(Recent) Pictures Pictures Pictures!
My time with Midori and Ben :D
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027095&id=1230390045&l=d6749b940e
The following are just more pictures of random times in Japan.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024618&id=1230390045&l=bf2794838a
----
So, I'm almost done with school. Things haven't changed in terms of my "I'll-do-this-at-the-last-minute" practice. It's not something I'm proud of, but neither is it habit I've been able to effectively break...as of yet. I'm currently writing a paper (in Japanese) about my Mobile Culture class' group project about a cellphone website. The obvious disadvantage of attending a class in which the language is too advanced is that you don't know what the teacher is saying....
Depending on fellow students to translate the things covered in class is not a comfortable way to get by, considering that they are not perfect in their Japanese either. Lesson learned. I hate depending on people so much because my level is not where I'd like it to be right now. Things like this make me wonder whether I'll take another class all in Japanese like this again. I know the "correct" answer is to take the challenging route. I have a few months to consider.
But fortunately, these friends still come through and have helped me figure out where I need to go with this paper. It has to be two pages, single space - I haven't written anything in single space since probably middle school. Seeing a paper crammed in single space with Japanese is headache inducing. I'm ganbaru-ing as hard as I can, but I don't believe two pages will be achieved. I figure he'll have mercy on me - he's a really cool guy, as far as my friends tell me and from what I've been able to deduce myself.
I only get excited about this paper when I see how much I've written. It's satisfying to know I can convey ideas. I've been using every resource - notes and handouts from Japanese class, online translators (to get rough ideas, I know they're aren't perfect in the slightest), my Japanese dictionary on my Nintendo DS and my Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary I got some many Christmases ago. All these things are saving my life right now!
As the school semester is ending, exchange students are starting to leave/have already left. It's sad. But we will soon have a new crop of fresh faced foreigners! :)
Because students are leaving, they have tons of things they want to give and/or sell. I'll be buying a refrigerator from my friend who is going back home to Canada. It's more exciting than it should be - it means I can make my own breakfast sometimes when I can't be bothered to wake up at 7:00 am to get it from the dorm ladies.
----
I blame living in the country of Pokemon's origin for this sudden and intense regression to my childhood days. Cat and Elizabeth have recently purchased the HeartGold and SoulSilver editions of the games. I think I will have to purchase HeartGold before I come home (for good - I'm still working my way through LeafGreen....leveling up my team for the Elite Four! I have guaranteed thrills for the ride home and back!)
This last segment was for my nerdy friends who I love dearly and am glad we can be children together.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Wheeeeeeee, I'm Back.
Heeeeey, unintentional hiatus is no longer in session.
Sorry. Again. *looks down at the ground in shame*
First things first: Pictures!
Recently, my friend Midori and her son Ben came to Japan for three weeks. When I was fourteen years old, my mom signed me up for classes at the Japan America Society in Washington D.C. and Midori was my very first Japanese teacher. Then, I started taking private lessons with her and my friend Kamille. Although we didn't keep up Japanese with her for the longest time, we still kept contact with each other, and we became more like friends than just a student-teacher relationship. I also became the babysitter :)
In short, I'm super happy we were able to meet with each other in Japan. She always made learning Japanese fun, with watching TV, eating snacks, and fun activities. I owe a lot to her for where I am today.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027095&id=1230390045&l=d6749b940e
The following are just more pictures of random times in Japan.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024618&id=1230390045&l=bf2794838a
So basically, I've finished the semester....except for a paper, which I'm in the midst of writing. It's due on the 30th, so just a few more days!
The last day of classes was celebrated with karaoke and eating out at a nice Italian restaurant.
I'm eagerly awaiting my Paramore concert on February 13th. Once I see them, I will have seen my top three favorite bands EVER. I can't express how much glee this brings me.
And three days after that, I'm heading home for a break! I need to figure out also whether I'm going anywhere else, namely Hong Kong and/or Korea. I hate planning things.
Oh, and thanks to Midori/my mom, I have been able to enjoy the classy cuisine of Easy Mac right here in my own dorm. I have yet to find macaroni and cheese in this country, so despite it not being anything as good as my mother's, it was delicious. I also now have my special chai tea and Swiss Miss hot chocolate. Things are doing pretty swell right now.
I have to go to the Immigration Bureau and apply for a re-entry permit so I can come back here after I go home during the break. That's my mission on Monday. It's been sort of like this for the last few days - missions. Friday was getting medicine. I learned a while ago that sending 3 months of prescription medicine is illegal (oops) so my medicine was confiscated. After sending in a thousand forms and only getting a little piece of paper saying that I did something wrong, try again later (thanks for playing), I tried again. No response.
