Korean Church Day

First off, here are some videos I took at the rehearsal before G Splash auditions, so you can see the kind of routines we were doing! We're all a little rusty/hesitant looking, but that's only because we were sooo sore and exhausted from Break and House the past two days, and we didn't want to wear ourselves out for our auditions! We definitely gave it our all for the real thing =)


First was Hip Hop. I think this was my least favorite. I couldn't really get into it, maybe it was the music? Some of the moves were kind of tricky too.



Lock!! My favorite genre and my favorite routine! Every time I did this one I had so much fun and started smiling and getting really into it =D They dance to such funky music!



Oh no, it's Break!! Every time the synthesizer part came in on this song I cracked up. I had the most trouble with the part where we first go down on the ground and kick our legs out in front... Haha, don't pay attention to the fact that none of the girls in this clip got the freeze!! Look in the back of the room, there's a group of guys there so look to them to see how it's done. I did it in auditions though!


House! This one doesn't look too impressive from this angle, and I started the video late, but this routine had the most footwork out of all of them and it was so easy to forget! When the real members do House, it looks so pretty and graceful and like they're having a good time =) Also, I apparently insulted Jeannette at the beginning of this video.



The last one, Girls/Girls Hip Hop! I made sure to film Hunter a lot in this one =) He was one of the few guys who actually seemed to have gotten the hang of it, haha. Is it that hard to shake your hips? I got my OWN car!



Today I went to church with Mia! I'm not exactly sure where we were, but it was somewhere outside of Shinjuku, she said it was sort of like the Korea Town of that area. The building was really tall, and there were different services on each floor. We went to the English service, where all the songs and stuff at first are in English, and then the sermon is in Korean but translated into English. They also have all Korean service, Chinese, and Japanese services. It was a pretty small room/group, but the church itself seemed to still be really busy with services even when we left! It was really interesting =) The atmosphere was kind of that revival, hand raising/clapping atmosphere (projector with song lyrics and everything!) like I experienced a lot in my church growing up. Although I think I've come to enjoy the more traditional services like the one I go to in Charlottesville (University Baptist Church) and the one here in Nishi Kawaguchi, it was really really nice to see people who were not only from a country foreign to me, but in a country foreign to them, having such passion about living for Christ.

Afterwards, they served lunch and had a Bible study. Lunch was really interesting! Mia told me it was sort of a common Korean dish called "bibimbap" (I did not remember that, I had to look it up, haha, though I did learn the Korean word for "and then" today from listening to the service!) which basically means mixed rice. It was a bowl of rice with various different vegetables and a sauce placed on top, and you're supposed to mix it up. I was explaining this to Mia afterwards and I should probably explain this to my parents/people who know me very well at all; I think that when there's a dish I'm familiar with that has vegetables I know I don't prefer, I usually eat around them as you probably all know, haha. But when it comes to something completely new and different, I've just been going for it! I ate that whole thing, and I couldn't tell you what was in it, except there was some ground beef, carrots, and maybe some of those funky mushrooms I've only seen in Japan. It was very fresh and greeny and kind of spicy! My first Korean food =D We also got little "tiramisu" (but not really) cakes for dessert, and Mia and I both ended up having two, haha!

The Bible study afterwards was nice too. Although my church here in Saitama is good listening practice for my Japanese, it was really nice having someone translate today (well, especially because I don't know Korean!). They talked about how God fills the emptiness in your heart, and through God you can do anything. My favorite part was where she talked about how when there are waves in your life, God can help you get through them and teach you to manage them, like a surfer! And how the Bible says to always be thankful and joyful no matter what situation God has put you in, and like how surfers really love the big waves because they're so exciting, we should be excited when God puts us in tough situations or tough times, and ride through them with his help!

Oh yeah, the usual church outfit update: I put together this outfit yesterday because everything else was in the wash, and Jeannette said it looked like I was going to church, so I decided to wear it to church! I wore my white jeans mom talked me into bringing even though I was hesitant, my black dressy tank top with tiny white polkadots which I love, a black light sweater, and black heeled sandals which destroyed my feet, but oh well. It was such a nice day today, I'm so happy it's warming up!

I was really sleepy when I got back, so I slept from about 4:30-7:00 ^^;;; And then I ate dinner, and I've not been getting much done since then.... I'm going to see which assignments I have for Japanese tomorrow and decide when to do them. Luckily we get Tuesday off from school this week because it's Children's Day! Thanks kids!

Lazy Day

It's been another busy week! Here's the usual recap from what I can remember:

Wednesday

• Another bad kanji day, but my quiz wasn't so bad since I studied more this time.
• Studied a lot after lunch.
• Break dancing, oh no! They taught us the audition routine for break, which was basically everything we had learned last week, put into sequence. It was really short which was nice because break is so hard to begin with! There was a part where we had to drop to the ground and kick both our legs out in front, supporting with one hand in the back, and I just couldn't get the hang of it as far as where my weight was supposed to be distributed, so I practiced that part about a million times and my quads are still feeling it. I did finally get it though! So we did the first dance part, dropped to the ground, did this basically (it was really slow in the routine. It's not that hard to do! I can't go fast yet though), and then ended with a chair freeze. The chair freeze is the part that was driving me absolutely insane with frustration last week! Hunter even tried to show me again before this practice, and I just got even more frustrated, I didn't understand at all! It was as if someone was saying to me "Oh, just put your pinky finger down on the ground, and then kick your legs up so all your weight is resting on it and hold yourself in the air" or "Just jump up in the air and levitate there for a minute, if you practice enough you'll start getting it!" It just seemed totally impossible and like my arm would snap in half (as Shougo pointed out later, pointing to my forearm "you are too thin here." ) However! They did a great thing at practice and took time to split us up into small groups of 5, and a member of the club worked with each group to help them figure it out. I don't know what our group leader said or did, but somehow I got my arms and weight in the right spots and could kind of see how this thing was supposed to feel! I didn't quite get a good one that night, but I at least understood the concept finally! I was super happy =D Here's a picture of the chair freeze I found on google. Mine doesn't look like this yet, my legs are all over the place. NOT ME
• I can't remember what day this happened, it might have been Wednesday, but the train we were on was pretty empty, everyone was just sitting down. We were asking Ansen if he thought he'd be able to do a freeze on the train (he's been breaking for three years I think), and he said he already had before! So someone dared him to do one, in one of the more spacious areas of the train. Instead, he decided to do it right in the middle of the train between the two rows, lol. Of course, the Japanese travelers were totally unphased. I accidentally made him hold this for a reeeallly long time because I was taking video first and he was posing for a photo, so I had to hurry and switch to photo mode, haha. Sorry Ansen! It was super impressive though. We were all scared he was going to fall on some salarymen.

• Home.
• I was supposed to be studying for my Japanese test the next day, but I was so exhausted and didn't know really what to expect/how to study since it was the first test we've had, so I decided to go on to bed.
• Ended up not actually sleeping any earlier because I got myself all worked up and sad thinking about things like how there's been earthquakes in Southern IL lately, and worrying about my family and stuff ^^; whoops!!

Thursday

• Probably should've studied for that test, haha.. Didn't really do so hot, didn't even finish (but that was because also I misread the directions on one part and spent a while doing it wrong...). There's always next time!!
• The rest of class was fine. I did my self-introduction and it went well and I got some nice peer comments. Although my teacher said I could speak a little faster, but some of the students said too fast. I think I just need to calm down and know what grammar forms I'm using before the words just sort of fall out of my mouth so I don't have to go back and correct them. I also need more interesting self-introductions.
  
• I had to read a bunch of stuff for Symbolic Practice before class, so I did that during and after lunch. The book we're reading for that class is really good so far. It was talking about what ethnography is, and the ethical measures you need to take and consider as an ethnographer. My favorite part was where the author was asking, why bother doing ethnography? And he argued that science just for the sake of understanding isn't good enough anymore. It needs to have a purpose and a purpose to help people. So he was encouraging researchers not only to start out focusing on something to research where the results could shed light on something to help people, but to also be willing to change your research to meet the needs of the people you're researching. That was really cool for me to read, because I had started to feel like that a little bit in this class. Yeah, Japanese people use cell phones and other technology differently that other societies.... but why is that worth anyone's time and money to study? How is it helping the greater good? So I'm planning on asking my professor about that before we pick our research topics. Greg and I had been thinking about video games, but now I'm not sure. Actually, I can't really think of how any of the topics we threw out in class could be used to help people, so maybe he can help put a spin on that so I can see one of them in a different light.
• House practice! This was the last routine to learn for auditions, but it was so easy to forget! The first half was stuff we already learned, luckily. But it's so much fast footwork! And there was a drop at the end that I could barely do cause my quads were so sore from breaking. It was fun though, House is a fun style!
• Home, not really any homework the next day, so sleep!

