So guess what tomorrow is (or at least tomorrow for me)? That's right (if you can read the title)! It's July 1 - Half way through the year 2005. I was figuring that since new years resolutions never work; we should all make midyears resolutions! I know at least for me, there's been something I need to do (or not do for that matter) for myself. So, if you've been feeling down, and you feel like you've needed to do something for a while, you should make a Midyears Resolution!
Okay, just a random thought that occured to me last night while trying to fall asleep on the hard futon . . . how I can't wait for that bed at Rose Hulman. A BED - how nice!
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Only 3 weeks left . . . 3 weeks of tests, quizes, and projects
Although a lot of you have said that my trip sounds exciting, from now on, I ensure you I will have a lot less to write about. We`re down to the last 3 weeks, which means some of the classes are winding down to an end, while others are getting ready to be at full swing. Tomorrow I have a presentation that I have to make about bridges in Japanese. Don`t really understand the words that are coming out of my mouth half the time, but hopefully, I`ll be fine.
Yesterday, we had a "party" with our conversation partners . . . yummy Japanese snacks and a continuation of the struggling to converse in Japanese.
雨が降ってるよ！The Gods of Japan have declared it to be raining season, and they are downpouring on us. I`m glad that I have classes inside all day, but I have a feeling this rain is going to keep me inside the rest of the trip, which is kind of crappy cause I was planning on seeing more of Kanazawa, but if it keeps up, since it is considered a "season," I doubt I`ll make it.
It is raining hard. It`s distracting, but sounds nice.
I should go back to studying my presentation.
Toodles
P.S. If I don`t write for a while, don`t worry. I just have nothing to write about. I`m alive. If you want me to write, ask me (appropriate) questions in the common section, and I`ll see what I can do.
Yesterday, we had a "party" with our conversation partners . . . yummy Japanese snacks and a continuation of the struggling to converse in Japanese.
雨が降ってるよ！The Gods of Japan have declared it to be raining season, and they are downpouring on us. I`m glad that I have classes inside all day, but I have a feeling this rain is going to keep me inside the rest of the trip, which is kind of crappy cause I was planning on seeing more of Kanazawa, but if it keeps up, since it is considered a "season," I doubt I`ll make it.
It is raining hard. It`s distracting, but sounds nice.
I should go back to studying my presentation.
Toodles
P.S. If I don`t write for a while, don`t worry. I just have nothing to write about. I`m alive. If you want me to write, ask me (appropriate) questions in the common section, and I`ll see what I can do.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Home-stay Fun
So I got picked up at 10 am on Saturday to begin my homestay. The mother picked me up and brought me back to their house, which is a nice quaint Japanese house. There house in a district of Kanazawa called 寺町 or "temple village." There are over 70 temples and shrines in the small area of Kanazawa.
She then took me to the Kutani Kosen pottery kiln and museum, where I had a nice tour (in Japanese) of the kiln and saw some skillful Japanese artists making bowls out potting wheels. Afterwards, we painted a souvenier from the potters' wheels. On the way there and back, we saw many temples and traditional Japanese stuff.
We then headed back to the college to pick up my host sister and her friend because there was a school wide test for first year students that they were at. We ate a lunch of ざるそば or cold noodles. I then showed them pics of home and my trip so far, which I think they all enjoyed. They were really excited by my sister's wedding on the cruise boat and such.
We headed to the supermarket to pick up meat for dinner, and when we got back, we hung out for a while, and then started that. May I say delicious! They had these large hot plates where we cooked all sorts of meat and veggies right in front of us. It was sooooo good! After the meat, we moved on to grilling up some noodles as well. I ate so much, but it was so yummy! I couldn't believe how much everyone else was eating as well.
You have to understand at this point, that I was the きょ人 or giant for the two days. I think the next tallest person in my homestay family might have been up to my shoulder. They were a pretty large family though - 3 generations in the same house; a grandma, grandpa, mother and daughter and they were all stick-tiny. I so felt that I needed to shrink around them.
When my stomach was busting full though, they could still eat more food. It amazed me.
After we ate dinner, we walked to the コンビ二 or convenience store where my host sister worked to meet her friend and pick up some snacks (like I needed to eat anything else).
We came back to hang out and snack on the Japanese snacks while admiring my host sisters room. Then we took turns in the family's bath, and then met the grandparents friends. I did the whole presentation of the pictures again for their visitors, and then we sat around, and they brought out some watermelon for yet another snack.
Watermelon in Japan is really expensive. One large watermelon is normally over 30 dollars so I was surprised when they brought it out. Fruit is a treat in Japan and boy does it taste good when you get it. The Japanese love fruit but they don't have enough land to raise it so it's really expensive. Yummy!! (once again, like I needed more food at that point).
The two girls and I hung out and stayed up until around 11 pm, snacking, watching tv, and making origami. When it was time for bed, we put down two futons in my host sister's room besides the bed. They were gracious in letting me have the bed, which was really nice, but with the two other futons in the room, there was absolutely no floor space to move in. So we had a little Japanese sleepover.
I woke up in the morning about 730 (because I can't sleep in in a foreign bed), but they were still asleep, so I forced myself to stay there. It was so hot!!! By the time, I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I was dripping in sweat (I saw the temperature gauge say 30 degrees celsius, which is 86 degrees farenheit and even worse because there was no breeze in the room and the humidity was at about 85%). I felt bad because then once I went down to the bathroom, my host mother went and woke them up.
We then ate a large (as Japanese breakfasts are) breakfast. I had toast with strawberry jam - another luxury and oranges (another luxury). We didn't end up eating until around 10, and when we were ready to go somewhere around noon, we walked to two temples in the area for tours, and then we drove to another larger temple.
After the temple sight-seeing, we went to Choco's, a "Californian" restaurant, for lunch at about 3 pm. I got some meet that was cooked in foil with all the juices and sauces and such making it as tender and yummy as can be with a baked potato and bread. Oh, it was so yummy. I haven't really been craving American food, but this hit the spot. They insisted on getting me desert as well, so I got some caramel crepes with ice cream. Magnificent!
Which brings me to the topic, why don't we have crepe stores in America? Crepes are so delicious and more healthy than other deserts because they have real fruit in them. Japan has them and they are a lot farther away then we are from France! I've at least had 4 crepes since coming to Japan, and now I'm mad that when I go back to Rose, I won't have any more, unless I talk the French club into letting me borrow their crepe maker!
They then dropped me back off at my dorm, and I've been catching up on blogs, writing a report, and this since.
The homestay was an awesome experience. I really enjoyed getting to know another Japanese family!
I'm really sorry I write so much about everything - I'm a real blabber mouth, but I like to think some people enjoy it.
She then took me to the Kutani Kosen pottery kiln and museum, where I had a nice tour (in Japanese) of the kiln and saw some skillful Japanese artists making bowls out potting wheels. Afterwards, we painted a souvenier from the potters' wheels. On the way there and back, we saw many temples and traditional Japanese stuff.
We then headed back to the college to pick up my host sister and her friend because there was a school wide test for first year students that they were at. We ate a lunch of ざるそば or cold noodles. I then showed them pics of home and my trip so far, which I think they all enjoyed. They were really excited by my sister's wedding on the cruise boat and such.
