Silver Week

Recap! I'm not sure if there is a Silver Week, but this coming week is Golden Week, sooo, yep.

Monday

• I don't even remember....haha.
• G-Splash practice was Hip Hop trials, which basically means it's your last chance to check it out and decide which genre you want to do for the next month. They taught us a short part of a routine to House of Pain's "Jump Around" which was totally awesome. As soon as Jen and I heard it come on we started dancing, haha. And we started jumping EVERY time he told us to jump around. Us crazy Americans.
• I liked this routine a lot better than the audition routine, it was way more fun and I could get into it a lot easier. It was a workout though! Hip hop wears me out, haha.
• I think we got katsudon after practice? I don't remember...

Tuesday

• NO SCHOOL YEESSSSS!!
• I erroneously stated in a previous day that this was due to Children's Day, but it was actually for Showa Day which is.... some other holiday, haha. Nothing exciting happened, but we got out of school, so it's a wonderful holiday.
• I think I slept...some? What did I do that day? I went to the grocery store...I meant to study all day, but I didn't really start until later afternoon. OH YEAH, there was KANJI TEST.
• Since I hadn't studied for or done so hot on the previous two kanji quizzes, I knew I was in for a lot of studying. Basically I had 125 kanji compounds to memorize before the next morning. I studied those darned kanji from about 6:30 pm to 11:00pm, slept from 11:30-2:00am, studied from 2:00am-3:00am, slept from 3:00am-5:00am, studied from 5:00am-9:15am, and then all through first class and break. And that brings us tooo...

Wednesday

• What an awful test!! You had to know those kanji frontwards and backwards to get anywhere close, and apparently I only barely knew them frontwards, even after all that studying. There was even a little section full of kanji we hadn't studied over the past two weeks, but I guess she thought we ought to know? They might have been in a book exercise that we did now that I think about it....
• Oh well, at least we only had one kanji day this week.
• Oh crap, I was supposed to have field notes done from my field site for Symbolic Practice this afternoon! *runs off to Shinjuku after class to visit an arcade*
• I took some semi-useless notes in one arcade and then went to a different one that had a floor full of fighting games. It was pretty empty, and only one girl was there with her boyfriend. I tried to play Tekken 6, but I lost the first round three times in a row! Turns out if somebody else is playing on the other side, you automatically challenge them when you put your money in, whoops! I didn't learn this until yesterday, haha.
• G-splash this night was LOCK TRIALS WOO! I love locking. The routine was really fun again! They taught it to us really fast, and we met yet another pair of adorable lock teachers! The girl made tons of sound effects and it was awesome, haha. The lock teachers are best all around =) Needless to say, I signed up for lock during the sign-up period at the end of practice! Hip hop was really fun and I liked learning the moves, but it was love at first sight with me and lock, and I would be sad if I didn't do it.
• Yoshinoya Takeout Dinner!

Thursday

• Class? Whatever. We played stupid games again, it was stupid. I'm going to start bringing a kanji list to that class to study while we waste time =/ We did watch a cool video though.
• Symbolic Practice is such a fun class. We work in small groups every day and it's always awesome. I got some good feedback from my group on where I ought to take my research, and I think I'm going to try and look at how beginners and females are accepted/treated/taught to play in the arcades by regular visitors.
• With no more G-Splash practice until next week, I decided to go do some more field research in Shinjuku! I went back to my arcade from last time and this time resolved to figure out the secrets of the impossible Tekken game, get a card for it, and try the Gundam game Greg always plays. I figured out the whole challenging thing when I started playing a game and it was a loooot easier, and missing some of the things that had been written on the screen, and then someone challenged me later on. Jerk. I did beat one challenger that day though! It was awesome! I think they might have been going easy on me though.
• I watched some other people play for a long time and kept waiting for someone to seem not-involved enough that I could ask them about cards, but I ended up figuring that out on my own too =/ 500 yen card, ooooof. But it saves your progress and such, and you can customize your name and profile and things like that, and Tekken only costs 100 yen to play.
• Next challenge was the Gundam game! This one is intimidating because you end up in teams or something, and it's in this huge pod thing with a huge screen and controls like you're really in a giant robot. I asked some guys playing psp outside of the area, "Excuse me, I want to try this one but it's my first time sooo...how do I...?" And he was like, um err, I think trying to say it's kind of complicated, and told me about how you get a card (which I had already done, 300 yen), and how it costs 500 (!!!!) yen to play, and you get to play twice, but the first time is computer training (I had already learned most of this from Greg) and then he directed me to some instruction manuals you could take from a kiosk. Lame =/ But he was very nice in explaining, I think he was just preoccupied with his PSP playing. Come on man, I need some data! Haha.
• So that game was an interesting experience. The screen was huuuge, and I couldn't read most of the Japanese. The game has a rumble feature which adds to the realism. Normally I LOVE that sort of thing (roller coasters, the 3d rides like Spiderman at Universal Studios, the cheap things in the mall where you sit in a pod thing and it has a video and the pod thing moves with it, haha) but this one just made me feel reeeally disoriented and kind of uncomfortable, haha. I still don't have the hang of the controls really... It was fun but difficult. And too difficult for me to be willing to drop another 500 yen right there to try and get better =/ I spent a total of 1800 yen that day T____T I don't know if I can afford this research...
• Shinjuku dinner with Greg, Jen and Hunter at a gyouza (dumplings) place! It was no Marco and Luca's (amazing dumplings in Charlottesville for super super cheap), but it was very good and super filling!
• Home, where I slacked off on homework for the third night in a row! I'm just too tired/wanting to talk to Nick/convinced I can get it done in the morning (which I usually can =) )
• I also read some really nice articles I want to share later that got me thinking about the future, but I think I'll save them for their own post.