Sooooooooo, I had to go to a clinic to get some medicine. Fortunately, again thanks to my mother, I was able to get to a clinic where the staff and doctor speak English. This was the sort of thing I didn't want to be struggling in Japanese, so it went well....expensive, but I got what I needed.
Saturday's mission was getting my hair taken care of long after it needed it. As usual, my hairdresser Ikko was friendly, happy to see me and eager to talk to me in both English and Japanese. He told me that he recently ordered two volumes of One Piece manga in English so he could practice reading. I told him I do the same thing! A while ago, I bought three volumes of "Yostuba&!" manga (much cheaper here than in the US) and was able to understand about 90% of it. It was satisfying. I think I'll pick up a volume of One Piece for him when I go home.
And so far my break has consisted of re-watching the first season of Pokemon episodes with Elizabeth every night. The cheesiness is beyond overwhelming but it brings back good memories and other parts of it somehow more hilarious than before. We talked about how amazing the human brain is and how it can recall things that haven't been brought up, watched, or listened to in years. Like the PokeRap. Yeah. I remember parts of it still.
We're tempted to watch it in Japanese after we finish watching the English dub. We've also noticed how much Japanese culture is in that show that we weren't aware of when we were kids and how some things didn't translate well (for example, onigiri turned into donuts....ehhh? Not even close 4Kids!).
I live a simple life.
Sorry. Again. *looks down at the ground in shame*
First things first: Pictures!
Recently, my friend Midori and her son Ben came to Japan for three weeks. When I was fourteen years old, my mom signed me up for classes at the Japan America Society in Washington D.C. and Midori was my very first Japanese teacher. Then, I started taking private lessons with her and my friend Kamille. Although we didn't keep up Japanese with her for the longest time, we still kept contact with each other, and we became more like friends than just a student-teacher relationship. I also became the babysitter :)
In short, I'm super happy we were able to meet with each other in Japan. She always made learning Japanese fun, with watching TV, eating snacks, and fun activities. I owe a lot to her for where I am today.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027095&id=1230390045&l=d6749b940e
The following are just more pictures of random times in Japan.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024618&id=1230390045&l=bf2794838a
So basically, I've finished the semester....except for a paper, which I'm in the midst of writing. It's due on the 30th, so just a few more days!
The last day of classes was celebrated with karaoke and eating out at a nice Italian restaurant.
I'm eagerly awaiting my Paramore concert on February 13th. Once I see them, I will have seen my top three favorite bands EVER. I can't express how much glee this brings me.
And three days after that, I'm heading home for a break! I need to figure out also whether I'm going anywhere else, namely Hong Kong and/or Korea. I hate planning things.
Oh, and thanks to Midori/my mom, I have been able to enjoy the classy cuisine of Easy Mac right here in my own dorm. I have yet to find macaroni and cheese in this country, so despite it not being anything as good as my mother's, it was delicious. I also now have my special chai tea and Swiss Miss hot chocolate. Things are doing pretty swell right now.
I have to go to the Immigration Bureau and apply for a re-entry permit so I can come back here after I go home during the break. That's my mission on Monday. It's been sort of like this for the last few days - missions. Friday was getting medicine. I learned a while ago that sending 3 months of prescription medicine is illegal (oops) so my medicine was confiscated. After sending in a thousand forms and only getting a little piece of paper saying that I did something wrong, try again later (thanks for playing), I tried again. No response.
Sooooooooo, I had to go to a clinic to get some medicine. Fortunately, again thanks to my mother, I was able to get to a clinic where the staff and doctor speak English. This was the sort of thing I didn't want to be struggling in Japanese, so it went well....expensive, but I got what I needed.
Saturday's mission was getting my hair taken care of long after it needed it. As usual, my hairdresser Ikko was friendly, happy to see me and eager to talk to me in both English and Japanese. He told me that he recently ordered two volumes of One Piece manga in English so he could practice reading. I told him I do the same thing! A while ago, I bought three volumes of "Yostuba&!" manga (much cheaper here than in the US) and was able to understand about 90% of it. It was satisfying. I think I'll pick up a volume of One Piece for him when I go home.
And so far my break has consisted of re-watching the first season of Pokemon episodes with Elizabeth every night. The cheesiness is beyond overwhelming but it brings back good memories and other parts of it somehow more hilarious than before. We talked about how amazing the human brain is and how it can recall things that haven't been brought up, watched, or listened to in years. Like the PokeRap. Yeah. I remember parts of it still.