Friday

• Class was ridiculous. This program is ridiculous. First half was fine, but in second half, after we finished self-introductions for the day (1 minute, doesn't even have to be memorized), we got instructions for two different card games in Japanese, and a deck of cards, and we were supposed to play with our group of 4 or 5. WE PLAYED CARDS IN CLASS FOR 30 MINUTES. IN THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF INTENSIVE JAPANESE, WE PLAYED OLD MAID FOR 30 MINUTES. Something is not right.
• On the flip side, Oh-san showed us a crazy card magic trick!! We freaked out, haha. He played it up really well and got us thinking he might have messed up or forgotten how to do it right, and then totally blew our minds by making a card magically appear!! I love magic XD Thanks Oh-san!
• I went to go start the bank account process by getting my hanko, which is basically a rubber stamp with your name on it to sign documents with in Japan. Most other places let you just sign in the hanko stamp space, but not the bank =/ Japanese people pretty much have kanji last names, so there will be stands in stores selling hanko for lots of different names (think those personalized pencils/mugs/crap nobody needs stands in card stores and stuff), but us foreigners have to get custom ones made. It'll cost about $30 and won't be done until next weekend, but I think it'll be a pretty cool thing to bring back to America. If anybody wants a little stamp with their first or last name in Japanese made up, let me know =)
• Lunch is always delicious.
• I studied some in the library, but also slept some, and thought of what I would say at G Splash auditions as my reason I want to do dance.

Oh snap, G Splash auditions! I got there early and there were already tons of people rehearsing =) It was an exciting atmosphere! Everyone was nervous, and after some groups started coming back, it started to sound pretty bad. (Shougo just said "terrible, terrible, my performance was terrible" ^^;; ) Everyone was saying that the judges (several different representatives from the club) looked really mean and didn't say much the whole time and were super intimidating. There was also a camera in the room, I guess so they could look back over and evaluate. I convinced myself that they had all agreed to look and act really mean and tough in the audition (which Yuki confirmed later on, haha, and apologized to us but said they had to), and I decided just to try and smile and look like I was having fun and have confidence. I was in a group with three other Japanese girls who all seemed really nervous. We only had time to run through the first 4 dances together in the warmup room before it was our turn! For my answer as to why I wanted to do dance, I said in Japanese that although I don't have any experience, whenever I see a dance performance, I start feeling like I want to do that kind of cool dance and be that kind of amazing athlete. Haha. My audition went really well, and I didn't forget anything in any of the dances! That was a big thing for me because I was really worried I would. And the best part.... I held my chair freeze for a good three seconds!! I was super proud ^__^

Afterwards, everyone gathered outside the gym and they announced the results.

Ok, give me.. "I'm super nervous about G Splash results!!"

Hunter asked for a retake, this is what he produced the second time around.

We got in!! Everyone who tried out was excepted, except for two people and they were going to talk to those two people about it later to see if they should reconsider, haha. We were kind of surprised they took everyone, but that's fine with me =) I'm glad everyone gets the opportunity to be part of this cool group and learn dancing

They were having a welcome party later on, so a big group of us went to go eat before hand (since Yuki said "The food is not very good, so..you'll want to eat before.. and you'll be sitting on the floor the whole time on tatami, and.." she was not selling this party basically, haha.) After much deliberation and splitting up, me, Jen, Hunter, and our new friend Yuujiro ended up at a cool ramen place with a nice atmosphere. Jen and I had girl talk the whole time and that was really nice =D hehe
This pic turned out so nice! Jen, Hunter, and Yuujiro!

Jen's dish.

My ramen. My heart belongs to Udon though.

Then it was off to Takada no Baba, a weirdly-named place with a meeting area right outside the station where tons of other groups from other schools and such were meeting up. I think we saw one guy getting hazed pretty bad, which was really really weird and uncomfortable...

We finally left for the party place after 11, and it turned out to be like... just down the street out of the station, haha, but I guess they wanted us to all go in together. This place was basically a house with big Japanese style rooms that they rent out to different groups. Yuki said they have the party there every year. There were lots of long low tables where we sat on the floor and they crammed us all into the not-big-enough room. Yuki said the food would be bad, but we enjoyed it! They had a wide variety of snacks and stuff (well, I guess it wasn't like, a meal or anything, but it was good for snacks!) like edamame (tons of edamame!! they're kind of like..peas I guess? but they're bigger and still in the pod, and they're really addictive and you end up eating a ton. You can buy them in America at the store or as an appetizer at Japanese restaurants sometimes), some weird popcorn, pineapple (it was soooo delicious but the girl next to me pretty much ate all of ours, haha), some weird Japanese seeming snacks, and lots of candy and chip/cracker items. Lots of cans of alcohol of course, but luckily there were big bottles of tea and lemon mitsuya cider there too, so I was able to just drink mitsuya cider and eat snacks all night! It was really great!! hahaha.

This was supposed to be Jen and I making kind of awkward faces, cause it was a little awkward and uncomfortable at first.... but I guess it turned out pretty cute instead!

First they had a toast to the new members, and something about growing close over the next four years (which made me feel like this would be a fun club to be in from first to fourth year), and then they made everyone do an introduction. Those were crazy because Shougo (not our friend Shougo, but the main teacher guy of breakdancing who is kind of a crazy guy) was yelling stuff during everyone's intro. Sometimes he would yell "Suki da! Suki desu! Kawaii! Suki da yo!" which is basically "I love you! I love you! You're cute! I love you!" at the girls he knew, haha. The best part was when one of us foreign exchange students would give ours and say, I'm so and so, from here, I'm a foreign exchange student, and Shougo would yell "Shiteiru! Mou shiteiru!" "We know! We know already!" hahaha. That was funny for us because it's just ingrained in our heads from class to say something like that in a self-intro and not consider the social situation we're in. My intro was luckily uneventful, haha

Now, as you might remember, the trains in Japan stop running at midnight, and this party started at 11, so it was going all night. The beginning started out pretty crazy, but then it calmed down. Jen and I mostly talked to whoever came our way the whole night. It was surprisingly hard to just find people to talk to, maybe with the way the room was set up. It was nice that everyone was all sitting on the floor though. It made it feel more personal like a sleepover and less like a sit-down dinner or something. There was a lot more freedom for everyone to move around.

The best part of the night was when Shougo came to talk to us! He was the only senpai member of the club who really talked to us at all. We expected him to be totally crazy because of how he normally acts, but he was actually really really cool and so polite to us in the way that he just kept asking us different questions about our experience with Japan and how we're liking it and stuff like that to keep the conversation going. It was definitely the most Japanese I've spoken at once since I've been here and it was soooo nice and so much fun. I was surprised how much I could speak naturally, although I still got hung up on a couple of things, but the conversation flowed pretty nicely. Thanks for the nice conversation Shougo!

Sorry I blocked your face, Jen! T__T What is Christine doing....

The other two people we spent time talking to were Shingo and Elena (I think that was her name..) across the table. They were both students in the Spanish department and I think second-years in G Splash. Shingo spoke in English while I responded in Japanese and that seemed to work out pretty well. I even forgot sometimes which language either one of us had been speaking and how to respond, haha. He kept trying to convince me to do break dancing, which I might consider now that Shougo made such a good impression on us! I kept telling the breakers that at first when they showed us the moves, it seemed impossible, but then they taught them and I was able to do it and it's so cool. Shingo said "impossible is nothing." hehehe. Whenever he would be trying to remember peoples' names, he kept having trouble with mine because it's kind of hard to say in Japanese, or it doesn't sound very natural. So he would point and say "Hunter, Jennifer, Jeanette, .........difficult." haha. I told him he could call me "difficult" instead and that got a laugh. A lot of the students seemed to have nicknames they went by, so maybe I should try and get one of those.

LOVE this photo, haha.


