This week, as you can imagine, was a busy one. I was hoping to sleep over at the Yokoyamas (my host family from two years ago) in Tokyo on Saturday so that I could hang out with them on Sunday...but I just didn't feel comfortable, what with all the studying that I needed to get done. Instead I spent the day at the library and studying, before grabbing Ramen and Chicken Pinman (Pinman are small green peppers in Japanese) at Ho-Chi for dinner and trying to race a thunderstorm home.
In Mito it rains quite a bit, but I can count on one hand the number of times that it has poured cats and dogs (and man when it pours, it pours. I've never seen rain fall that hard in my life.), and thunderstorms crop up even less infrequently...but when they do....it basically takes me back to the daily thunderstorms on the mountain town of Cuernevaca, Mexico where I went to Girl Scout camp a few years back. The storms last for 2-3 straight hours and have a tendency to occur right above the Kaikan, or something close to it (on Monday there was another storm and when I was rushing to get my laundry in from outside, a bolt of lighting hit the roof of a house two houses away. O_o;) The thunder is so loud it shakes my windows and glass doors of my cabinets and the rolls of thunder last so long they frequently overlap with the lightning, which are easily the brightest, largest and strongest bolts of lightening of I have ever seen. This, of course, led to a fun amount of off-again-on-again power outages while I was trying to study. I also was supposed to hang out with Yoshie, who is leaving for Germany tomorrow, but considering neither of us saw it fit to risk life and limb out in the storm, we called it off in favor of Breakfast at Gusto's on Tuesday morning.
It really stinks that I had to say goodbye to yet another person, because it really drives home that all these people I have grown to love so much and see on a daily basis...I just won't be seeing them any more...some of them
never again.:(Yoshie is definitely a diamond in the rough when it comes to Japanese girl friends...because she's about the most like me compared to other Japanese girls...She's not all girly and she certainly doesn't dress girly (by Japanese girl standards. With her zip ups, chucks and polos, she'd fit right in at Penn State), she's not timid, by any stretch of the imagination and frequently will tell you exactly what's on her mind...even if you don't want to hear it. She's very much like a breath of reality in a sea of sugar, spice and everything nice and she's about the only Japanese person I know that not only gets sarcasm, but was all ready using it when I met her!
Tuesday I took my Japanese studies final, which was actually a lot easier than I expected it to be (it lasted 30 minutes in a 1.5 hour allotted time block) and spent the rest of the day studying, finishing papers and working on my Power Point for my Japanese speech that I had to present today. Wednesday marked my Japanese language final and last day of Japanese Film history, both of which just kind of blew by. Today I presented my speech about Japanese and American Interpersonal relationships (in Japanese of course) and my mass e-mailing of people to come to Tony and my presentation really paid off! People whose phone numbers I didn't even have ended up coming. Of course Takami came since he's Tony's tutor, but so did Yuki A. and her friend, Yuuya and Koki!
Astuko and Haruru (the Oohira's who hosted me for a weekend in may) came up to see my speech and gave me this furoshiki (Japanese elaborate cloth/massive
handkerchief that is tied and used to hold things) full of Japanese goodies including Senbei (Japanese rice crackers which are 10 times better than any Quaker Oats rice cake...unless its the chocolate smeared with a little bit of peanut butter on top. Then Quaker totally wins) and mini-chocolate cakes and cheesecakes which were to die for. Seriously. I shared some with Yasu at lunch and I think he about died and went to food heaven when I shared a bite with him and he looked like a kid on Christmas Day when I said he could have a whole one to himself. They even tied this massive bear key chain/cell phone strap to the bundle. It was so cute and completely made my day....especially since I had to go back and listen to more Japanese speeches for another 2 hours or so after lunch since I was asked by Fujiwara Sensei to be the Emcee for the Level 4 speech session.Here is my speech! For those of you non-Japanese speakers out there I am talking about American greetings (hugs, waving and hand shake), proxemics, "Honne"(one's real feelings) and "Tatemae" (public facade) and Male/Female Relationships. My favorite part is around the 12 minute mark when my friend Koki asked me how I knew what the measurements for comfortable distances for Americans vs. Japanese were. I told him in my Japanese studies class we talked about it, but most importantly, from my own observations of how close I could get to a Japanese person without feeling uncomfortable (as I demonstrated to him in front of a room full of people)
After school, instead of having a traditional meeting for our last week, English Corner decided to have a little Nomikai/party as coordinated by Tomoko, Tony and I since Ma seems to have fallen off the face of the earth lately. We were finally allowed back into the main lobby of the Kaikan, since they closed it for about the past month...which is kind of frustrating because part of the fees that I paid at the beginning of staying here included access to that room...does that mean I get some money back? No one's really sure exactly why they closed it...I heard that some students got to rowdy during a world cup game and left the room a mess...and then I heard that some one in the neighborhood who did not live in the Kaikan had a full blown party of their own in the lobby.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I learned a new game called "Jouri Jouri"...its very similar to seven up in terms of how the game moves from one person to the next in the circle (which ever arm you gesture with is the direction you go in...so you always have to be careful that the person next to you doesn't quick throw it back to you instead of going onto the next person)...except there are no numbers, so there is no special motion for the number 7...but instead when someone gestures with both their arms you all have to throw your hands up in the air and shout "YAY!"...try watching this video and see if you can understand.
We were going to play some other games but quickly got distracted by a very interesting show about ghosts caught on tape....some of them were lame and seemed totally fake (like the Japanese were trying extra hard to make it scary) but some of them were pretty cool. Since it was all on film, it wasn't really all that scary...but they had a bunch of celebrities watching it for their reactions (because that's what every Japanese TV show is. If a celebrity isn't participating in some part of a game or competition, they're their to give their "expert" opinion on whatever it is.) and one girl literally had to be escorted off the stage because she was crying and hyperventilating. O_O and then a large chunk of wax fell off of one of the candles and fell to the ground and all of them (boys included) freaked out and started running around the set screaming. Japanese are a little too jumpy...
Then, we accidentally stumbled into a channel that was in English...which Tony
and I decided was just to weird to watch so we flipped back through the Channels until we found a game show featuring Arashi (my favorite Japanese boy band featuring my favorite Japanese idol...MatsuJun!)....as you can imagine, we didn't end up playing any more games...and then I think all hope was officially lost when Mune passed out on the couch...face first. And those couches are disgusting.There is also a cat that lives somewhere in Hori-machi (the part of Mito where the Kaikan is located/where we live) that keeps finding its way back to the Kaikan at random intervals...and since we've last seen her, she's apparently given birth to her litter of kittens, though they're no
where to be found. One of the boys found her randomly outside and brought her into the lobby to play with for a while, so we named her Nekomi-chan (I still don't know why) until we had to give her the boot because our Pizza came, and I told the boys under no circumstances were we feeding the cat....she was really cute though and quite content to just sit there in our laps or wander around between our legs...and don't worry, we washed our hands thoroughly afterward.Well, that's all she wrote folks. The next two weeks are going to be busy between Araragi coming up from Tokyo, going to the beach with friends, the class trip to Fukushima, climbing Fuji, dancing in the Mito Komon Festival parade and more going away parties than I have fingers on my one hand. I'll try to keep this updated as much as possible...but like I said...August is going to be very much a whirlwind!
..And now...I'm going to enjoy the wonderfulness that is sleeping without setting an alarm since I'm completely done with my 10:30 Japanese class and the teacher is going to Taiwan. :) Nighty night!
No comments:
Post a Comment