We headed to the supermarket to pick up meat for dinner, and when we got back, we hung out for a while, and then started that. May I say delicious! They had these large hot plates where we cooked all sorts of meat and veggies right in front of us. It was sooooo good! After the meat, we moved on to grilling up some noodles as well. I ate so much, but it was so yummy! I couldn't believe how much everyone else was eating as well.
You have to understand at this point, that I was the きょ人 or giant for the two days. I think the next tallest person in my homestay family might have been up to my shoulder. They were a pretty large family though - 3 generations in the same house; a grandma, grandpa, mother and daughter and they were all stick-tiny. I so felt that I needed to shrink around them.
When my stomach was busting full though, they could still eat more food. It amazed me.
After we ate dinner, we walked to the コンビ二 or convenience store where my host sister worked to meet her friend and pick up some snacks (like I needed to eat anything else).
We came back to hang out and snack on the Japanese snacks while admiring my host sisters room. Then we took turns in the family's bath, and then met the grandparents friends. I did the whole presentation of the pictures again for their visitors, and then we sat around, and they brought out some watermelon for yet another snack.
Watermelon in Japan is really expensive. One large watermelon is normally over 30 dollars so I was surprised when they brought it out. Fruit is a treat in Japan and boy does it taste good when you get it. The Japanese love fruit but they don't have enough land to raise it so it's really expensive. Yummy!! (once again, like I needed more food at that point).
The two girls and I hung out and stayed up until around 11 pm, snacking, watching tv, and making origami. When it was time for bed, we put down two futons in my host sister's room besides the bed. They were gracious in letting me have the bed, which was really nice, but with the two other futons in the room, there was absolutely no floor space to move in. So we had a little Japanese sleepover.
I woke up in the morning about 730 (because I can't sleep in in a foreign bed), but they were still asleep, so I forced myself to stay there. It was so hot!!! By the time, I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I was dripping in sweat (I saw the temperature gauge say 30 degrees celsius, which is 86 degrees farenheit and even worse because there was no breeze in the room and the humidity was at about 85%). I felt bad because then once I went down to the bathroom, my host mother went and woke them up.
We then ate a large (as Japanese breakfasts are) breakfast. I had toast with strawberry jam - another luxury and oranges (another luxury). We didn't end up eating until around 10, and when we were ready to go somewhere around noon, we walked to two temples in the area for tours, and then we drove to another larger temple.
After the temple sight-seeing, we went to Choco's, a "Californian" restaurant, for lunch at about 3 pm. I got some meet that was cooked in foil with all the juices and sauces and such making it as tender and yummy as can be with a baked potato and bread. Oh, it was so yummy. I haven't really been craving American food, but this hit the spot. They insisted on getting me desert as well, so I got some caramel crepes with ice cream. Magnificent!
Which brings me to the topic, why don't we have crepe stores in America? Crepes are so delicious and more healthy than other deserts because they have real fruit in them. Japan has them and they are a lot farther away then we are from France! I've at least had 4 crepes since coming to Japan, and now I'm mad that when I go back to Rose, I won't have any more, unless I talk the French club into letting me borrow their crepe maker!
They then dropped me back off at my dorm, and I've been catching up on blogs, writing a report, and this since.
The homestay was an awesome experience. I really enjoyed getting to know another Japanese family!
I'm really sorry I write so much about everything - I'm a real blabber mouth, but I like to think some people enjoy it.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Karaoke and the weekend
Yesterday was the normal day of classes and tests that Thursday entails. Japanese for Science and Technology is proving to be a hard class because we're expected to read technical writings in Japanese and actually comprehend them when I'm not familiar with over half the words, but eh, I'll be fine.
Last night, we went to a karaoke parlor. In Japan, going to Karaoke is a bit different then in America. There are whole businesses dedicated to karaoke. You rent a room and get two mic's. Everyone just sits around the table and chooses songs out of telephone book-size catalogs.
I enjoyed singing my heart out again cause I haven't been doing that much lately - no choir in Japan. The Japanese students were great and so cute when they tried to sing in English. It was bunches of fun!
We had to ride bikes rented from an international club here, and then we road down the narrow sidewalks to go there. The bikes are road bikes - you have to go fast to keep balanced, but we went in a group so we were all following the person in front close behind so it made it really interesting. We finally finished our singing around 2 am, so riding a bike on a Japanese street at that time is definitely an interesting experience.
Today, we only had two hour of class in the morning. I still don't know what I'll be doing the rest of the day.
Saturday, we're going to do homestays. I'll be spending two days and one night with a Japanese family. I met the mother a week ago, and it sounds like we'll have a good time. She didn't speak much English at all, so it'll really test my Japanese. The funny thing is their whole family is relaly small. She was probably about at my elbow. I'm sure she weighs half of what I do, so it'll be interesting in pictures, I'm sure. I'm not really sure what we'll be doing for the time. I guess we'll see.
Thanks to mom for the glasses and the cookies!!!! You're awesome!!
Rose peeps : I miss you!!!
Last night, we went to a karaoke parlor. In Japan, going to Karaoke is a bit different then in America. There are whole businesses dedicated to karaoke. You rent a room and get two mic's. Everyone just sits around the table and chooses songs out of telephone book-size catalogs.
I enjoyed singing my heart out again cause I haven't been doing that much lately - no choir in Japan. The Japanese students were great and so cute when they tried to sing in English. It was bunches of fun!
We had to ride bikes rented from an international club here, and then we road down the narrow sidewalks to go there. The bikes are road bikes - you have to go fast to keep balanced, but we went in a group so we were all following the person in front close behind so it made it really interesting. We finally finished our singing around 2 am, so riding a bike on a Japanese street at that time is definitely an interesting experience.
Today, we only had two hour of class in the morning. I still don't know what I'll be doing the rest of the day.
Saturday, we're going to do homestays. I'll be spending two days and one night with a Japanese family. I met the mother a week ago, and it sounds like we'll have a good time. She didn't speak much English at all, so it'll really test my Japanese. The funny thing is their whole family is relaly small. She was probably about at my elbow. I'm sure she weighs half of what I do, so it'll be interesting in pictures, I'm sure. I'm not really sure what we'll be doing for the time. I guess we'll see.
Thanks to mom for the glasses and the cookies!!!! You're awesome!!
Rose peeps : I miss you!!!
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
A little bit of blog games
So for all the people who are reading my blog as their first blog-reading experience, excuse this brief break from my travels in Japan (scroll down to the next article-thingy - it's new). For all of you others, I've been tagged, so I'll go ahead and tag someone else.
List five songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words or even if they're any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artist and the song in your blog along with your five songs. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
Okay, I'm going to cheat because the only song I'ver really been digging since I've come to Japan is this one random song that I hear in a lot of stores and restaurants, but I have yet to find out its singer or title. So, I chose the songs that were first to come to my head when I got tagged and what I've been listening to since then. Anyway(in no particular order - order depends on my mood) . . .
1) Opening sequence from "Rent"
2) Cell Block Tango from "Chicago"
3) Think of Me from "Phantom of the Opera"
4) Master of the House from "Les Miserables"
5) Jacob and Sons from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" (It's been one of my favorites since I was like 5).