The night went by a lot faster than the night we stayed out in Shinjuku. Probably because this time:

• It was warm.
• There was food.
• There were people to talk to.
• We started at 11 instead of 8.

Overall it was a lot more fun than I expected, and even though it threw off my weekend get-work-done intentions a bit, I'm glad I went! We got kind of disappointed to see that a lot of the friends we had already made and some of the senpai group members we respected were smoking though. The percentage of people smoking there was crazy! It's almost as if they don't know it's bad for them. It seems to be part of that group mentality thing, sort of along the lines of how all the girls dress up and all the guys do their hair. If it's something they think will make them seem cooler, they just go ahead and do it. As a result, my throat and voice was starting to feel pretty weird by the end of the night and my hair and clothes all smelled like smoke again when I got home. Luckily today was laundry day =)

Jen being constantly leaned-against by the exchange student behind her who was too engrossed in teaching the Japanese kids English slang to realize he was being a jerk. Pay no mind to the slumbering Jeannette in the photo.

It didn't take too long to get home, and I slept til about 1 this afternoon and talked to Nick til about 3 when I started my laundry and got a shower. Then I went to Yaoko with Jeannette to get groceries and... lunch? Dinner? Both? Haha. Mom and Dad, I bought some milk (and oreos...I splurged!) and a container of pineapple, soooo go health!

The rest of the evening I haven't really been getting much done. I meant to focus on cleaning and doing physical work today since I can do that when I'm kind of tired, but I can't study at all when I'm tired. I haven't gotten much done though. I think my wet clothes all over the room is demotivating me somehow. I'll just try and say I relaxed today so I can work hard tomorrow =)

Locking Day

Today was just another normal day =) Japanese didn't go so well because I had confused myself into thinking Kanji day started tomorrow when it actually started today, so I had another quiz I wasn't prepared for... whoops! It shouldn't happen again though.. Man I hate kanji... I'm just so far behind everyone. I hope I can stay focused and do some backtracking on older ones that everyone else seems to have learned already.

I got a quick lunch by myself so I could go study for as long as possible (I got ice cream too XD ). Greg joined me after a while and we both took turns napping, haha. I got a pretty good amount of work done. I really like that Tues/Weds/Fri gap between lunch and practice where I can study, instead of having to do it all after 10pm.

Then it was G-Splash time! Tonight was my favorite.... Locking! It's such a fun style of dance, and the two members who teach it are super-effective and really energetic. They're definitely the best teachers in the whole club. They taught us a ridiculously complex-looking dance in about 25 minutes and we had the rest of the time to practice! It's still a little confusing, but it's
reeeealllly fun! Most definitely my favorite style. I had been feeling a little unsure about G Splash with the time commitment and everything, and I wasn't having as much fun the past few days, but doing lock again changed everything! I want to learn that style!!

I got kaaragedon (like..sort of fried chicken with egg on rice) for dinner and it was pretty good. Now I'm home! Tonight I've got to practice those kanji for another quiz tomorrow, and I'm supposed to present my self introduction for the class tomorrow, but that's no big deal because I was one of the only two people who did it last time, and you don't even have to memorize it. Jeeze.

One thing I wanna talk about is how I miss America. I don't think you could have convinced me before I left that I would miss the concept of America once I got here. I thought maybe like, things I'm not used to might get annoying, like taking off your shoes or weird cultural things like that, but I'm not really one to get to missing places. I sometimes get to missing my family a lot while I'm at UVa, but that's about it. Lately though I've just been missing the comfort of America, really little things that people seem to do or not do here. For example, for some reason, I feel like people are very very conservative and reserved in public. Like, I feel really out of place if I put my hands in my back pockets, or cross my arms while I'm standing waiting for the train. Or if I had folded my legs up in the chair at the library today, or when I started hitting my stomach at dance practice because I had a side stitch. People just don't seem to goof around or act relaxed here like we do somehow...

I think I also need to get out of Tokyo soon, because I was thinking of how I miss rural southern Illinois, or even Virginia. America is so big that we build out, in Japan they seem to build up. Every time I look out a window, there's a building. There aren't any backyards really, just some small patches of grass. Every space is planned out and filled with concrete. Everyone's flowers are in pots on the side of the street. Even the parks and playgrounds are just pavement and bare dirt. I just want to go run a big field and then sit under a tree and look at the sky.

Appropriately, I started listening to Sufjan Stevens' Illinois album today =) I wouldn't say I miss America in a sad way, but more in an extreme longing kind of way. I think part of it is just that I haven't really connected with Japan on any level yet. It's so hard to meet other Japanese people really and make friends, so I haven't connected socially yet, there's a lot of things about the culture and social mentality that I don't really agree with, so I've had trouble there too. The only analogy I can come up with is from something I read online about studying abroad. It talked about how when you come back to your home country, you might feel "rootless," because you had to uproot yourself, grow new roots, and then you're uprooted again and you're left somewhere in between. Right now I feel like my roots are still firmly planted in America. I was ready to dig them right up, but... it seems for me there's no dirt to plant them in.

I can't really see Japan as being somewhere I would consider working anymore... Part of me is starting to wonder why I'm really studying Japanese or have an interest in Japan. I guess it's because I liked learning the language, and I was into anime and all, those are my only real reasons. Now that I'm here, it's just sort of seeming like another place, but not one that I should have an interest in for any particular reason. Maybe it's like how Mom thinks I deal with other things in life, I find something that's a challenge and I pursue it until it gets boring for me. Learning Japanese was a fun challenge until I came here and found out you don't really need to know any more than I know to get by here, and there's not really anything prompting me to learn more outside my own interest, which seems to be waning. I think I do need to get out of Tokyo before I make any other judgments though. At the very worst, I'm still glad I made the effort to study abroad here. I think it was the head of the religions department at UVa who solemnly advised that I make sure to visit Japan before devoting my life to studying it =)

Anyway, I might write more on those feelings as the semester goes on. Right now I'm just longing for wide open spaces, the way Charlottesville feels in the spring, green grass and trees, the feeling like I can do/wear whatever I want in a public space and still feel comfortable and normal, a normal schedule where I can go home during the day, Nick, a dirt road, and a big house with a piano inside.

Catchup Post

I'm sorry for the extreme lack of updates!! It's pretty much...any time I'm not using on homework when I get home is time I don't get to sleep, sooooo yeah.. And I was lazy and didn't finish blogging over the weekend!

Sunday

• Today I got up at 8:30 and then went back to bed for a while.. haha, I can't believe I was still tired after all that!
• For church I wore my pale green skirt with a white shirt and a yellow sweater over it, and
  I got to test drive my new pale yellow adorable heels I got before I left! They totally rule.
• Church was nice, we sang a lot of hymns I knew!!
• I got a Japanese bible when I came in this morning since the page numbers are in the program, and then I found the verses in my English bible, so I actually knew a little bit what was going on! It was talking about Paul visiting a city, and how the people there prayed to a lot of gods, and even had a shrine that said "To an Unknown God." But they were interested in hearing the gospel. The way it talked about the city's religiousness and the way religion played a role in their society reminded me some of Japan.
  
• I might have accidentally told the lady from the Bible study class that I was going, but then I took off, ha...sorry!
• I meant to do homework the rest of the day, but ended up spending a lot of time to go shop and eat with Greg, and then I just didn't do much the rest of the day!

My credit situation mostly got worked out, so I'm no longer hanging! Let that cat down! I'll be finishing up the language requirements of my major with 11 credits from Intensive Japanese (after taking a placement test when we get back. whatever.), and then getting another 3 for the media-ish class I'm in, so it all will work out nicely. Just took a lot of emails and explanations to get that far.

Here's a short recap of Monday:

• Back to school again? Really? Didn't wanna go!!
• Japanese was fine
• Got lunch with Jen at our usual katsudon joint, which was delicious. We discussed our qualms with the intensive Japanese program here compared to what we're used to from U Va, but I'll write more on that later on.
• A little bit of study time!
• Japanese Symbolic Practice time!! I love this class!! I always get nervous we're going to do hardcore class discussion like in my MDST class, but we always end up in small groups discussing our field work. Our teacher is super awesome and hilarious, AND he let us out 30 minutes early. Best class ever.
• Tonight's G-Splash was Hip Hop again. Turns out they're teaching us new, longer dance routines for the auditions, oh no! This one wasn't too tough, but the practice was run really sloppily. They just sort of started dancing without saying anything, and didn't take the time to explain it well at all. I was really irritated by the end of practice, and if it had been run that way from day 1 I probably wouldn't be very interested in joining.
• Way too long of a train ride, Yoshinoya takeout, then home.
• Did my homework (or so I thought....), then bed.

