だるまさんがころんだ! ～ Mr. Ghost fell down!

As of late, I've only really been talking about my weekends because most of what's worth noting happens on the weekends (because do you really want me to go through a play by play of all of my classes?)...but I think for the first time on record, my week was more exciting than my weekend is shaping up to be! (I'm currently taking a break from a major cleaning overhaul of my room that involved sweeping, mopping, cleaning down the kitchen, laundry, scrubbing my bathtub and dusting)

Have I mentioned my adviser here at Ibaraki is awesome? Because if I haven't, please let it be known that she is. She's really nice and funny, goes out of her way to help me and even sets up meetings with me to talk just because. On Tuesday we had the first of our soon to be every-other-week meetings that next time, will involve the students from her Zemi class. We talked about how in Japan genealogy isn't important unless you're from a major well to do/power house family, because well...more or less, everyone in Japan is Japanese (shocker, I know.) It makes sense, but its always so interesting to me the things that you don't think about and just assume are the same from your culture to the next.

I told her about how into genealogy my Mom is and how she has our family tracked back as far as 500 years ago in Germany, before a little thing called the 30 year war happened and they burned down all the churches that previously held public records. Kanemoto-Sensei was amazed by this and she was also amazed when I told her about the little 'villages' within in major cities such as New York that are kind of ethnicity specific (i.e. Little Italy and Chinatown.) I also told her about the Pennsylvania Dutch and we discussed how wearing a ring on your right ring finger in Japan means that you have a significant other (something I didn't know when I first came here and resulted in a lot of people asking me if I had a boyfriend when I walked around wearing rings on that finger some days and not on others)

Kanemoto-Sensei's Zemi class (Azusa, Yuri and Akane) all came over for dinner after that, so I cooked and we had girl talk and it was a lot of fun. They told me they are entering into a Furisode competition (a kimono for unmarried women with very long sleeves. These are the most elaborate, colorful and expensive kind of kimono) in December and they are learning how to wear Yukata and Furisode, so sometime in June they're going to teach me how to wear a Yukata and we're going to go to some kind of event put on by the cultural society :) I'm very excited!!!

Wednesday was by far the most fun this week. After my Japanese class I went with a bunch of other international students to the elementary school owned by my University to play with a bunch of elementary students. A man named Pa-Goffi, whom I met at the ambassador induction last week, is an English teacher from Ghana at the school, so we came to play with two groups of his students to teach them to be more outgoing and not to be afraid of foreigners. Pa-Goffi was hilarious and he said that sometime soon he's going to invite all of us to an international party at his house with all kinds of food, talk, dancing and even some African drums! :D The kids clearly adored him, because he walked into the room they all started clapping and giggling. It was so cute!

With the first group we sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", which the kids loved and then we broke out into groups. People at the university had previously sent the elementary school ourpictures, so each group of students was assigned to one student and they new who you were. My name is to hard for them to say (In Japanese, my name is said Kay-to-rin...so they just called me "Kay-Onee-chan" which means "Big sister Cai") I was placed with Mikuru, Suzuka, Ayuri and Tomoki who were quite outgoing for a group of Japanese elementary students and, to my complete surprise insisted on speaking English with me. If I spoke to them in Japanese, they always would answer me in English. Pretty impressive for a group of 10 year olds if I do say so myself O_O.

We played a game called "Daruma-san ga koronda" which literally means "Mr. Ghost fell down"...Its a lot like Mother may-I, without the asking. The "ghost" faces the wall and everyone starts rushing to be the first to reach the ghost. When the ghost yells "Daruma-san ga koronda!" and turns around, everyone has to freeze, and if the ghost thinks you moved at all, they call you out, turn around and go again. This continues until one of the runners succeeds in touching the ghost, and then all of the players, including the ones that got out, turn and run until the ghost yells "Daruma-san ga koronda!" again, and turns around. Everyone freezes and then the ghost asks "How many steps?" One thing I never figured out was how you pick the person you ask (I THINK it was the person who touched the ghost) or how many steps you tell the ghost (sometimes I thought it was the amount of steps they took, but other times I think they made it up). You tell the ghost how many steps, and whoever they can touch within that many steps is the next ghost. What I thought was interesting was that, unlike I feel like some American children would, if the ghost said you moved, even if you didn't think you didn't, you never disputed it and gracefully bowed out.