1. Jesseca (you can leave it in my comment section)
2. Nancy
3. Brittany
4. Witt
5. Rabbi
Sorry, it was hard to choose the 5, but I left out a lot of you who often say it in your blog . . .
There's stuff from today on the post below.
List five songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words or even if they're any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artist and the song in your blog along with your five songs. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
Okay, I'm going to cheat because the only song I'ver really been digging since I've come to Japan is this one random song that I hear in a lot of stores and restaurants, but I have yet to find out its singer or title. So, I chose the songs that were first to come to my head when I got tagged and what I've been listening to since then. Anyway(in no particular order - order depends on my mood) . . .
1) Opening sequence from "Rent"
2) Cell Block Tango from "Chicago"
3) Think of Me from "Phantom of the Opera"
4) Master of the House from "Les Miserables"
5) Jacob and Sons from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" (It's been one of my favorites since I was like 5).
1. Jesseca (you can leave it in my comment section)
2. Nancy
3. Brittany
4. Witt
5. Rabbi
Sorry, it was hard to choose the 5, but I left out a lot of you who often say it in your blog . . .
There's stuff from today on the post below.
An elementary school in Japan
Well, today with the culture class we went to a Japanese elementary school. We were greeted by the principal and as always took off our shoes before entering the building. We were shown up to the washitsu or the traditional Japanese style room. Here in a large building of classes and such, there's suddenly a room with traditional tatami and shoji screens . . . weird? I think so, but that's the Japanese way. In our walking from the front to the washitsu, kids stopped what they were doing to yell and laugh at us. It kind of felt like being a fish in a fish bowl.
After arriving in the washitsu, we obtained nametags and split up into pairs to go and meet some fifth graders. It was basically split up so that a pair of American students were with 5 or so Japanese 5th graders. They did quick introductions in English, where they said their name and that's about it, and then they showed us scenes around Kanazawa. We were supposed to guess what they were. They were actually pretty simple, but don't tell the fifth graders that. Then they showed us how to do origami to make a ninja star. They were so cute!
After origami, some of the other groups had already wandered out of the classroom, so we followed their lead and went to the gym. Here we practiced throwing our ninja stars (I admit, mine didn't fly very well.) Then the teacher's decided to organize basketball games. 4 American students vs. about 10-15 Japanese 5th graders - Scary? I think so. There were so many of them all over, but luckily the height advantage let us get a two-pointer. The kids were really good at moving the ball around, but when it came to scoring they beat us 4 to 2, so the little kids still beat us, but that was how we wanted it to end.
Then we went back for a "break" in the washitsu, but it ended up that the kids were having a break too, so it wasn't a very relaxing one. I think every single first grader climbed up the stairs to the room we were in so they could gawk at us. They yelled and screamed at us for the entire 10-minute break. They had a lot of fun with the student with green hair, who we've nicknamed midori-chan. I don't think teachers would allow kids to be that loud in an American school, but I honestly don't think the Japanese teachers even noticed. There's a lot less rules in their elementary schools. I think the kids learn responsibility for themselves somehow through it.
After the break, we headed to the 6th grade classroom where one of us did an introduction, and we showed them the hokey-pokey (Its been a while since I've done it - I think I might have to get people doing it again!) The kids thought we were so funny when we were turning ourselves about.
Then we split into groups to learn about different parts of Japanese culture. We headed to a room with caligraphy sets set up. The kids in our group did self introductions - this time with what they liked to do as well (these were 6th graders this time). Then they had us practice our caligraphy skills. Thanks to Mrs. Semba, I think they were pretty impressed at my elementary caligraphy. They also offered to make our names into kanji (the third alphabet in Japanese based off of Chinese). I already had it, but they had a fun time trying to change my partner's name.
We practiced quite a bit, and they gave us pointers. After a while, it was time to head back to the washitsu for a short break before an observation of some of the classes. We then headed back to campus, lunch, and then 2 hours of classes followed by a project meeting and dinner. That's about it. I promise I'll stop writing so much daily soon. It will become more boring and more classes and not much else soon. I have a homestay Saturday and Sunday this weekend, and I think after that, the schedule doesn't goof around as much and we are forced to study bunches.
Nighty night!
After arriving in the washitsu, we obtained nametags and split up into pairs to go and meet some fifth graders. It was basically split up so that a pair of American students were with 5 or so Japanese 5th graders. They did quick introductions in English, where they said their name and that's about it, and then they showed us scenes around Kanazawa. We were supposed to guess what they were. They were actually pretty simple, but don't tell the fifth graders that. Then they showed us how to do origami to make a ninja star. They were so cute!
After origami, some of the other groups had already wandered out of the classroom, so we followed their lead and went to the gym. Here we practiced throwing our ninja stars (I admit, mine didn't fly very well.) Then the teacher's decided to organize basketball games. 4 American students vs. about 10-15 Japanese 5th graders - Scary? I think so. There were so many of them all over, but luckily the height advantage let us get a two-pointer. The kids were really good at moving the ball around, but when it came to scoring they beat us 4 to 2, so the little kids still beat us, but that was how we wanted it to end.
Then we went back for a "break" in the washitsu, but it ended up that the kids were having a break too, so it wasn't a very relaxing one. I think every single first grader climbed up the stairs to the room we were in so they could gawk at us. They yelled and screamed at us for the entire 10-minute break. They had a lot of fun with the student with green hair, who we've nicknamed midori-chan. I don't think teachers would allow kids to be that loud in an American school, but I honestly don't think the Japanese teachers even noticed. There's a lot less rules in their elementary schools. I think the kids learn responsibility for themselves somehow through it.
After the break, we headed to the 6th grade classroom where one of us did an introduction, and we showed them the hokey-pokey (Its been a while since I've done it - I think I might have to get people doing it again!) The kids thought we were so funny when we were turning ourselves about.
Then we split into groups to learn about different parts of Japanese culture. We headed to a room with caligraphy sets set up. The kids in our group did self introductions - this time with what they liked to do as well (these were 6th graders this time). Then they had us practice our caligraphy skills. Thanks to Mrs. Semba, I think they were pretty impressed at my elementary caligraphy. They also offered to make our names into kanji (the third alphabet in Japanese based off of Chinese). I already had it, but they had a fun time trying to change my partner's name.
We practiced quite a bit, and they gave us pointers. After a while, it was time to head back to the washitsu for a short break before an observation of some of the classes. We then headed back to campus, lunch, and then 2 hours of classes followed by a project meeting and dinner. That's about it. I promise I'll stop writing so much daily soon. It will become more boring and more classes and not much else soon. I have a homestay Saturday and Sunday this weekend, and I think after that, the schedule doesn't goof around as much and we are forced to study bunches.
Nighty night!
Monday, June 20, 2005
The weekend in Kyoto
So, I know that this will end up being long, so let's see how successful I can be at breaking it down.