I'll try and get another post for today out before bed!

Slept All Day

Now it's time for a recap of the past few days! Everything's just been so hectic and busy now that school has started, I haven't had time to even think about blogging! I'll stick to the bullet format for the recap.


Thursday

• Day two of Kanji, just as bad as day one T_T I feel so behind all the other students somehow.. But I did end up with an 8/10 on that kanji quiz instead of failing it. Somehow.
  
• Day two of Japanese Symbolic Practice. That class is going to be totally awesome. Teacher is really great and funny, and the class is going to be so media focused. We're picking topics for our field research/final project/paper soon, and I think Greg and I are going to do gaming. Our class came up with a lot of ideas, and he was encouraging a lot of ideas that were really media focused (like thinks we talk about in my MDST classes at home), but really cell phones and gaming are the only two that really stuck out as being particularly different in Japan and worth spending the time to research while in Japan.
• (The previous paragraph can also be read translated to the following text: "Greg and I are going to play video games with Japanese people and call it homework." )
• G Splash practice was House! I'm not sure what that means really, but the music was a lot more jazzy with piano parts and stuff, and the dancing was pretty easy to pick up. The girls did their routine for us, and it looked like it was just fun to dance House. The House leader also told us foreigners the club rules in English. Basically, don't miss practice or be late without telling someone first, extra practices around event time, for the first event you can only dance Hip Hop or Lock (yay!), first event is in June, second is in August (booo!), it's a serious club they don't mess around blah blah blah.
• We met some new friends afterwards! The only name I remember is Shougo, but there were two boys and two girls we met. They were really nice! Shougo and the other guy spoke some English and it was really funny. I was trying to explain the concept of first-year, second-year etc. at UVa, and I mentioned how Thomas Jefferson built our school, and Shougo was like "Ah!! Thomas Jefferson!... Thomas Jefferson ha.... independence... independence.. nantoka nantoka.." hahha. And the other kid's English pronunciation was reeally good! I was impressed.
  
• We got dinner at a cool place Greg and Hunter had found and got their recommended yakiniku. For some reason, the sauce on yakiniku still makes me feel pretty sick....although it's better in Japan
• From about 10pm to 1:30am, I wrote lengthy emails back and forth to my adviser trying to get the issue of our credit transfer worked out. The story changed a lot of times, I learned some specifics about the requirements for my major, and it looks like it's going to work out fine with me getting 11 credits of Japanese language to finish up that part of my requirements, and then 3 credits from the Japanese Symbolic Practice class for another part. After I get back, I'll just have 2 more Japan-related courses to take in different departments, one of which I'm already signed up for.
• Since it was 1:30am and I was still sort of in correspondence with my adviser, and I hadn't started my homework, and I didn't really feel like sleeping, I decided not to sleep that night. I did some laundry since I had run out of things to wear for G Splash, and I picked up my room a little bit, and I talked to Nick and my Dad for a long time on Skype.
• Somehow I couldn't make myself focus on my homework, and there really wasn't that much of it, so I decided I didn't really need to stay up all night, and ended up taking about an hour and a half nap and getting up at 6:15 to finish my homework.

Friday

• Got up at 6:15 to finish my homework (well, most of it)
• Ditched the guys and rode the special ladies only car on the train, for the busy morning commute. It smelled nice and it wasn't crowded at all. Being a lady rules sometimes.
• RAIN. It rained so hard on Friday, and the wind was blowing super bad, it was ridiculous. I was thankful for my new heavy-duty old lady umbrella.
• Class was ridiculous. Jen and I got a bad case of the giggles when Noguchi-sensei just ran class so hilariously. He just sort of says ridiculous things while he's talking to the class, like it's nothing at all. And he draws example pictures on the board, which is fine, but he goes too far... He just keeps adding pictures and it keeps getting more ridiculous.. Jen and I were having a hard time in that class because we were both just laughing until we were crying, it was crazy... we just could not stop laughing, even a long time later.. I think Jen summed it up best when she asked me "What is he doing??"
  
• Lunch was bad for me.. I accidentally bought a Soba ticket instead of Udon, so I asked the lady to change it since it's the same price, and she was like sure! But the message didn't make it all the way down the line, so the guy in front of me had ordered soba, but his ended up with an egg in it instead of what he ordered, when the egg and stuff was supposed to go in mine T_T So he ended up having to take the thing I had ordered basically instead of what he ordered.. I felt soooo bad and it made me feel bad all lunch, I wish I had said something to him to apologize. I couldn't even offer to take that one since the other one was udon.. I prayed that something especially nice would happen for him that day.
• After lunch, I went to try out the post office ATM and see if I could get money out of it like Greg did. On the way there, I stopped in a Christian bookstore near the school and fulfilled vow #3 by buying a Japanese Bible.
• I successfully took out 50,000 yen from the ATM, with about a $5 service fee, not bad!
• For the room we practice G Splash in, it's supposed to be no shoes, or only indoor shoes. I've been getting away with wearing my normal shoes inside, but I decided I should really get some indoor shoes, so I walked down this street for suuuuchhh a long time and didn't find anywhere selling shoes! Very discouraging T_T
• My jeans were soaked once I got back to campus T_T
• I tried to go to the library to study, but ended up putting my head down for about 45 minutes, and then decided I was too cold from my wet legs to study.
• So I went to the gym room and changed for practice and studied till it started!
• Friday's dance waas.. Girls! Or Girls Hip Hop, as I think it's really called... they made the boys learn it too! It was one of the harder ones to get the hang of... I don't seem to have that natural sexy body rhythm that it takes to dance that way.. The worst parts were body rolls, which I still don't get, and a funky hop step thingy that took me forEVER to even remotely get the hang of, and I'm still not great at it.
• I got delicious ice cream afterwards =)
• Dinner was the Yoshinoya!! Wooo!
• I was extremely happy the weekend had started and went to sleep.

Saturday

• Woke up at 9:30! Woooo sleeping is aweesooommee
• Left a little before 11 for the Ito Yokado mall with Hunter and Jeannette.
• We bought shoes for dancing! Mine are pretty sweet. They're all white with like a gold sparkly swooshy cross thing on the side. I decided not to invest in running shoes after all since I honestly won't have the time or feel like running here.
• After we got back, I went to Yaoko with Greg for groceries!
• Then... I took a nap! From about 2-5! Woaaah
• Then I took another nap! From about 6-8, double woah!
• Greg tried to get ahold of me several times, and I only woke up at 8 because he knocked on my door! Whoops! I didn't mean to sleep that much ^^;
• I tried to make something of the rest of my evening by cleaning my room and getting caught up with my expense report.
• Then I went to bed at around 2am.

More recap in the next post!

Hanging Day

(Thanks, Daddy.)

Seriously? Day

Things are getting complicated with our potential credit transfers from our Sophia courses back to UVa. Here's hoping it all works out as it should. I had all my homework done and then that needed dealing with... ya just can't catch a break in this program!

Today was:

• Awful kanji day
• Might have failed a quiz
• Enjoyed studying in the big quiet library
• Learned a little bit of breakdancing
• Can't believe I learned a little bit of breakdancing
• Got reaaally reaaallly frustrated at one part of breakdancing I just couldn't comprehend
• Reeeaalllly hate the feeling of not being able to comprehend
• Ate ice cream at every meal today
• Took Midol for the first time, is miracle, am hooked
• Got cheap katsudon from the Shop 99, surprisingly delicious and filling, and cheap
• Actually got almost all of my homework done before midnight
• Room's still a disaster
• Was proactive
• Want something done right so I'm doing it myself
• Doing something right means 3am bedtime this time
• Better than not getting what you paid for
  

Kanji Day

Continuing with the short posts, here's a list of things I learned today:

• The nice lady we met during the train delay yesterday actually lives on our street, and is eager to show us around Saitama and speak English with us.
• The best part about having a big blanket on the floor is that I can just throw clothes and stuff there when I don't have time to deal with them, just like I'm used to doing haa.
• Learning to dance makes it hard to walk.
• Kanji day is the worst day.
• Sometimes you stereotype people, and they end up surprising you. Other times you stereotype people and they end up being dead on and so you get a photo taken with them to remember them by.
• There's too much homework and not enough time to do it.
• How to do some locking (dance).
• Locking is really fun.
• Locking is difficult and too fast.
• It's fun to watch skilled people lock.
• "Lock" in Japanese pronunciation not only sounds like "rock", but also the Japanese word for "six."
• Sukiya has coupons.
• Now I have coupons (thanks again Jeannette!)
• I know less kanji than a lot of the kids in class.
• Four raisin croissants is an adequate breakfast.
• A four raisin croissant breakfast every morning is gonna add up.
• The gaijin card looks nice.
• The weather is warming up.
• Sometimes new shirts you buy without trying on fit better than you expect them to and turn out to be a great purchase.
• I didn't bring enough T-shirts/sweatpants to be in a dance club.
  