We're tempted to watch it in Japanese after we finish watching the English dub. We've also noticed how much Japanese culture is in that show that we weren't aware of when we were kids and how some things didn't translate well (for example, onigiri turned into donuts....ehhh? Not even close 4Kids!).
I live a simple life.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Happy New Year!!
Well, it's 2010 now. Crazy, I do believe.
I'm on winter break still, it ends this Thursday, the 6th.
Although it is incredibly short by UMD's standards, my break has been jampacked with all sorts of fun and goodness.
I went to Sendai with the Vander Haaks to stay in one of the cabins of Takayama. It's a gorgeous place, as you can see in the hordes of pictures I took that I will post right here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026122&id=1230390045&l=99ba5adc9c
But before we went to Takayama, we stopped in Mashiko, a pottery town. They had tons of shops, selling all sorts of unique and beautiful plates, cups, utensils, etc. I didn't think I was that into pottery before but when I was there, I wanted everything.
Takayama with its beaches and mountains and clear blue skies - it was great. Despite this, I spent most of my time inside because we brought a Nintendo 64 with us and...well, I love Nintendo 64. So many good memories and so many good games. But don't worry, I got to appreciate the great outdoors too.
For Christmas, we decided we needed to have a rave. We also decided we needed some boom to our party. Emily asked the people at The Daiso (100 yen store) where we could find fireworks. They said that they had some. One employee asked her fellow employee to cover her register as she ran to the back room. Two more employees got involved and finally, they brought out some stuff. They told us it was summer fireworks and whether it was okay. We said yes, apologized for their efforts, they apologized for the wait, we all smiled and we got our fireworks.
It was the smallest (and the only) rave I've been to but it was so much fun. I like that I have friends who are as silly, if not sillier, as me. We rocked out to my impromptu playlist of Lady Gaga, Hellogoodbye, Yelle, Miley Cyrus and Cascada, and other stuff.
The rest of the time in Takayama was more chill. Watching Christmas movies (and Beauty and the Beast), playing Mario Party and regretting we started it and that we had to finish it, drawing in my notebook....oh, and "starting" a Glee club. Basically, we just sang songs of the Glee soundtrack to the best of our ability. I think "Lean on Me" was our best number.
Oh. I did the naked thing (how my mom calls going to the public bath). The place we went to was called a sento and they had different kinds of baths - a scented bath (the day we were there it was yuzu - citron fruit in English), a cold bath (for cooling off in), a bath with jets, a bath with SUPER jets, a bath outside so you can feel warm and cool at the same time, and just a regular bath. Oh, they have a sauna too. And once you decide in your mind to get over the nakedness, its really not bad at all. No one cares, so you shouldn't either :D I can't do the bath for very long though. The water is very hot - in a good way, but I get hot very fast and can only do heat for so long.
What actually made me decide to just go for it as because I figured it would be interesting to write about, and for others to read, for my blog. Hahaha, a silly motivation tool, but it worked. So, I hope you enjoyed it.
We returned to Tokyo and it was general relaxation, hanging out, and lazying about for the next few days until New Years Eve. Emily and I met with her friend Laura and her fiance Otto. We went to Ikebukuro for Starbucks and wasted a few hours there. After Starbucks, we went to Book-Off to waste some more time and then we did purikura! One of the best inventions that Japan has made better. We ate dinner at Matsuya and then headed over to Asakusa.
We were plenty early though. We did some walking around, taking pictures of the Senso temple, seeing what people were selling...and then we made our way to another Starbucks and spent some time there as it was cold outside and we had a lot of waiting to do. We did some shopping at a 100 yen store too. We came back to the temple around 11:00 and just walked around more. We got tired of walking though and started dancing. I started "do-do-do" -ing the Mario song. This guy started "do-do-do" -ing back at me...he seemed sort of angry/annoyed. Whoops. He was drunk though. We had a couple of guys that wanted to take pictures of us - not really sure why...the fact that they were inebriated helped though. And I guess we were the most charming foreigners there (haha).
There was a gong that began to ring as the new year came in. People cheered, hugged and kissed their lovers/spouses, we did a little dance. We didn't try to go into the temple, so we just headed home. Unfortunately, even though the Yamanote train line was still running, the Seibu Ikebukuro line that Emily and I needed to get home stopped running at 12:35 (we got there at about 1:00) and wasn't going to start running again until 5:00. Laura and Otto got off at Shinjuku, so they were a-okay.
Emily and I - not so much. She called her mom and her mom was nice enough to come pick us up. Sadly (for all of us), she got lost. About 2 hours later, we were picked up and taken home.