Thursday
So, after classes on Thursday, Robyn, Phil, and I went back to our rooms to pack up our single backpack full of stuff for the weekend. Once we were ready, we headed to the bus stop in front of the college, and took a bus from the college to the kanazawa station. We found something to eat at the station, and then caught our bus from the station to Kyoto. It was basically like a greyhound bus, but with JR - the company that has a monopoly on all Japanese mass transportation. Within the four-hour drive, they stopped at rest stops every hour or so.
Once we arrived at Kyoto station, we went and searched out our first hotel which was a few blocks from the station. It was a ryokan - a Japanese-style inn. There were tatami rooms, where we slept on futons, and the bath was japanese style, but luckily was for private use. It was a really cute little place, and the hotel people were really nice.
Friday
In the morning, we headed off back to the station to meet for our tour with Johnny Hillwalker. He gives walking tours to foreigners in English. We walked from Kyoto station to near Kiyomizu temple. He showed us a few temples and shrines and a garden and a good view of the in-home industry in Japan. We saw fan-makers, tatami-makers, pottery-makers, and many other products made in the homes of Kyoto. He was very knowledgeable of religion and culture in Japan, so it was nice to hear information from a real Japanese man. In the tour, we not only went in the world's largest wooden building, but we stood under the heaviest bell. Also, we saw the former headquarters of Nintendo when it was making Japanese playing cards. I suggest the tour to anyone who visits Kyoto.
After the tour, we found our new hotel to drop off our backpacks (because they were killing us by then). It was realy cute. It was Japanese dorm-style. Robyn and I were in a dorm with 6 other ladies in a tatami style room, and Phil was in the guy dorm. After dropping off our bags, we searched out somewhere to eat on our way up to Kiyomizu-dera (dera=temple). It's a Buddhist temple up in the hills surrounding Kyoto. It gives great views of the city, and it's water is supposedly very pure, so we had a drink from their fountain. There were also a 3-story pagoda, and a few other temples and shrines in the area that we wandered around.
When it was getting time for the temples to be closing, we hit up the shops on the way back down, but they were closing really quickly so we ended up not getting much. (Just so you know, stores in Japan close at 730 and if they are around temples, probably around 6) So we headed down to the area of Gion to search out some Geisha. We saw a few running from one place to another, but the bugs were getting bad and we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel for a shower and sleep.
Saturday
In the morning, we got up and walked to a bus station to grab a bus to Nijo-jo (the second jo=castle). It's the old castle of Kyoto. It has a palace with nightingale floors that squeak when you walk on them. We wandered around the castle and the garden for a while.
It was here, I think, that we discovered the wonderful concept of Bench touring. With bookbags full of stuff and walking from place to place to save money, we soon found ourselves exhausted pretty quickly in the 85 degree weather with 95% humidity or so. The heat makes you crazy hot in no time. Also, because I've been hang-drying my clothes with cheap laundry-detergent, my clothes are all starchy and feel horrible in the heat. Because of all this, we developed this new form of sight-seeing. It involves going to quite a few places, but in the process, finding many places to sit down and camp out. We sat on benches, ditches, edges of hundreds of years old palaces. We sat around for about 15 minutes or so at each place, until we felt revived enough to move on. It's a great way to get around.
After Nijo-jo, we headed to Kyoto cheapest inn, our hotel for the night (seriously, that's its name). It had about 10 bunk-beds in about the smallest room that you could imagine that many being in. There were many random people staying there - scary Germans, some crazy-looking Americans, little Japanese ladies that ran in before bed and left before everyone else because most likely, she was just as scared as we were of the foreigners.
Anyway, after dropping off our bags at the inn, we walked to Kyoto Imperial Palace Park. It's a large park around the imperial palace. The park is public, and seems to be a common visit for people from Kyoto since there is very little other green areas with trees and grass around. We did a lot of bench touring there, as there were many benches around, and the park is about a mile wide. We walked the long length of it, but it took us about 3 hours because we took lots of breaks.
After walking across the very large park in central kyoto, we wandered out back into the city. With more benching, we wandered into stores and such.
By the way, if you need a contact case, don't look in Japan. Even though a large majority of them have contacts, I guess most of them were hard, which apparently now have different cases in Japan than soft. I had forgotten my contact case when packing for Kyoto, and so I had been looking for one all day. We found some in a couple of stores, but they were all around 900 yen (about $9!!). I finally found one for a bargain of 840 yen that I gave up and bought cause I couldn't do without it.
We walked down the street and wandered in the area until we randomly turned onto an alleyway that became a large walking mall. About 3 or 4 blocks of streets in that area were walking streets dedicated to all the different stores you could imagine. We did some shopping, ate some dinner, and some crepes for dessert in that area. It was really funny though, because inbetween the stores, you would randomly see a buddhist temple or multiple shinto shrines. It was crazy to see the old and the new so close together.
While heading back to the hotel, we decided we wanted to try pachinko, the gambling game of Japan. We wandered into a parlor, and while we were trying to figure out how to play, we were approached by a Japanese man who said "Japanese only" and motioned for us to leave. We were discriminated against because we were white! Hehe! No fee money for them!
After exhausting ourselves, we wandered back to the inn to take a shower and head to bed in our 3X3X5 ft area that we called our own for the night (one part of a bunk bed). That hotel was definitely an experience to remember.
Sunday
In the morning, I was able to grab the computer for a second to put up a short post, telling everyone I was still alive.
Then we headed out back into the city of Kyoto. We caught a bus that took us up from central Kyoto to North-western kyoto (our first bus since coming to the city). We went to see Kinkaku-ji, AKA the golden pavilion. As before, it was beautiful and glorious, but at the same time, packed with foreigners so much so that it took us a while to find a few places to bench at. Finally, we found a spot, and people-watched for a while. We enjoyed watching people go by, laughing at the other foreigners going by and noticing random things. While benching, we were approached by these middle-school Japanese kids from Tokyo who asked to talk with us. They were so cute! They had to talk to some foreigners on their trip for their English class so we answered a few of their questions and took pictures with them. It was so random!
After Kinkaku-ji, we headed towards another temple that we planned to go to and looked out for lunch. Yay for ramen! On the way there, we took lots of bench stops and at one point, it was really weird because at one point we were in the city, and the next it seemed we were wandering in the mountains of Japan. With the backpack and heat and all, it felt like philmont all over again.
We made it to the temple, and we benched for about 2 hours there. They had a 5-story pagoda along with numerous other temples and such. We took lots of pictures, and we watched foreigners as they put trash in the wrong trash cans and depurified the water meant to purify people before they pray at shrines. Thanks to Johnny Hillwalker, we knew better.
After the temple, we took our 3rd bus back to Kyoto station, where we tried for about 45 minutes to get to the south side of it. It seems that no one in kyoto wants to go south of the station - only the north part of the city is important?? We ended up walking the streets in the area until we found one that went over the endless tracks of trains leading into and out of the station. I think we must have walked a mile out of our way.
After much strain and hardship, we found our hotel around 5. We checked in. This was another ryokan but this is a newer-style ryokan, in that the tatami were made out of plastic instead of the normal dried grass. We had a private room in this one, which actually consisted of 2 tatami rooms a toilet room, and a bathroom. It's actually a lot like our rooms at KIT, just newer. We followed the directions of the nice man at the reception desk suggested for Japanese food. It was our first real restaurant in Japan, in that we were shown to our seats by a waiter and waited upon. It was a little pricy but yummy anyway.
