~Mirai no tame ni, kono bashou de PERIOD ni~

Hello again! I just finished my first full week of school and on to round 3 starting tomorrow.
Here's my schedule. The explanation in English follows. :)



Monday
Japanese and Japanology (Japanese Studies). In Japanology, we had to form groups. The way the teacher arranged it was amusing. He had all the Americans stand at the front of the class and all the other students from various countries (the largest groups being Chinese and Korean, but we have people from Germany, Russia, Thailand, England...) had to pick which group they wanted to be in, after the Americans found a partner or two. It was a very funny process to watch and participate in.

Tuesday
Japanese Art History in the Meiji Era, Vocal Music, Japanese and...Japanese Circumstances (literal translation). I usually just go about calling it Nihon jijou which sounds less awkward. But basically, it's just like an extra side with Japanese in which we learn more kanji, learn more about culture, etc. As you can see, Tuesday will be my busiest day. Riding the 8:00 AM train isn't the best way to start my day, but as you can imagine in my Vocal Music class, I get to sing. I'm WAY excited. Also, my art history teacher is a real sweetheart and funny. Her pleasant attitude makes it worth it.

Wednesday
"Heiwa wo Kangaeru" or "Thinking of Peace" is a class about war. At first, I thought it was specifically about the war in Okinawa, but it's about current day war. So, for the first day of class, we watched a leaked U.S. military video of American soldiers mistaking two journalists as men with weapons (the "weapons" they saw were actually cameras). Needless to say, being the American in the room and the content of the video was uncomfortable and disturbing, respectively. But you know what they always say about seeing things from different perspectives. That's what I'm here for, partially, right?

Oh, and I have Japanese class that day too.

Thursday
My day off! I managed to schedule that unintentionally. It's very refreshing. A nice day for errands, homework, appointments, rest, whatever.

Friday
Japanese again and Creative Writing again! I'm so excited for Creative Writing because writing stories has always been such a fun thing for me to do. So far, it involves a girl being kidnapped by a young, disturbed but incredibly handsome man named Mars (if only I could draw him as nicely as I imagine him, hahaha). I'll let you know how it goes - I don't even know where it's going yet. Because that's how I roll. But I want it to be awesome and compelling and good enough to make you mad and yet, you keep reading because you want to know what happens next. I blame Fullmetal Alchesmist and Code Geass: The Rebellion of Lelouch (I haven't watched season 2, so no one reading this ruin it for me, please 'k thanks!) for this. Those two shows have done it for me more than I'd like but I can't stop watching and/or reading them.

Anyway, enough about school! Extracurricular activities are awesome too! Like strawberry picking and celebrating people's birthdays!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033379&id=1230390045&l=1ef4d8c9bd

That's what I did last Sunday with Aoyama's Japanese tutors and other exchange students, in a city called Tateyama in Chiba prefecture. They gave us condensed milk for us to dip our strawberries in. So delicious! Interestingly, the strawberries there were more long than round so they reminded me a bit of chili peppers. After slightly gorging ourselves on fruit and milk, we went to have real lunch. It was a very lovely arrangement of seafood, but some of it I didn't eat. The top offenders being raw squid (both taste and texture kill me), the shrimp that still had its eyes, and the crazy jerky. Everything else was tasty!

After we had lunch, we had a little bit of time to explore the place were in. I was held captive by a Yoshi (from Super Mario Brothers) plushie and bought it. He's the new addition to my happy stuffed family here in Japan. :) Also, we bought ice cream. Now, when I looked at the sign, it definitely said milk flavored (yes, they have milk flavored ice cream here). But when the lady told me the flavors, she told me they had vanilla when it was no where on the sign. I guess she didn't want to confuse me. Oh well. I enjoyed my milk flavored ice cream.

We finished exploring and eating and then we went to this center, of some sort, and learned how to make fans. The man had infectious laughter and was very happy to be teaching us. It was very fun. One of the men who was volunteering to help us make fans asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from America, he soon became more excited than I expected and asked whether I was from Chicago. I guess he thought I'd be from the same place President Obama is from? Too bad! I told him I was from Maryland, but he found that to be a good enough answer.

When we returned back to campus, some of us gathered to go to a yakiniku restaurant in Yoyogi to celebrate Mike's birthday. It was an all-you-can-eat deal for two hours and they never stopped giving us food. We basically all ate far too much. There was also cake involved. Of course. We decided that walking back to Shibuya from Yoyogi was the best plan, to sort of cancel out the absurd amount of food we ate. Fortunately, the weather was incredibly refreshing and with fun company, the 30 minute walk was enjoyable.

Speaking of weather. It is ridiculous here. One day it's cold. Next day it's sunny. Next day is not only cold, but windy and rainy. This may continue for a few more days. And then it's HOT. WHAT IS THIS?! @__@

The World is Mine! >:D

Just kidding! The title is a song by Hatsune Miku - a computer produced singer using Vocaloid software. Of course, this was created in Japan. All the cool, high-tech, mindblowing stuff is made here.

(This is going to be a long one, as I'm trying to summarize three days of WIN!)