In the second class I played a traditional Japanese card game called Karuta with a large group of students. On each card there is a picture and a white circle, inside which is written one of the 52 sounds (or letters for those of us who thinks in terms of the roman alphabet) of the Hiragana alphabet. Each card with a letter and picture on it corresponded to a card in another deck, where the same letter was written at the top, but there was also description of the picture on that card (the description started with that Hiragana letter). The cards are spread out on the floor in a random, hodge podge order and a caller reads out the description on a card. The first person to successfully locate and slap the corresponding card got to keep it and the person with the most cards won.

Sound confusing? It kinda was, especially because they all spoke only in Japanese and I didn't understand half of what they were saying. They eventually resorted to just calling out the letter as opposed to reading the whole description when they realized that they were reading it so fast, I couldn't hear the first letter and so therefor had no idea what was going on and was the only one without any cards. After that, one of the girls decided to help me cheat when I couldn't find it on my own, by literally reaching out and holding her hand out over the correct card but not touching it, so that I knew where it was and then would tell me to slap the card. They would all then clap and cheer as if I had accomplished some sort of major achievement. I think with her help I acquired about 3/4 of the deck by the end of the game ^_^; Please note the ratio of my cards to the rest of the group in this picture....

On the way back to the school, the taxi driver pointed out a shrine ten blocks from school saying that there was some kind of festival involving Azaleas going on there, so I decided to go check it out.The shrine was hidden in plain site, very awkwardly sandwiched between two buildings and down a street, and I realized that I've actually ridden past there on my bike more times than I can count, and this was the first time I'd ever seen it. I got there and there actually wasn't a festival going on there ( I saw a poster there and I think he was telling me there had been one going on over the weekend...oh well)...but there was actually a beautiful Japanese garden attached to the shrine that was blooming full of azaleas, which were gorgeous.

I've only ever seen the ones that are the bluish/purple color that you will find on occasion in Pennsylvania, so I was very surprised to see white, scarlet, pink, yellow, purple, blue and orange. I eventually had to call it quits because between all my bike riding, the 96 degree heat and running around with the kids, I was about to pass out from the heat, but the garden was lovely and I'm really happy the taxi driver decided to take that moment to point that out to me...especially because it was the only thing he said to me.

Thursday started nice and early with Yasu and Rinda e-mailing my phone at 6:40 and 6:50 AM respectively, once again reinforcing my theory that Japanese people have to be at least part robot because they never sleep. I later took this as an opportunity to educate Yasu on proper American phone etiquette and acceptable calling/messaging times. :3

After English Corner, in which my team (Team Yankees), took home the gold in the World Cup Trivia game (:D), I headed to the Oohira's to play with Haruru and Marie, and we ended up eating Gyudon (yum) that Haruru topped with cheese and raw egg (not so yum. Apparently this is very normal in Japan...my stomach did not agree with this later) and we played Mario on the Wii...at which Marie and I failed epically.

Friday Tony and I helped out in a cross-cultural communication class taught by a Canadian teacher, Joyce Cunningham. Since the topic of discussion was Anne of Green Gables, we had to come early to decorate the room with posters about Canada and Joyce-Sensei actually came to class dressed as Anne, straw hat, red pig-tail braids and brown lace up period boots and everything. She's a complete and utter hoot and she invited us back to help with one of her other classes later in the semester. When I realized that Sat-chan was in the class I actually teased her by saying "Joyce-Sensei! This is the friend I told you about who thought I was from Canada!" :P

After E.S.S. Tony, Takami and I went to Yasu's house to randomly hang out and see videos of previous year's AKEL conference entertainment. The first video, Tony and I just kinda sat there confused before we just gave up on understanding Japanese comedic humor, but I will admit it was funny to see Gabira, Yasu, Takami and Rinda as freshman. And boy have they changed. O_O The second video was a lot easier for Tony and I to understand, because it consisted of Ita wearing a big red squirt gun bow tie, Ayaka and Ka-chan being pied in the face, and Masashi, Takami, Rinda and Shinji putting on a song/dance skit...in school girl skirts. I couldn't stop laughing, even though I had no idea what they were saying. I finally looked at Tony and asked him if he understood and he basically summed it all up by saying "They're wearing skirts. You don't need to understand anything else." After I managed to stop laughing I finally looked at Takami and said "In all seriousness...Takami, you have really nice legs. I have girl friends who would kill for your guys' legs." I wish I was kidding about this.

Well, I'm off to go watch Japan vs. Holland with some of my friends in the Kaikan lobby...Toodles!