Afterwards, we just went back to the ryokan because we didn't dare try and go to the north side of the station and get stuck again. We watched the Haunted Mansion and Anger Management with Japanese subtitles, and basically relaxed and had a relaxing night.
Monday - almost done, I promise
We grabbed breakfast at the combini across the street. (Its a convenience store - basically like the inside of a gas station without the gas and car stuff. They are on every block in Japan.) We then followed the directions of the reception desk man to go under the station to get to the other side. Who would have thought that you need to go to basement 1 (not 2, mind you) from a department store on one side to get to the other side of the station.
We headed to Kyoto tower, because it was the only real plan we had for today. Kyoto tower looks like a spaceship. (Look at a picture of it off of google!) We saw the city and all the places we had visited. It was nice to go there at the end of the trip, so we could retrace our steps and find some of our hotels and such from the tower. I took lots of pictures, and we benched on the floor for a while because there were no benches in the tower. We then wandered around Kyoto station and it's multiple floors and the mall in under the streets to find somewhere to eat.
We finally found someplace that a lot of Japanese were going in and out of. We were looking for cheap Japanese food - so this was a good thing. They were making udon at the front of the shop from scratch. I got udon cause it was the cheapest thing on the menu, and it was super yummy.
We then wandered up the escalators of kyoto station, and ended up at what might have been the 12th floor. It was awesome. That station is amazing! I took bunches more pictures.
We benched around the station for the rest of the time until our bus came to take us back to Kanazawa. We finally got to Kanazawa and finished our expensive weekend by eating some 189 yen ramen.
I've been eating carbs a whole bunch this weekend because everything else was too expensive. I'm glad to be back on campus so I can get lots of cheap college food. Yay! I'm really getting used to living here even though I miss all my friends from Rose. I miss my puppy and pets too but at least I got to pet a doggy at the final ryokan. I'm going to have glasses that are all in one piece again soon - thanks mommy!
Well, I better get to other stuff cause class starts full-off tomorrow! Sorry about the length - I'll try and give you guys a couple of days to catch up.
Thursday
So, after classes on Thursday, Robyn, Phil, and I went back to our rooms to pack up our single backpack full of stuff for the weekend. Once we were ready, we headed to the bus stop in front of the college, and took a bus from the college to the kanazawa station. We found something to eat at the station, and then caught our bus from the station to Kyoto. It was basically like a greyhound bus, but with JR - the company that has a monopoly on all Japanese mass transportation. Within the four-hour drive, they stopped at rest stops every hour or so.
Once we arrived at Kyoto station, we went and searched out our first hotel which was a few blocks from the station. It was a ryokan - a Japanese-style inn. There were tatami rooms, where we slept on futons, and the bath was japanese style, but luckily was for private use. It was a really cute little place, and the hotel people were really nice.
Friday
In the morning, we headed off back to the station to meet for our tour with Johnny Hillwalker. He gives walking tours to foreigners in English. We walked from Kyoto station to near Kiyomizu temple. He showed us a few temples and shrines and a garden and a good view of the in-home industry in Japan. We saw fan-makers, tatami-makers, pottery-makers, and many other products made in the homes of Kyoto. He was very knowledgeable of religion and culture in Japan, so it was nice to hear information from a real Japanese man. In the tour, we not only went in the world's largest wooden building, but we stood under the heaviest bell. Also, we saw the former headquarters of Nintendo when it was making Japanese playing cards. I suggest the tour to anyone who visits Kyoto.
After the tour, we found our new hotel to drop off our backpacks (because they were killing us by then). It was realy cute. It was Japanese dorm-style. Robyn and I were in a dorm with 6 other ladies in a tatami style room, and Phil was in the guy dorm. After dropping off our bags, we searched out somewhere to eat on our way up to Kiyomizu-dera (dera=temple). It's a Buddhist temple up in the hills surrounding Kyoto. It gives great views of the city, and it's water is supposedly very pure, so we had a drink from their fountain. There were also a 3-story pagoda, and a few other temples and shrines in the area that we wandered around.
When it was getting time for the temples to be closing, we hit up the shops on the way back down, but they were closing really quickly so we ended up not getting much. (Just so you know, stores in Japan close at 730 and if they are around temples, probably around 6) So we headed down to the area of Gion to search out some Geisha. We saw a few running from one place to another, but the bugs were getting bad and we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel for a shower and sleep.
Saturday
In the morning, we got up and walked to a bus station to grab a bus to Nijo-jo (the second jo=castle). It's the old castle of Kyoto. It has a palace with nightingale floors that squeak when you walk on them. We wandered around the castle and the garden for a while.
It was here, I think, that we discovered the wonderful concept of Bench touring. With bookbags full of stuff and walking from place to place to save money, we soon found ourselves exhausted pretty quickly in the 85 degree weather with 95% humidity or so. The heat makes you crazy hot in no time. Also, because I've been hang-drying my clothes with cheap laundry-detergent, my clothes are all starchy and feel horrible in the heat. Because of all this, we developed this new form of sight-seeing. It involves going to quite a few places, but in the process, finding many places to sit down and camp out. We sat on benches, ditches, edges of hundreds of years old palaces. We sat around for about 15 minutes or so at each place, until we felt revived enough to move on. It's a great way to get around.
After Nijo-jo, we headed to Kyoto cheapest inn, our hotel for the night (seriously, that's its name). It had about 10 bunk-beds in about the smallest room that you could imagine that many being in. There were many random people staying there - scary Germans, some crazy-looking Americans, little Japanese ladies that ran in before bed and left before everyone else because most likely, she was just as scared as we were of the foreigners.
Anyway, after dropping off our bags at the inn, we walked to Kyoto Imperial Palace Park. It's a large park around the imperial palace. The park is public, and seems to be a common visit for people from Kyoto since there is very little other green areas with trees and grass around. We did a lot of bench touring there, as there were many benches around, and the park is about a mile wide. We walked the long length of it, but it took us about 3 hours because we took lots of breaks.
After walking across the very large park in central kyoto, we wandered out back into the city. With more benching, we wandered into stores and such.
By the way, if you need a contact case, don't look in Japan. Even though a large majority of them have contacts, I guess most of them were hard, which apparently now have different cases in Japan than soft. I had forgotten my contact case when packing for Kyoto, and so I had been looking for one all day. We found some in a couple of stores, but they were all around 900 yen (about $9!!). I finally found one for a bargain of 840 yen that I gave up and bought cause I couldn't do without it.
We walked down the street and wandered in the area until we randomly turned onto an alleyway that became a large walking mall. About 3 or 4 blocks of streets in that area were walking streets dedicated to all the different stores you could imagine. We did some shopping, ate some dinner, and some crepes for dessert in that area. It was really funny though, because inbetween the stores, you would randomly see a buddhist temple or multiple shinto shrines. It was crazy to see the old and the new so close together.
While heading back to the hotel, we decided we wanted to try pachinko, the gambling game of Japan. We wandered into a parlor, and while we were trying to figure out how to play, we were approached by a Japanese man who said "Japanese only" and motioned for us to leave. We were discriminated against because we were white! Hehe! No fee money for them!