Japan in the Spring:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033379&id=1230390045&l=1ef4d8c9bd

Picnic by the River
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032913&id=1230390045&l=c561cbf4f8

Anyway, the last few days have been exciting! All the new exchange students are here! I've made friends with some of them so far, most of them coming from China, Hong Kong or Korea. There are also some Americans too, but it seems like we're running low on them this time around. But that's okay, because I feel like I've been given more incentive to speak mostly Japanese. Some of the students speak English too, but sometimes their Japanese is better. It's been fun.

On the last day of March, I met with Ayane and one of Ayane's mom's friends (an Aoyama Gakuin University graduate) who has come to Japan to visit home for two weeks (with her daughter as well). Ayane is an expert in giving tours and finding fun places to see and do. We went to Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown. In Roppongi Hills, we went into this super tall building where we could see Tokyo from a great view. We also visited the Mori Museum of Art and it was just fantastic! My breath was taken away by some of the stuff there. I loved it all so much.

(Before that, while we were taking pictures outside, two Saudi Arabian guys - I want to guess - decided to take pictures with us. By the way, they didn't ask. They just sort of jumped into our picture, smiled, and just assumed it was okay. It was strange. Amusing, nonetheless.)

After the museum, we had ramen for lunch. Yum!

Next, it was Tokyo Midtown where there were some more short-term exhibits. We came across a pet store and we immediately went inside. Basically, I died from the cute overload. I'm not a huge fan of the pens that they keep the animals in, but if I didn't think about that, I enjoyed the place. It had two levels and on the second level, they had this big St. Bernard puppy. Near the puppy, the shop was trying to say, "We're not responsible if the dog bites you" (as the St. Bernard had an open pen) but it ended up saying something along the lines of "The store's responsibility is not it if bitten by dog."

A prime example of Engrish. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I slowly put my hand near the puppy and she sniffed my hand. I then slowly put my hand on her head and she sort of leaned into it. So, I took the royal opportunity to pet her. I spazzed a little bit. So. so. so. cute. I cannot tell you how much I LOVE dogs. Especially puppies!! My other favorite puppy there was the French Bulldog who had fully erect ears, a smooshed-in face, and eyes so wide apart, it looked incredibly goofy.

After I got my full of puppy goodness, we continued on to a park that had a beautiful garden. Lots of cherry blossoms are out and they're simply gorgeous. Lots of people were taking advantage of their beauty and the decent weather. We saw plenty of families out with their children, dogs, friends, etc. I could feel the happiness in the air.

We took some time to rest by the garden as we had been walking around a lot by that time. It was very relaxing.

Evening soon came and we all went our separate ways.

The next day (Thursday, April 1st), I met with the rest of the exchange students and Japanese tutors in Yoyogi Park for a hanami! On the 31st, I thought a lot people were out - that was nothing in comparison to the amount of people out in Shibuya, Omotesando, Yoyogi and Harajuku on this day. The weather was perfect. I didn't spend too much time introducing myself to many new students, because I worried I would just forget their names....so, I plan to do that as school starts. It was all going pretty splendidly, but unfortunately, one of the Japanese students suffered alcohol poisoning (drinking is a part of the hanami experience, and she got a little carried away). They needed an ambulance to get her. Now, she's doing well. Thank goodness.

On Friday, the IEC instructed us that we needed to come in and get our packages for the new semester. Included in our packages is a urine sample bag - that was surprising. I wasn't expecting that at all. Oh boy.

Cat and I went to karaoke with some of the new girls. There were about 12 of us girls waiting for a room at the karaoke place and a group of young guys (Aoyama students - I could tell from their bags) watched us with great interest. I heard one of them mutter, "kirei naa" which essentially means, "They're pretty, aren't they?" as they inspected us. The comment was nice, but it was weird - you got to love when people talk about you out loud when they think you don't understand them. I have to admit I have committed the crime before too, but I'm not as obvious about it! They kept saying "hello" to us. I waved and said "hi" back in good fun. They seemed to appreciate it.

We finally got a room and in the end, after two hours, we had an awesome time! We all discovered who were amazing singers, how sometimes we all love and know the same songs (the most popular were Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" and Utada Hikaru's "First Love" - we basically had a choir going on with those two songs. It was brilliant.) My favorite new friend would definitely have to be the Japanese girl who likes Fullmetal Alchemist as much, if not more, than I do! We had a fun time chatting and giggling like the fan girls that we unashamedly are. We exchanged numbers last night and have been emailing each other by phone today. :D

Today, I've been trying to figure out my school schedule. It's been a bit irritating actually. There are two classes, a lecture on Hayao Miyazaki's movies (WHICH I LOVE) and a lecture on 2nd language acquisition, that I desperately want to take but I cannot due to conflicts with classes I absolutely must take. I screamed into my pillow a couple times today. But I have time to figure it out, so all hope isn't lost. I don't have to pick classes for UMD until the 8th - which I also don't want to think about, considering I have to figure what I have to take to fulfill my major requirements.

It's such seriously crazy business.

But the other successes around me make me feel better. And even though my tutor graduated, she said I could ask her for anything. I love her to pieces.

Ugh, I just thought about how much I'll miss her and so many other people when I go home in August. I can't think about it!