花見

I have been a busy bee the past week and a half. Finally I have some time to relax a little bit.

Spring has finally come and with it some wonderfully gorgeous weather. The Japanese love spring since that's the time one can see the cherry blossoms. They have what are called "hanami". That's actually the title of this post. Separately, the two kanji mean flower (hana) and look/view/see (mi); translated, hanami is usually called a blossom viewing party. People flock outside to picnic under the cherry blossoms. I myself did this several times with my host family.This photo is from my first hanami. Mami, Su-chan, my host dad (I still feel weird calling him Yosuke...) went to an area near Yasukuni shrine which is famous for its blossoms on a Friday evening. This meant there were a bunch of people there picnicing and wandering around. Because of that, my host dad eventually took Su-chan home so that Mami and I could walk around unencumbered by a two-year-old. Taking pictures was hard since it was night, but I got a few good ones like the one above.

The next morning was more blossom viewing. This time we all went to a park in Shinjuku which was more open so that Su-chan could run around. Now you can see some blossoms in daylight!

And here we have Su-chan in a tree. See? This park was great for him. Lots of opportunities for him to do silly things. I was impressed that he actually looked at me when I took this picture. Usually he does something weird when you try to get a photo of him so that most of the time you get a blur...

...Or a photo like this. This was taken that night at Mami's parents house. We stayed that night in order to help welcome Jeremy, Mami's parents' new host student. We I told Su-chan I was taking a picture, he started running at me like the crazy child he is so this is the result.

This photo is of me at a park near where Mami's parents live. I went there with Mami's dad and Jeremy. We had been intending to go to another Hanami that a friend of Mami's was hosting, but Su-chan was not his usually genki self (genki being a Japanese word that means healthy and energetic) so we didn't go. The park was really pretty though and you can see a whole regiment of turtles on that thing in the water behind me.

After that weekend, I had to start classes which was not really any fun. No one wants to go from two months of break to three hours of Japanese in the morning. Luckily, however, my classes this semester seem like a lot of fun. Besides Japanese, I'm taking sociolinguistics, Ainu in a typological perspective, and media studies (this is maybe my favorite but that might just be because the professor is a Doctor Who fan).

Last week was also exciting because I got a visit from KENDRA! Her Semester at Sea ship came to Japan so I got to hang with her for a few days (when I wasn't in class anyway...I'm a good girl!) which was super awesome! Though a bit sad since that's the last visit from anyone back in the States that I'm getting while I'm here.

That pretty much brings us up to date. By the way, as a bit of trivia, today is my seven month anniversary here in Japan.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

A Temporary Farewell

My semester is well and truly over. I took my last final today (Self and Society in Asian Religions). I'm sure I did well though considering how I did on the first two tests it doesn't really matter as I could get a 50% and still get a A in the class.

The real point of this post is to say goodbye. I'm leaving in a few hours to catch my night bus to Osaka. Then on Friday morning I take the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo where I will have about an hour and a half before getting on another shinkansen going to Minakami this time. I'll be in Minakami for 4 weeks so this blog will be inactive until I return on March 5th (maybe a little longer since I might not feel like blogging right when I get back).

So, goodbye for now!

Oh right, I have a blog.

It's been a while. Sorry about that. I'm a very bad blogger apparently. No pictures today. Not because I don't have any, but because I don't feel like messing with it at the moment. Instead, you get to read.

Last week was not that special. I had class, taught English, and went to a party (though it was more of a "gathering" really except there was no brie--5 points to the first one to get that reference). I can't actually remember doing anything over the weekend which probably means I was pretty much a total bum.

This week I also had class. On Tuesday, I had a really awesome Japanese class, in fact, where we took a field trip to Toraya, a traditional Japanese confectioners. A very tasty experience. The only downside was the commute. In order to get to school, I go to Hanzomon station where I get on the Hanzomon line for one stop to Kudanshita. There I transfer to the Tozai line and get off three stops later at Waseda. I met my class at Waseda then we returned to the Waseda station and took the Tozai line to Kudanshita and transferred to the Hanzomon line for two stops to Nagatacho--that's ONE STOP away from where I live. It was pretty annoying really. It's a good thing I got sweets out of it.

The most exciting thing about this week though is that the Japan Term students arrived. They got here Monday, but I didn't meet up with them until Wednesday because of that little thing called class. I did get to spend all of Wednesday and Friday with them though. Unfortunately, they've now moved on to Kyoto so I won't see them again until next weekend. I'll talk more about what we did when I get my pictures up.