After exhausting ourselves, we wandered back to the inn to take a shower and head to bed in our 3X3X5 ft area that we called our own for the night (one part of a bunk bed). That hotel was definitely an experience to remember.
Sunday
In the morning, I was able to grab the computer for a second to put up a short post, telling everyone I was still alive.
Then we headed out back into the city of Kyoto. We caught a bus that took us up from central Kyoto to North-western kyoto (our first bus since coming to the city). We went to see Kinkaku-ji, AKA the golden pavilion. As before, it was beautiful and glorious, but at the same time, packed with foreigners so much so that it took us a while to find a few places to bench at. Finally, we found a spot, and people-watched for a while. We enjoyed watching people go by, laughing at the other foreigners going by and noticing random things. While benching, we were approached by these middle-school Japanese kids from Tokyo who asked to talk with us. They were so cute! They had to talk to some foreigners on their trip for their English class so we answered a few of their questions and took pictures with them. It was so random!
After Kinkaku-ji, we headed towards another temple that we planned to go to and looked out for lunch. Yay for ramen! On the way there, we took lots of bench stops and at one point, it was really weird because at one point we were in the city, and the next it seemed we were wandering in the mountains of Japan. With the backpack and heat and all, it felt like philmont all over again.
We made it to the temple, and we benched for about 2 hours there. They had a 5-story pagoda along with numerous other temples and such. We took lots of pictures, and we watched foreigners as they put trash in the wrong trash cans and depurified the water meant to purify people before they pray at shrines. Thanks to Johnny Hillwalker, we knew better.
After the temple, we took our 3rd bus back to Kyoto station, where we tried for about 45 minutes to get to the south side of it. It seems that no one in kyoto wants to go south of the station - only the north part of the city is important?? We ended up walking the streets in the area until we found one that went over the endless tracks of trains leading into and out of the station. I think we must have walked a mile out of our way.
After much strain and hardship, we found our hotel around 5. We checked in. This was another ryokan but this is a newer-style ryokan, in that the tatami were made out of plastic instead of the normal dried grass. We had a private room in this one, which actually consisted of 2 tatami rooms a toilet room, and a bathroom. It's actually a lot like our rooms at KIT, just newer. We followed the directions of the nice man at the reception desk suggested for Japanese food. It was our first real restaurant in Japan, in that we were shown to our seats by a waiter and waited upon. It was a little pricy but yummy anyway.
Afterwards, we just went back to the ryokan because we didn't dare try and go to the north side of the station and get stuck again. We watched the Haunted Mansion and Anger Management with Japanese subtitles, and basically relaxed and had a relaxing night.
Monday - almost done, I promise
We grabbed breakfast at the combini across the street. (Its a convenience store - basically like the inside of a gas station without the gas and car stuff. They are on every block in Japan.) We then followed the directions of the reception desk man to go under the station to get to the other side. Who would have thought that you need to go to basement 1 (not 2, mind you) from a department store on one side to get to the other side of the station.
We headed to Kyoto tower, because it was the only real plan we had for today. Kyoto tower looks like a spaceship. (Look at a picture of it off of google!) We saw the city and all the places we had visited. It was nice to go there at the end of the trip, so we could retrace our steps and find some of our hotels and such from the tower. I took lots of pictures, and we benched on the floor for a while because there were no benches in the tower. We then wandered around Kyoto station and it's multiple floors and the mall in under the streets to find somewhere to eat.
We finally found someplace that a lot of Japanese were going in and out of. We were looking for cheap Japanese food - so this was a good thing. They were making udon at the front of the shop from scratch. I got udon cause it was the cheapest thing on the menu, and it was super yummy.
We then wandered up the escalators of kyoto station, and ended up at what might have been the 12th floor. It was awesome. That station is amazing! I took bunches more pictures.
We benched around the station for the rest of the time until our bus came to take us back to Kanazawa. We finally got to Kanazawa and finished our expensive weekend by eating some 189 yen ramen.
I've been eating carbs a whole bunch this weekend because everything else was too expensive. I'm glad to be back on campus so I can get lots of cheap college food. Yay! I'm really getting used to living here even though I miss all my friends from Rose. I miss my puppy and pets too but at least I got to pet a doggy at the final ryokan. I'm going to have glasses that are all in one piece again soon - thanks mommy!
Well, I better get to other stuff cause class starts full-off tomorrow! Sorry about the length - I'll try and give you guys a couple of days to catch up.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Having a blast
Well, I only have a second just to tell everyone I`m still alive in Kyoto. Today we`re going to see Kinkaku-ji. We developed a new way of tourism called bench sight-seeing which is absolutely great! To see what I`ll be doing in the next few days, see the last post.
I HEART you all!!
I HEART you all!!
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Off to an adventure
So, after a short week of lots of studying (geesh, I never knew I could possibly do this much Japanese in a day), we're going to have a 4-day weekend break. Now, in my realistic thinking, I don't know how I could possibly not go somewhere. The chance to go to Japan and see these sights are few and far between, so I decided that I'd go with Phil and Robyn somewhere.
After lots of deliberation, we decided on Kyoto. It is one of Japan's old capitals that was kept from war raids during WWII due to all of it's national treasures and heritage. I went there the first time I went to Japan, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For larger cities, it's the closest which means that it costs the least.
Here are our plans:
Thursday-
3:15 pm class lets out for the weekend
6 pm board bus at Kanazawa Station
10 pm arrive at Kyoto Station
walk to ryokan (Japanese style inn) for the night.
Friday-
10 am walking tour from Hajime Hirooka, also known as Johnny Hillwalker - he takes people around Kyoto for ￥2000, and he shows us gardens, temples, and shrines.
3 pm tour ends around Kiyomizu-dera, a famous temple in Kyoto, that I visited the last time I came
After shopping and such, we'll head to Gion, a geisha district, to see a view of the old Japan.
We're spending the night at Gojo guest house (essentially a youth hostel)
Saturday-
Seeing Nijo-jo castle and the area around that
We're spending the night at Kyoto Cheapest Inn (It sells a tatami mat size bed for about $10 a night)
Sunday-
Seeing Kinkaku-ji (the golden temple - saw it last time - magnificent) and Northern Kyoto
Heading back to the station early to stay at a ryokan. They have a puppy! Yay! And they offer a traditional Japanese dinner for around $30 and a traditional Japanese breakfast for $10. It's a little expensive, but it is a sample of Japanese traditional life that I have always wanted to experience.
Monday -
Spending the area around the station, and getting on the bus around 2 pm to head back to Kanazawa.
I'm really excited about this trip. I have planned many trips around Japan for classes, and it's exciting because I'm actually doing this one. For one, it's a real step of independence because I'm going out into a foreign country with very little support besides two other American students who have about the same knowledge of Japanese as I. Also, we are spending every night at a different place, which means we will be literally living out of our backpacks. It'll be like backpacking in a city! It's going to end up costing quite a bit even though we are staying the night at some of the cheapest hostels possible, but I think it sounds like a good adventure. I'd be worried if I was on my own, but since I have Phil and Robyn with me, I'm not so worried.
