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 =)