• Fashion tennis shoes are not proper athletic or fitness footwear.
• I miss Nick a lot.
• Bananas at Shop 99 are actually a lot cheaper than the ones we bought off the street.
• Warabi station is a lot farther away that it looks, especially if you walk yourself around in a circle first (sorry again guys!)
• I could probably make it to bed before midnight if I'd use my time a little more wisely.
• Just one game of spider solitaire to unwind can last a long time.
• Blogging, in any form, takes too long.
  

Super Exhausting Day

Today was very tiring, and I'm very very sleepy with still some homework to finish, so I'll just to a short recap of today for now, in the ever-popular bulleted list form!

My Day:

• Left for school with Jen and Greg
• Found there to be a mass of people backed up at the ticket gates. The trains were down and delayed due to an accident.
• Several packed trains later, we arrived at class 30 minutes late.
• Class was ok.
• Lunch was pretty good.
• Spent the next two hours studying in the computer lab, trying not to fall asleep.
• Met up with Greg and Jen to scope out Japanese Symbolic Practice course.
• Totally awesome course, cool professor, interesting subject, will learn a lot but it'll be a lot of work too.
• Bought book for that class, about $50 =/
• Changed clothes for G Splash practice
• G Splash practice! Crazy awesome workout and learned some cool hip hop moves.
• Went to print out vaguely referred-to homework page from computer lab, waited around.
• Took the trains home, everyone super exhausted and hungry.
• Picked up some Yoshinoya takeout.
• Picked up some snacks from Shop 99.
• Ate said takeout with the gang in the kitchen, was delicious. Got Jen hooked on new chocolate snacks.
• Homework, ugh.
• Blog
• THE FUTURE: more homework, Bible, sleep.

That's all for now! I might elaborate more later on, but maybe not. Nothing particularly interesting happened today I suppose. Back to work!

Church Day

Today was an exciting day! I decided to try out the little church down the street I had found. I woke up early and did stretches this morning (which is probably good since I might not have time to do them again tonight... too much homework!), and then picked out what to wear. I love going to church because it gives me an excuse to dress up! I got out all my cute skirt and blouse combinations and laid them out on my bed. I know that I tend to buy things in pale yellow and green lately, but I didn't realize how much yellow, green, and pink made up my spring wardrobe!
I decided on a flowery pink skirt, a white three-quarter length top, a pink sweater jacket, and some white leggings for warmth since it was rainy today. I wore my strappy white sandals, although I wasn't sure about whether I'd need to take them off when I went in the church or not... I took my new green flowered umbrella and felt very flowery and girly and wonderful =) ( although I realized later today that I only put one of my earrings in before I left..haha!)

When I got to the church, they were already singing some, which was nice to walk up to! Luckily, I didn't have to take my shoes off when I went in, so that means it's gonna be Cute Shoe Sunday, every sunday from here on out! XD There were ladies in the front hallway to welcome me, and they gave me a hymnal and asked if it was my first time there and I told them I was a study abroad student here for four months. They had me write down my name and go on in. Unfortunately, I failed to get a Japanese bible before I went today, and the lady and in the front hall decided it would be better for me to read my English one instead of borrowing a Japanese one since I'd be able to understand it. What I didn't understand was the name of the book that the pastor announced in the sermon, haha.. The books of the Bible will be my own personal vocabulary list to learn for next week I suppose =)

The church was very very small, probably only somewhere between 50-100 people (on the lower side I would guess), but it was packed pretty full for such a small sanctuary. I found a seat between two girls and joined in the next hymn. For some reason, I wasn't expecting the hymns to be in Japanese! I had a lot of fun singing them though, and a few of them were set to familiar hymns I already knew. I think doing that every week will definitely improve my reading skills. At some point during the service, one of the ladies from the front desk came up to me with a note asking me which country I was from, with a few potential countries written down, so I pointed to アメリカ。 =) Another lady also brought up a cough drop for a boy who had been coughing some! How nice ^^

As I've told a few people already, the rest of the service was pretty typical, and if it hadn't been all in Japanese, you wouldn't have been able to tell it was a church outside of America. I'm not sure about the denomination, since it just says Christ Church on the sign, but it seemed to be pretty basic and traditional. We sang some hymns and prayed in between, then about a 10-person choir did a song. I couldn't understand any of the sermon except the name "Paulo" (the Apostle Paul), but as I was sitting there, I had already decided that even if I couldn't understand a word of anything being said there, I was really glad to have found such a nice and warm-hearted church to go to. Everyone seems so nice and genuine there, and to know I was in a country where Christians make up less than 1% of the population, and to be lucky enough to be sitting in a room full of Christians, I felt very blessed.

After the sermon was the offering, a few more hymns, and announcements (where two high school-age looking boys said some apparently funny things). Then came a surprising moment, the pastor introduced me to the congregation! Hehe, as soon as I heard him saying "study abroad student" and "for four months" and "from America" I was thinking, "uh-oh..." and then he said "Natalie Wilson." Hehehe, I think I was supposed to stand up, but instead I just kind of awkwardly raised my hand and waved a little, and he said something else, and everyone applauded =) Then he asked me, in English, where I was from in America! So I told him Illinois, and he repeated it, and there was much head-nodding. Afterwards I felt a little embarrassed, but it was a really nice gesture and a nice feeling to know that everyone there now knew a little bit about me if they wanted to come talk to me or anything, and it made me feel very very welcome there. He introduced a few more new visitors after me (who properly stood up), and a couple groups that I think might have been new members.

After that was a closing hymn and prayer and church was over. It was a nice average length of a service I felt. Afterwards, the pastor came up and greeted me and asked me a few more questions in English, and then ran off to find so-and-so-san who could speak English (I don't think he ever found them..) while another lady came up and talked to me, and then introduced me to a woman who had graduated from Sophia University in 1987 in philosophy. We talked for a while about how if you don't use a language, it's easy to loose it, because she had studied linguistics in America for a year, and worked at an American bank in Japan for a while, but now she doesn't remember very much English. We both could agree on the feeling of being able to read and listen to that language pretty well, but not being able to speak it after not practicing for a while.

I thought I was about to leave, when another lady approached me and introduced herself and asked if I'd like to visit a small after-church class called the "family class." I'm pretty awful at declining invitations for anything, and since I didn't really have anything else to do, I went along! It was in a separate building from the church, and I did have to take my shoes off this time, aw man. The group was very small, about 13 people or so, all sitting around a table in a small room. The lady had said it was people of all ages, and I suppose that was true, but I was the youngest there by a long shot. The structure of the class seemed to be that one person in the group perhaps came up with a study topic for the day, and then the class leader lead the discussion after the topic and Bible verses were introduced.

Today's topic was "What does church mean to you?" A lot of the introduction was hard to understand, but the lady who had brought me to the class helped me find the right verses (Ephesians, the end of chapter 1), and did a lot of interpreting for me throughout the class. The discussions were a little easier to understand, but I still didn't catch a lot of it. The leader asked around to each person what church meant to them, or their history with church, and it was soo interesting to hear the responses. One girl there is an architect, and this was her first time going to church (she later asked about if the church groups do any group meals or lunches afterwards, and seemed excited to hear that they do), another girl seemed very shy and nervous at first, but then started talking about how she has recently come to understand what church means to her, and something about how people can go there and feel the awesome power of God. A younger man talked about being invited to a wedding at a fake church. I've heard about these before... it's basically a building/event location built to look like a church, and wedding couples can get married there and have a traditional Western Christian ceremony with a preist and everything (though I'm not sure he's a real preist) because they like the look and romanticism of that kind of ceremony. He described it as "a church, but not a church," and that he was surprised. It was interesting to hear about that first-hand from a Japanese person. The pastor's wife was also in the class, and she talked about having to always be at church because of her husband, and that she was surprised the first time she went, because it was a place were people were talking and laughing together, and sometimes eating together, and it was a fun place, unlike what she had imagined. She also mentioned something that I had noticed today, that when people first come to church, they're not really sure what to do, and especially with Japanese people, they're not sure how to find the right chapters and verses in the Bible or hymnal, so it can be kind of a stressful place instead of a fun place because they're worrying about what to do next or where they're supposed to be in the readings.