So, I'd better get back to studying for tomorrow, but after that, I'll be gone for a bit, so I'll leave time for everyone to catch up reading, since apparently I write too much . . .
Sayonara!
I miss you all!
Mom, you're awesome!
After lots of deliberation, we decided on Kyoto. It is one of Japan's old capitals that was kept from war raids during WWII due to all of it's national treasures and heritage. I went there the first time I went to Japan, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For larger cities, it's the closest which means that it costs the least.
Here are our plans:
Thursday-
3:15 pm class lets out for the weekend
6 pm board bus at Kanazawa Station
10 pm arrive at Kyoto Station
walk to ryokan (Japanese style inn) for the night.
Friday-
10 am walking tour from Hajime Hirooka, also known as Johnny Hillwalker - he takes people around Kyoto for ￥2000, and he shows us gardens, temples, and shrines.
3 pm tour ends around Kiyomizu-dera, a famous temple in Kyoto, that I visited the last time I came
After shopping and such, we'll head to Gion, a geisha district, to see a view of the old Japan.
We're spending the night at Gojo guest house (essentially a youth hostel)
Saturday-
Seeing Nijo-jo castle and the area around that
We're spending the night at Kyoto Cheapest Inn (It sells a tatami mat size bed for about $10 a night)
Sunday-
Seeing Kinkaku-ji (the golden temple - saw it last time - magnificent) and Northern Kyoto
Heading back to the station early to stay at a ryokan. They have a puppy! Yay! And they offer a traditional Japanese dinner for around $30 and a traditional Japanese breakfast for $10. It's a little expensive, but it is a sample of Japanese traditional life that I have always wanted to experience.
Monday -
Spending the area around the station, and getting on the bus around 2 pm to head back to Kanazawa.
I'm really excited about this trip. I have planned many trips around Japan for classes, and it's exciting because I'm actually doing this one. For one, it's a real step of independence because I'm going out into a foreign country with very little support besides two other American students who have about the same knowledge of Japanese as I. Also, we are spending every night at a different place, which means we will be literally living out of our backpacks. It'll be like backpacking in a city! It's going to end up costing quite a bit even though we are staying the night at some of the cheapest hostels possible, but I think it sounds like a good adventure. I'd be worried if I was on my own, but since I have Phil and Robyn with me, I'm not so worried.
So, I'd better get back to studying for tomorrow, but after that, I'll be gone for a bit, so I'll leave time for everyone to catch up reading, since apparently I write too much . . .
Sayonara!
I miss you all!
Mom, you're awesome!
Monday, June 13, 2005
Back to the school part
Well, I guess I'm finally getting used to these futon things. I was able to sleep in until 10 on Sunday. After finally setting on some Ramen to eat, we went back to working on homework most of the day. About 5, we headed to the city to see a Noh play. Now, I guess I don't understand enough Japanese to understand this type of play, which made it a little hard to stay interested for 2 and a half hours, but it was a cultural experience. It was hosted by the Noh school in Kanazawa, so it started off with some little kids performing Noh which was really cute. Once we got into the real Noh play, elaborate costumes shined in the lit stage in front of the Kanazawa Castle gate. It was really a site to see.
We got crepes on the way back to the bus stop. Yumm! Crepes in Japan are delicious! They're worth the trip alone.
The buses were near the end of their routes, so we hopped on a bus number that normally takes us back to campus. For some reason, it never announced our stop, so we just kept riding, hoping it would turn around and go back toward campus. Eventually the bus driver stopped and essentially said this is the end of the line, and so we started to get off. I guess he took pitty on us Americans though (because there aren't very many of us in Kanazawa) and he took us a little closer to campus where we would recognize where we were. It was really nice of him since he was off-shift and all, but I guess that goes with the normal actions of any service in Japan.
Monday was full of 5 hours of classes, and lots of studying for today because I have 2 vocab quizes, each over about 20-35 words, and a dialogue quiz. I better get back to studying and head to class.
Toodles!
We got crepes on the way back to the bus stop. Yumm! Crepes in Japan are delicious! They're worth the trip alone.
The buses were near the end of their routes, so we hopped on a bus number that normally takes us back to campus. For some reason, it never announced our stop, so we just kept riding, hoping it would turn around and go back toward campus. Eventually the bus driver stopped and essentially said this is the end of the line, and so we started to get off. I guess he took pitty on us Americans though (because there aren't very many of us in Kanazawa) and he took us a little closer to campus where we would recognize where we were. It was really nice of him since he was off-shift and all, but I guess that goes with the normal actions of any service in Japan.
Monday was full of 5 hours of classes, and lots of studying for today because I have 2 vocab quizes, each over about 20-35 words, and a dialogue quiz. I better get back to studying and head to class.
Toodles!
Sunday, June 12, 2005
An Interesting Couple of Days
Maybe I gave the warning a little too early that things would die down . . . this weekend so far has been quite eventful. Sorry for the length!!
We had our unit quiz on Thursday. I didn’t know everything perfectly, but I’m sure I did well enough to pass, which is all that really matters in this course. We luckily got her to agree to spread the unit quizzes out over each day so there is less to memorize per day, so that will hopefully be pretty helpful. Thursday was pretty uneventful and after a day at class, we went to a ramen store. Ramen in Japan is so much better than the instant ramen we make at home. It normally has some type of meat and veggies along with it, and the broth tastes a lot better. The best part is that I can get a big bowl of ramen that always fills me up for only 185 yen (less than $2).
Afterwards, I headed back to my room because I had gotten into the climax of 1984 and I felt that I had to finish reading it. Comments on the book – I liked it all the way through, but I could care less for the ending. After finishing 1984, I went to the lounge where the SGE students and my fellow students were watching some type of Japanese old samurai movie. It was really funny. I came late to it though, so I have no idea what its name is.
Friday, I woke up and packed for our trip to Anamizu. We had a short culture class in the morning and then we got on a bus to spend an overnight stay in Anamizu. Kanazawa is on the edge of a fairly large peninsula, and Anamizu is a town that is farther up on the island area of the peninsula. KIT has a training facility there. (Don’t ask me what they use it to train for at an institute of technology, but who knows?!?)
We first rode the bus to Daijo-ji, a Buddhist temple in Kanazawa. It was over 300 years old with ornate Japanese architecture. It was beautiful. The monks of the temple gave us a tour around the temple, and showed us their Buddha house which is a national treasure or something. It was beautiful. After the tour, we had a tutoring session with the head monk on how to perform “sanzen” (a type of meditation).
Every part of the meditation had certain rules on how to do it. There was a certain way to get up onto the raised platform of tatami where the sanzen was performed. Also there was bowing a turning and hopping and all sorts of fun stuff. The proper way to sit for meditation is where you are cross-legged with your feet over your thighs. While we meditated, we were supposed to essentially not pay any heed to the world and let the sounds go in one ear and out the other.
It was a really neat experience. The monks really tried to have us achieve a good idea of what the life was like there, and it was really neat how they gave up their lives to be as they were. They start sanzen every morning at 4 am. There is no closing of eyes in sanzen either, so sleeping is strictly forbidden. They actually have a monk that walks around with a stick in case you fall asleep. We only did it for about 5-10 minutes, but you really got a taste of it.
