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 =)