New Year's Day was more lazy business. We watched the movie 9, had tabletop barbecue for dinner and watched the new Star Trek movie. A great end to another visit. I went back to Eda after that as I had work in the morning.
Now, just waiting for school to start.
I'm on winter break still, it ends this Thursday, the 6th.
Although it is incredibly short by UMD's standards, my break has been jampacked with all sorts of fun and goodness.
I went to Sendai with the Vander Haaks to stay in one of the cabins of Takayama. It's a gorgeous place, as you can see in the hordes of pictures I took that I will post right here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026122&id=1230390045&l=99ba5adc9c
But before we went to Takayama, we stopped in Mashiko, a pottery town. They had tons of shops, selling all sorts of unique and beautiful plates, cups, utensils, etc. I didn't think I was that into pottery before but when I was there, I wanted everything.
Takayama with its beaches and mountains and clear blue skies - it was great. Despite this, I spent most of my time inside because we brought a Nintendo 64 with us and...well, I love Nintendo 64. So many good memories and so many good games. But don't worry, I got to appreciate the great outdoors too.
For Christmas, we decided we needed to have a rave. We also decided we needed some boom to our party. Emily asked the people at The Daiso (100 yen store) where we could find fireworks. They said that they had some. One employee asked her fellow employee to cover her register as she ran to the back room. Two more employees got involved and finally, they brought out some stuff. They told us it was summer fireworks and whether it was okay. We said yes, apologized for their efforts, they apologized for the wait, we all smiled and we got our fireworks.
It was the smallest (and the only) rave I've been to but it was so much fun. I like that I have friends who are as silly, if not sillier, as me. We rocked out to my impromptu playlist of Lady Gaga, Hellogoodbye, Yelle, Miley Cyrus and Cascada, and other stuff.
The rest of the time in Takayama was more chill. Watching Christmas movies (and Beauty and the Beast), playing Mario Party and regretting we started it and that we had to finish it, drawing in my notebook....oh, and "starting" a Glee club. Basically, we just sang songs of the Glee soundtrack to the best of our ability. I think "Lean on Me" was our best number.
Oh. I did the naked thing (how my mom calls going to the public bath). The place we went to was called a sento and they had different kinds of baths - a scented bath (the day we were there it was yuzu - citron fruit in English), a cold bath (for cooling off in), a bath with jets, a bath with SUPER jets, a bath outside so you can feel warm and cool at the same time, and just a regular bath. Oh, they have a sauna too. And once you decide in your mind to get over the nakedness, its really not bad at all. No one cares, so you shouldn't either :D I can't do the bath for very long though. The water is very hot - in a good way, but I get hot very fast and can only do heat for so long.
What actually made me decide to just go for it as because I figured it would be interesting to write about, and for others to read, for my blog. Hahaha, a silly motivation tool, but it worked. So, I hope you enjoyed it.
We returned to Tokyo and it was general relaxation, hanging out, and lazying about for the next few days until New Years Eve. Emily and I met with her friend Laura and her fiance Otto. We went to Ikebukuro for Starbucks and wasted a few hours there. After Starbucks, we went to Book-Off to waste some more time and then we did purikura! One of the best inventions that Japan has made better. We ate dinner at Matsuya and then headed over to Asakusa.
We were plenty early though. We did some walking around, taking pictures of the Senso temple, seeing what people were selling...and then we made our way to another Starbucks and spent some time there as it was cold outside and we had a lot of waiting to do. We did some shopping at a 100 yen store too. We came back to the temple around 11:00 and just walked around more. We got tired of walking though and started dancing. I started "do-do-do" -ing the Mario song. This guy started "do-do-do" -ing back at me...he seemed sort of angry/annoyed. Whoops. He was drunk though. We had a couple of guys that wanted to take pictures of us - not really sure why...the fact that they were inebriated helped though. And I guess we were the most charming foreigners there (haha).
There was a gong that began to ring as the new year came in. People cheered, hugged and kissed their lovers/spouses, we did a little dance. We didn't try to go into the temple, so we just headed home. Unfortunately, even though the Yamanote train line was still running, the Seibu Ikebukuro line that Emily and I needed to get home stopped running at 12:35 (we got there at about 1:00) and wasn't going to start running again until 5:00. Laura and Otto got off at Shinjuku, so they were a-okay.
Emily and I - not so much. She called her mom and her mom was nice enough to come pick us up. Sadly (for all of us), she got lost. About 2 hours later, we were picked up and taken home.
New Year's Day was more lazy business. We watched the movie 9, had tabletop barbecue for dinner and watched the new Star Trek movie. A great end to another visit. I went back to Eda after that as I had work in the morning.
Now, just waiting for school to start.
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