The very most interesting story I heard today was from a much older man. I couldn't understand anything that he said, but my interpreter just told me this: "He says he went to a church school when he was younger, but then he was in the World War, and he was not allowed to believe in another country's religion." She also said that he had just started coming back to church this year and was going to be baptized soon. I thought that was the most moving story, and I don't think I could've heard that kind of story in any other setting than the one I happened to be in today. Thinking back on it now, it gives me such a feeling of hope, that no matter what age a person might be, or what kind of things they've been through in their life or how hardened their heart might have become, God can still work in their heart and life. It was interesting thinking about how Christianity is so scarce in Japan, and that most of the people in that church probably found Jesus on their own, as opposed to being raised in church like me and so many other Christians in America, so everyone has such a unique story to tell.

I inevitably got called on to share my meaning of church with the class, so I gave the answer I had sort of been preparing in my mind. Unfortunately it didn't come out very well ^^; I think I said something like.... "In the week..not the weekend.. your heart..becomes bad...you forget about God...but on Sunday, go to church...heart becomes more good" hahaha... what an awful response. I swear I know better Japanese than that, but I wanted to express the sort of refreshing, recharging feeling I personally gain from going to church. I got a lot of encouraging head nods though, and at the end, I think to help me out, they all said a word I don't remember that must have been describing what I had just tried to express I suppose. Oh well, hehe, they all heard me tell the pastor my Japanese was so-so =)

After the class was over, the lady asked me if I wanted to join them for the lunch they have afterwards every day. I might have eaten some interesting food and heard more stories, but I decided to decline for today and see if I could meet up with any DK House friends for lunch since nobody was really around yesterday. She asked if I lived in the big building by the grade school, which I do, and she said she lived really close to there, so she gave me her home phone number, cell phone number, and name so I could contact her in case I'm ever in trouble or anything. So nice!!

The walk home was waaay colder for some reason, even though it had stopped raining. Jeannette and I decided to go to Yaoko for lunch and grocery shopping (yes, the same Yaoko I went shopping at LAST NIGHT... but all the pastries had been bought already, I needed those right?). I ended up buying a lot of instant stuff to have around for nights like last night when there was nobody to go out with so I'm not out alone at night. I already ate one, instant delicious curry and instant rice, tonight since it was too cold to go out. I also got some more chocolate snacks since Mom seemed to condone my addiction on the phone this morning...

The rest of the night I've been slowly but surely finishing my Japanese homework. I've still got a little bit left to do, a little more practicing of my readings, and maybe some studying vocab, but I figure Jen and I can maybe quiz each other on the train. I probably didn't really have time to blog this much tonight, but I had to talk about how awesome that church was! Mia invited me to the Japanese/Korean/English church she went to today, so I'll probably try that out the week after next (so my new church doesn't think I ran off!) Hopefully there will be more young people than there are in my church... why am I always drawn to churches that end up having older congregations? Haha.

Here's to 6:45 wakeup tomorrow!


P.S. Nick informed me that, as of my last post, I had written a total of 42.5 pages, single spaced, on this blog. Now accepting publishers. I keep the movie rights.

Floor-cleaning Day

After resolving to start stretching at least twice a day in order to increase my flexibility for learning to dance, I decided I could not continue to work out on my hardwood floor in its current condition. At first, I was just letting go of my inhibitions about how clean the floor was when I moved in (and after two vacuums since), but I was also running into the problem of the floor being made of wood to begin with.


I really really can't touch my toes! Not even close! So here's a stretching update. I'll maybe try and keep doing this later on when I can start seeing more results. Here's how close I can get to my toes/how far I can get past my knees before I do warm up and stretching, and after! I'm always amazed at the difference! Hopefully these lines will both go farther and farther down throughout the semester!

Problems with exercising/stretching on a hardwood floor, as a foreign exchange student with few belongings such as exercise mats, etc.:

• It hurts.
• The only items to place on the floor to make it not hurt are my nice towels I use for the shower.
• It is questionable just how thorough a cleaning Uzuki-san had done on these floors before we arrived.
• The floor gets dirty really quickly.
• It's loud. I'm sure the resident below me is already sick of hearing me drop my cell phone/DS/books/heater remote on the floor every day, and I'm also quite certain he doesn't appreciate my 11:00pm fumbling around, trying to do warm-ups before I stretch.

So I decided that first, I would clean my floor with something better than just a vacuum! And second, I would buy either a cheapo beach towel or exercise mat or something to create a buffer between me and the wooden floor. So after noon or so, I headed out on my big adventure!

First, I had to find something along the way. In a new, more close-up map of our area that Uzuki-san had given us at orientation, I noticed there was a Christian church really close to the DK House. Before I left to study abroad (and as far as I'm concerned, before God would let me study abroad by getting my visa processed), I made four promises to myself and God about coming here. I filled one of them before I left, and it looks like finding a church to attend regularly will be the second. Since Sophia is technically a Catholic school, they offer masses at lunchtime throughout the week. I've only been to mass at a Catholic church once, and the experience was very very different for me (raised in a Southern Baptist church, attending a plain ol traditional Baptist church in Charlottesville), and I didn't feel like I gained as much from it as I might have a different style of church. I'm willing to go again, and will probably go to mass at Sophia at some point, but I do really like the routine of attending service every Sunday, so it would be super-great if this church nearby turns out to be a good place for me to go. Services will probably be in Japanese, which could be a good or bad thing! We'll find out tomorrow I guess =) I took a couple pictures of the sign out front and translated it at home to find that there's a 7am early morning service, and a regular one at 10:30.
My new church home for the next four months? Perhaps!


After that, I headed towards the main street and, although it was in the opposite direction of where I was going, I decided to go to Yoshinoya for lunch and see if they were still having their sale. It was over, but it was still about the cheapest lunch I was going to get. Today I decided to eat all the onions in my gyuudon! They're not as oniony as other places, so it really wasn't bad at all! And it made the beef last longer in the rice-to-other item ratio. I also sat at the counter there for the first time!

Next was my main destination, the Ito Yokado mall! I sure do love that place. I spent waaay too long in there though. Here was my list of items I was looking for:

• Athletic socks (I bought a bunch before I left for Japan, but I must've just left a big pile of them out of my suitcase somehow, because now it seems like I hardly have any at all. And some of my older ones are starting to get holes in the toes!)
• Athletic shoes (for running and dancing! The one type of shoe I didn't bring..)
• Sweat pants
• Laundry detergent (to hand wash socks etc. in the basins in the laundry room when I don't need to do a full load of laundry. And those washers do NOT clean socks very well... I may as well have just thrown them in a bucket of water and then taken them back out, that's about how clean they were)
• A swiffer mop type thing, for my big floor clean!
• A mat or blanket for the floor
• Tape (just plain old scotch tape!)

After picking out a blanket thing on the second floor, I decided to do the rest of my shopping before getting that big thing to carry around. I hadn't really checked out the third floor yet since it seemed to be mostly baby stuff and computers, but turns out half of it is a fabric/craft store! It was huuuuge, there was so much stuff! Their pattern selection was limited, and they didn't have a very wide variety of fabrics (mostly cutesy decorative stuff, not so much for clothing), but they had about every notion you could imagine! I was super impressed and surprised.



Obviously my favorites, but a biiit out of my price range!