Anyway, that's pretty much it right now. Later!

Boggled...

Wow a lot has happened. In one of those life happens sort of ways.

Friday, I did just as I promised myself. Nothing. This did wonders for my cold which is now long gone. Yay! This weekend was really fun. Saturday morning Su-chan's nursery school had an undokai. Sorry, there is no real English translation; roughly it means "exercise party". Basically there's dancing and running and stretching and obstacle courses. Mostly it was just the kids that did these things but sometimes the audience got to join in. I had a pretty good time. And Su-chan is totally the fastest two-year-old of the bunch. He's going to be a jock when he gets older. After, we went to a park so that Su-chan could play. There we met a French family (French father, Japanese mother, two little boys). They all spoke English so I actually got to use three different languages which was pretty cool.

Saturday afternoon I just hung out in Shinjuku with Kate, Jeff, and Rachel. There was much wandering and an experience with severely overpriced cheesecake. We also had a long discussion about Japanese gestures that we thought was hilarious though I'm sure passers-by just thought we were nuts. Silly gaijin.

Yesterday was class and Laura's birthday. Rachel, Kate, and I had dinner at her host families which was super delicious. We had a good time just hanging out there and chatting. Her family must be rich though as their house is HUGE (by Japanese standards) plus they have a gigantic tv.

In the picture from left to right is Kate, Laura, me, and Rachel since this picture doesn't have a bajillion people in it, I can actually name them for you! All it needs are Sarah and Jeff, and you'd have my main friend group here all together. Sadly, Jeff had practice and Sarah had a prior engagement so they couldn't come. I promise to take pictures at karaoke and stuff tomorrow though, and they'll be there.

It was last night when I got home though, that things got...too exciting. Mami hurt her shoulder really bad somehow yesterday (she hasn't told me how...) so I got to call an ambulance and take care of Su-chan while she got brought in. Do you know what? It was the first time I'd ever actually ridden in an ambulance. I've been in one before, but it didn't actually go anywhere while I was in it. So I didn't get much sleep last night. Mom will sympathize as Mami now has a sling apparatus that she has to keep on for four weeks.

Today was not so fun at school due to the lack of sleep and the fact that I got told that there is no way I am allowed to move up a Japanese level despite the fact that everything is sooooo easy. The reason? The class above mine is full. Argh! So I just have to sit through a class that's frustrating for me because it's too simple. I'm here to learn Japanese, not review! I feel like this is middle school math all over again. Stupid placement tests seem to be out to get me. I did my best to move up though. I went all the way to the Japanese language coordinator for Waseda before I resigned myself to my fate. So annoying. At least I know there's a couple other people in my class that feel the same way I do. We've sort of created ouselves a little "this is too easy" support group for each other so we have people to complain to.

So anyway, that's what's happening. Last night and today were a bit hard, but I'm sure everything will be okay if not superb. At least I have karaoke tomorrow to look forward to...

Errands.

Yesterday and today have been mostly errand running. Yesterday I had to get a pretty thorough health check in order to exercise in Waseda facilities. I can't use the pool yet though since I still need an ekg.... So thorough! We also had our last orientation session yesterday! Yay! We're all fully orientated! Plus, we got to fill our our cell phone paperwork.

Today, I got my teiki (commuter pass) so I can go to and from Waseda for free (the program reimburses the cost of the teiki). Then a bunch of us went to pick up our cell phones. Of course, they're in Japanese so we then spent the next hour trying to figure out how to use them. They're pretty high tech. And our phones our very basic. I'm sure everyone will be surprised to know that my phone is bright pink. Color choice was limited, and I didn't want something boring like black. Then Laura and I went to open bank accounts. I was the only one that actually did. She has to wait until she's 20. So soon I'll have a bank account here! Woot!

Laura and I explored Ikebukuro (where the bank we chose is) and the area around Waseda while waiting for the party we wanted to go to to start. We didn't actually go to the party as we decided socializing was not worth the 2,000en required especially since we weren't really hungry.

I also checked on my classes. I got all the ones I wanted so I will be taking Comparative historical linguistics, Public choice theory and Japanese politics, and Social and international relations of Japan along with my nine hours of Japanese per week. Cool.

I told you guys that things would start getting less interesting the longe I was here...