The fourth floor is where I spent most of my time. I found a swiffer-type mop thing and the sheets that go on it pretty easily (all for a total of 210 yen!! I couldn't believe it. And DK Friends, if anyone wants to borrow it and some sheets, feel free!), and I also found some S hook things that I decided would be awesome to have to hook over my dresser doors, since there's nowhere to actually hang anything like a coat or jacket in the rooms. I had to concede with a decorative tape dispenser that already had some tape in it, because they didn't seem to sell just cheap, simple tape dispensers like we do. Then came the difficult part... where's the laundry detergent?? I found a shelf-end display with all sorts of different fabric softeners and other items, but I couldn't find anything that was obviously laundry detergent. After a good 10 minute investigation using my DS, I discovered that several of them were detergent, but they all had a note on the back that said NOT FOR HAND-WASHING (basically). Arrg.. I'm not sure if that's not a common item for Japanese people to use or if I was just looking wrong or what. I guess I'll have to try somewhere else!
View from the fourth floor. I wonder what city it is off to the left with the super tall buildings?


Walking through that store, you just start getting to thinking that everything looks like it would be a good purchase. Especially in such a bare room where you start missing the little things that are just kind of always around, like tape or a stapler, or paper towels, or paper clips... I need to keep telling myself that I'm only here for four months, and that I have to deal with all the stuff I've bought when it's time to leave, and not "If I had that cute basket.... I could put things in it!" So far I've been really frugal about buying things (besides food), and I've only bought the things I really need. I think today's swiffer mop and blanket purchases were probably my most unnecessary so far, but they only totaled to about $16.

After the fourth floor, I found one of the shoe areas to have a pretty good selection of American brand running shoes that I was familiar with, so I hopped back over to get my new blanket and some athletic socks so I could try on some shoes. The first ones I tried were a pair of Asics, which I've had good luck with in the past, and they fit so nicely! They were soo cushioney in the heels and felt like a good solid shoe. I asked the store guy (in really awful Japanese) if they had the match to this shoe ("I will buy this shoe.") but unfortunately, the single display shoe was the only one they had in that size. What? Ugh. So I went on to try just about every brand of shoe on that they had, but the sizes were all kind of weird, and all the Nike ones were only in wide, and none of them fit as perfect as those Asics! There was no way I was just going to give in and buy a crappy pair of running shoes for $39, so I took a picture of those Asics and I'm gonna find them somewhere else, darnit. Buying running shoes is serious business (just ask my mom!).I will find you!!

That was all the shopping I needed to do today, so I went on home. It was nice to have walked outside in the sunshine and nice day, and I had listened to my mp3 player along the way there which was very therapeutic. When I got home, it was time for my super clean floor mission. I cleared everything out of the way and vacuumed really good first, and then I swiffered the floor twice. It wasn't as gross as I thought it must've been, but there was a lot more dust than I expected. I felt pretty confident about the cleanliness and put down my new yellow blanket! It fits pretty well in the space between the end of my bed and my fridge, and it looks like I'm about to have a picnic all the time! I'm glad to have utilized that space now for sitting or whatever, cause it was pretty much useless before. I'm going to go absolutely nuts when I get my first non-dorm, semi-permanent living space to shop for and take care of. Those floors will be spotless on move-in day, with a nice rug on them the next, and a high quality vacuum purchased ASAP.The rest of the night I've been just hanging out, looking at some of my Japanese homework, aaand not much else. I just went to Yaoko for some dinner, and got the Shaka Shaka Chicken from the McDonald's there. It was on the dollar menu, so I got two. I'm not sure if they're selling this in the U.S., but basically it's like a round chicken strip type thing, and it comes in a bag, and you pick which seasoning you want, put it in the bag, shake it up, and now your chicken tastes better. I didn't really understand the concept, so when the lady asked me what seasoning I wanted (or some combination of other vocab words I don't know), I had to wait til she started listing them off, at which point I chose cheese because it was the only one I understood and could recite back, haha. Even then, I didn't know what kind of cheese I'd be getting, it turned out to be like a powdery cheddar cheese seasoning packet. I was going to eat it there, but it was so hot that I figured I could do the rest of my shopping and be home by the time it was edible, and I was right. It wasn't bad, but you definitely have to be in a setting where you can shaka-shaka without inhibitions in order to get the seasoning to be evenly displaced.

I also picked up some snacks, despite my no-snack policy that I instated last night. I added up the amount from my expense report that I had spent on food so far, and it was almost $200 which really surprised me. I wanted a reference for how much that was, and it was more than the UVa dining plans work out to per month (which I suppose isn't too bad, it wasn't too much more), but it still seemed like a lot to have spent in less than a month on just food! To get another comparison though, I divided the total by 16, how many days we had been here, and it was only about $11 per day. Sophia had suggested that students expect to spend about $18 a day on food, and that's how much I reported in my financial aid applications, so I should technically be doing fine as far as food spending. I think it's just that I've never really had to think about day-to-day food spending, or really have any idea how much it costs, and I'm living in Tokyo, so seeing $200 for two and a half weeks just caught me off guard.

So I got some snacks. Again. It was interesting to go to Yaoko in the evening, because all the bakery and sushi items had apparently been marked down and consequently all bought up by the customers, so everything looked really bare. We should try and go sometime in the early evening and catch the savings! I figured I'd be needing at least something more for breakfast in the next few days, so I found some "Chocolate Bread", which in this case is a roll of the dinner roll type, filled with chocolate cream! I already had one and it was really really good, sooo...those might not last long. I think the reason for my sudden addiction to all things chocolate (it was just a preference before) is the wider variety of delicious chocolate-based items here. In America, I don't really think of anything past like.. chocolate cookies or ice cream or pop-tarts, or maybe donuts and things like that. Here, there is a plethora of new and exciting choices, but I think I'll write more on that later.

I'm off to stretch!



"When you make a vow to God,
do not delay in fulfilling it.

He has no pleasure in fools;
fulfill your vow.

It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it."

Ecclesiastes 5: 4-5

Funny how some verses show up right when they need to.. =)

First Day

Happy first day of classes! Intensive Japanese class started at 9:15, so the sannin departed from DK House at about 8:00am. We might have been pushing it a little close, but luckily we didn't get denied any trains along the way. I was talking to Jen on the way, and we agreed that it's nice that the trains run so often in the morning and we don't have to plan our schedule around a certain train arriving at a certain time. With the sprawling grounds that are UVa, you kind of have to know what time the bus comes around, and if you miss it, then you might just be sorry out of luck. Instead, we pay the price of inevitable super packed morning trains for the convenience of a flexible schedule.

I also learned this morning (with a previous information from Mia's blog) that there are usually two or so cars in the front that are female only during the morning rush! I think that's a nice gesture, and Jen and I will most likely be ditching Greg for the girl's only train come summertime. (We were tempted to ditch him today, haha)

We reached school with plenty of time to find our classes! Jen, Teresa, Sehyun, and I are all in the same section, while Mia and Dan are in a different section, and Greg is in a different level. I didn't really think about what to expect from the class or the teachers, but I was really surprised to see our first teacher was a man! I think because I've only had female senseis at UVa (about 6 teachers in one form or another... not counting Professor Heldt that is.) it just didn't fit in my mind's image of a Japanese teacher! His name is Kobayashi-sensei, and he'll be one of our two teachers for Grammar, and also Oral and Writing days. The class is for three hours every day, but it's split up into two hour and a half sessions covering different topics: grammar, oral and writing, and kanji.

Kobayashi-sensei was suuuuuper nice and spent a lot of time in between talking about the course to talk about random little things. His Japanese was also really easy to understand, which was a big comfort. After his course introduction, we got down to business right away with some reading from the book and grammar study. For grammar days, we'll have a vocab quiz every day as well as homework using the new grammar.

The second half of class was with Noguchi-sensei, also a man! He was teaching oral and writing (kaiwa and sakubun), but mostly he just had us read the syllabus out loud in Japanese =/ Luckily I got a section that didn't really have any kanji I didn't know. After that we had a test! What?! It was supposedly to help evaluate whether the placement test did a good job of putting us in the correct class. I was really hoping "test" was going to be another word for "survey" and I'd get to give them the what for about how it's a bad test AND they put me in the wrong class, but..alas, it was just your standard issue test-that's-way-too-hard.

After class, we went to buy our Japanese books. For now, we have a total of four books (with another kanji workbook to be added later), which came to about $80, which really wasn't so bad. All the books look the same, so it's going to be tough making sure to bring the right ones each day. Then we decided to just hang out for a while before lunch. Lunch was being served, but apparently it's waaay to crowded to attempt during the normal lunch time. You see, Sophia is a small campus (and this might be a Japanese thing too), so there are like.. four class periods or so, with two before 12:30 and the rest starting at 1:30. There's even bells that ring to mark the beginning and end of each period! So the campus-wide acknowledged lunchtime is from 12:30-1:30, so it's obviously going to be crowded in the cafeteria.

I went for some Somethingorother Udon, which ended up having a more properly cooked egg included. I'm thinking the texture of the school udon is probably not the proper texture, but I kind of like it. It's sort of chewy? haha... After lunch we gave in and got some delicious ice cream snacks, for only 100 yen! I love cheap school food, for serious.

Greg had to head out early for the next class he wanted to try (which turned out to be a bust), but Jen and I had a lot of time to kill before we wanted to look in on the Sophia Modern Dancers' rehearsal, so we went with Dan up to a path on top of a hill (where cherry blossoms had been blooming last week) that overlooks the athletic fields. It was a really nice spot and we found a good bench in the sun! We mostly just sat around and looked at our new textbooks.

Then it was dance time! But not before a few Jen and Natalie's Awkward Social Antics! We knew where the Modern Dancers were supposed to be practicing, but it seemed like there were only like 5 girls in there! And a guy! Guys aren't in the Sophia Modern Dancers! So we looked at the room schedule, and saw that G Splash was also scheduled for that room at the same time somehow, then we looked through the cracks of the door to see what was happening, then another girl went in, then we went around to the side and found a window to look in while we pretended to use a vending machine, then we finally went around to the side door and saw the 5 or so girls doing some warm up dancing inside. We also saw a few other girls in street clothes (read: skirts and tights and cute tops) sitting on the sides watching, so we decided to join them!

Originally the plan was just to sit and observe this group and see if we might be interested in joining them if our G Splash hopes are shattered, but the Modern Dancers would have none of it. After their primary warm-up dance, they had us out on the floor doing their exercises with them! They had some intense ab exercises and super difficult leg stretches (for me anyway. As mentioned in the last post, I have zero leg flexibility. It was a little embarrassing, but it makes me want to stretch more and work hard towards this goal!) At one point I looked over at another new girl doing an ab exercise where we had to lay on our stomachs with our arms straight out and just lift our chests up off the ground a little bit, and I did a double-take. She had her eyes closed and just looked so peaceful and graceful, like she was an angel just hovering there! That's kind of weird, but she just looked really cool ^^

After more exercising and warming up (which was all synchronized exactly to the beat, with everyone knowing the next move.. their warmups could've been a performance), they wanted to teach us part of some dances! First we learned about 4 measures of their routine to Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man." I really love that song and I had seen them perform to it yesterday, so that was fun for me =) The dance was really cute and girly and fun to learn! I had a good time!

Next, they did their classical warmup. These girls are like serious ballet dancers! They were so beautiful and graceful! I was super impressed, they had such great balance! But then they wanted to teach us a lyrical modern dance x_x It was very flowing and pretty, but I'm not sure Jen and I got the hang of it, haha.

One thing Jen and I noticed was that we were waaay taller than all the other girls. We hadn't really run into this problem yet, since in most situations there is a wide variety of heights with boys and girls, and neither of us are very tall by American standards. In this situation, however, we were just standing behind about 8 shorter Japanese girls. All of their movements were so graceful and pretty, but we felt like awkward giants kind of fumbling across the floor, waving our giant arms and legs T__T Hopefully we can become elegant like these ladies, and then our long limbs will make us look more lovely instead of more unfortunate.

That was basically the end of our sit-in with the Sophia Modern Dancers! Their leader girl was really really nice, but we couldn't really understand anything she said to us. We both agreed that while that practice was really fun, we weren't so sure about the classical ballet parts, and we both have a bit of a taste for hip hop beats as well. It was a battle during class, because we'd be learning this beautiful dance, but at the same time, some G Splash members were behind us hip-hoppin it up to some cool music. I guess we'll see how their practice goes on Monday!

After that it was back home for Jen and I (and Hunter who we met along the way), and then we all decided to go to Mos Burger for dinner! We were really feeling the lack of protein/overdoes of noodles these past few days, so we all just needed some good old fast food burgers. Mos Burgers are interesting though. It's a small burger with some sort of special sauce on it (which I have dubbed the "Mos Sauce") which seems to be comprised mainly of onions. I was pretty surprised how bland the Mos Burger was (maybe the tomato I removed was supposed to give it that extra kick?) I might try the Teriyaki burger next time, but I was somewhat unimpressed with mine, and I think Hunter was as well. I did have my first melon soda though! It's really just melon fanta, but you see it in anime all the time (most prominently, Sailor Moon!). It's got the carbonation of ramune, but the taste of... I donno, just sweet and fruit I guess! I wasn't blown away, haha, and I couldn't finish it.ART. This one is ART.

Our food all came out in little baskets! I thought this was way easier/cuter than it all being separated by person.


Melon soda

My Mos Burger, upside down!

Here's what I thought my Mos Burger looked like after I saw this picture. This is maybe a little too weird for my blog... :

With a short stop at the Shop 99 for chocolate snacks on the way home (what have I become...) we returned to DK House. I think once the Mos settles, I'll do a good workout routine using my new moves from the Modern Dancers! I have a lot of homework already for this weekend, so maybe I'll take a look at that too? After our first day of class, we are all just totally relieved that class started on a Friday and now we have the weekend to recoop and prepare to get back in the groove =)

Nothing Day

First off, I've added a little widget on the side of the blog that tells you what time it is in Japan! Totally awesome!

So today I didn't really do anything! Some of the gang was going to Harajuku for shopping, but in the interest of saving money, staying out of the rain, and resting up for the first day of classes tomorrow, I opted out.

Greg and I ran to Yaoko around lunchtime to get groceries and lunch. I got my standard tonkatsu on a bun with some good sauce, with a weird bread thing with hot dog in it.. and a chocolate-filled croissant for dessert! Dessert is becoming more and more important these days.

I also got an umbrella while it was there to replace my broken one since it was raining! I figured I would end up with a super girly cute pink polka-dot one, but the pickings at Yaoko were slim and I ended up choosing a classy sort of old-lady one that has pale green flowers and a tan handle. I'm actually quite fond of it.

I wanted to pick up a sketchbook while I was there, but my choice was limited to either individual sheets of nice drawing paper, or cheap ones with cartoon characters on the front. I opted for the cheapest, which is like a little kids coloring book and has pictures of babies on the front or something, until I find a place that isn't a supermarket to buy something a little better. When I got home, I wanted to draw some, so I curled up in bed to do so. After sketching one small picture, I decided to lay down instead ^^; Originally I had vowed for no naps today so I can get up early tomorrow for class, but, that just didn't work out. I took about a two hour nap with some wild dreams about flying houses!

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. I spent a while doing some stretching and exercise though. I can do a two-minute plank at the end of my workout, which is good for me =) Maybe I'll have it up to three by the end of the semester! That would be something. I want to start keeping track of how close to touching my toes I get over the semester if I keep up my exercise and stretching. For those of you who don't know, I'm very very unflexible. There's never been a time in my life that I can remember being able to touch my toes. That always sucked in P.E. class. I blame it on my uncommonly long legs. My toes are just too far away! But... studying abroad is a time to reinvent yourself! I'm going to try and become the girl who isn't unable to touch her toes!

I met Greg and Hunter in the kitchen for dinner, which was basically us heating up all of our frozen/instant items, haha. I had a package of what I'm assuming were read as "Niku dongo" which I took to mean meat dumpling. They were basically meatballs. I put them with some instant ramen and it wasn't half bad. Nothing special. I'm not a big instant anything, except for the ramen that you actually cook in a pot because you have a little bit more control over how good it's going to taste. We all just watched delicious meals being cooked on TV for celebrity guests, including a three-egg katsudon....zomg....

Now it's time for head to bed since we'll be leaving for Sophia at 7:45-7:50 for our 9:15 class tomorrow! Sorry this post was a little dull. Next time it's a dull day, I plan on starting a new line of posts that focus on a specific part of life here, like the way they deal with trash sorting! There just wasn't time tonight as I need to go to bed. But if you're looking for more study abroad thrills and chills, head over to Greg's blog and check out episode 2 of our podcast (it's a little ways down in the posts now)! It was recorded on our third day here about, so it's a little old, but it's quite entertaining. Goodnight everyone!