Next, we got back on the charter bus to head to Anamizu until we stopped about an hour later at Nanao Fisherman’s wharf. It was basically a Japanese style mall with a fish market on the first floor. I got a ramune bottle, which makes me happy. The place reeked of fish, which doesn’t particularly strike my fancy, but it was a nice break from the bus ride.
After getting on the bus again and riding for another hour or so, we arrived at the compound. The rodes were so interesting, because these islands are made out of volcanoes and therefore there is no beach, it goes from mountain right into the sea. There’s no coast and no flat area for roads. The whole ride was with a mountain on one side and the sea on the other – very pretty.
We arrived at Anamizu and bowed ourselves in. This place is so traditional Japanese. Once we came inside, we took off our shoes and placed them in cubby holes and traded them with slippers to use inside. In our room, there were 3 bunk beds, 6 lockers, and a 3-matt tatami floor. The toilets were all Japanese style – a hole in the ground with flushing capabilities, practically. And when you entered the toilet room (because it’s not really a bathroom or a restroom), you had to change into different slippers.
Once we partially moved in, we had a welcoming meeting, where we were told of our responsibilities while being there. Because the compound has a small staff, we would clean everything ourselves. Everything down to folding the blankets and making our beds was very regimental. After the meeting, we had free time in which my group just sat around on the tatami and talked.
Once the SGE students came, the fun began. We helped them move quickly, and then we moved down to the sea edge to have a “barbeque”. It was very Japanese style – so much seafood that I’d never even consider eating, but there was also some good stuff for us. BEEF – gosh, there’s no beef in this country, I swear, but gosh, did it taste good off the grill. As well as corn and chicken and unions. Yummy. I spent the whole time grilling just because I enjoyed it, and I like the small chat you get to talk to while you’re busy. I don’t like the awkward silences we get when trying to talk to the Japanese students, and if you’re both busy or giving out food or something, it’s much more easy to relax and have a good time.
The barbeque was really fun, and in the Japanese style, we cleaned up after ourselves afterward. You have no idea how fast things can get done until you ask a group of Japanese students to clean up. They’ve been cleaning up after themselves for their whole lives and you can tell. Right from elementary school, they begin help cleaning the school every day. I’ve never seen an area cleaned up so quickly.
I didn’t notice until we went back inside how much I reeked of fish. I hadn’t noticed it by the grill and I didn’t eat any fish, but the cooking of the fish definitely showed on my clothes and me. I was ready for a shower. One problem – in this compound, everything is Japanese style, including the baths, which means they are public! At least there was no mixing of genders, but I definitely felt a little uncomfortable for a while. The bath felt nice though – like a hot tub.
Afterwards, we went over to someone else’s room for games a Japanese snacks. One of my SGE roommates had brought Japanese snacks to share and we played “batsu” (punishment) games. If you lost and you were a guy, we got to paint your fingernails, and if you were a girl, you had to eat some really hot snacks. I got lucky and never lost, but I painted a few fingernails, hehe. Tried a few yummy Japanese snacks as well, so it was a good night.
We were woken up at 630 by a PA announcement that was one of the longest I’ve heard ever. I swear the music lasted at least 5 minutes. I guess there’s no snooze button at the compound. We headed down to the gym at 7 for a traditional morning meeting. We did “rajio taiso” (morning exercises) as a group, which was essentially a series of stretches that most Japanese do at their school or office to start off their day. I hadn’t done it since Mrs. Semba’s class in high school, and it was a nice little exercise.
After rajio taiso, it was time for our cleaning chores. Each room was assigned to a specific area to clean. Our room got the “ofuro” or bathroom, so we got to spray it down and squiji (sp?) it clean. Afterwards, we went up to our room to fold our blankets properly for inspection.
Finally it was time for breakfast, and luckily there was some bread besides the traditional Japanese breakfast, which normally involves some kind of soup, salad, fish or eggs. I got to make some toast, which was excellent. Then it was time to head for our culture class for the day (yes, it is a Saturday and we did have to have class because we’re in Japan). The class was on religion in Japan, and I had a lot of trouble staying awake, but so did the SGE students as well, so it was quite humorous.
After the lecture was finally over, we got to head back down by the sea for a bay cruise. We took lots of pictures, and the boat was very nice. It was like any other bay cruise of the liking, and the scenery was very close to any other cruise along a not so populated area. We saw two different bridges, which they made sure to point out because one of our projects is to make a bridge with a Japanese partner that we’ve been paired up with.
Then it was time for lunch after we got back. Of course, it was curry, which I don’t really like so I had a large lunch of rice for a meal. Sometimes I’m too picky for my own good, but I’m getting better, and it was just the spiciness that got me this time. I ate a little, but then my mouth was burning and I had to go buy a drink.
Soon it was time to head back to KIT. We had only one bus on the way here because the SGE students had to come up later, but this time we had two buses to take us back, and we could ride either, mixing the students. We ended up on the Japanese bus because Americans all save their seats really early. It was really fun on the way back. We played a card game with them that I’m sure I’ve played before in the states, but I don’t know what it’s called, but in following with all my card training, I did pretty well at shocking the Japanese students with my playing skills.
In the middle of the bus ride, we stopped at a rest stop, where I got the type of ice cream that I had gotten the time the bird stole it, and it was very good, in its entirety this time. We then got back on the bus and Robyn and I decided to do a bit of studying. The Japanese students had fun trying to help us on elementary shapes and terms, and they teased us about the dialogue that we had to practice. They were a lot of fun.
After we arrived back at KIT, it was time to head out for the Hyakumangoku festival, a historical annual festival in Kanazawa. There was supposed to be a parade with Odori dancers, but because it was rainy, it was canceled, but of course, we didn’t find this out until we had already spent the 330 yen to get to downtown Kanazawa. We decided to go down the roads and roads of food tents that were set up for the events and grab supper. It was like the midway, with lots of yummy foods that are for fair-like things. It was really fun going down the sidewalks and ordering random foods from the vendors.
We were hoping to head to karaoke after grabbing dinner but the leaders of the group decided not to because it was too expensive because it was a holiday weekend. Hopefully, we’ll have another chance. While most of the group headed back to campus, Robyn and I wandered around for a little through the stores. There was one store that was solely devotes to selling socks! Nothing else – just socks. It was amazing, and we had walked by it before, but this was our first chance to go in. I bought the cutest socks ever, and you’ll have to ask me to see them sometime! We found out that on a Saturday night in Kanazawa, everything closes at 8 so we were kind of forced to head back around then.
We took a bus back to campus, but it didn’t really go all the way back to campus, and we were lucky to have found campus from where we were, but we did it. I think Robyn and I are getting pretty good at getting around Japan together. Knowing more the spoken and written language definitely helps, and it really encourages us to keep up our studying!
Well, off to more events of the night . . . maybe, sleep!
I miss you all!!
We had our unit quiz on Thursday. I didn’t know everything perfectly, but I’m sure I did well enough to pass, which is all that really matters in this course. We luckily got her to agree to spread the unit quizzes out over each day so there is less to memorize per day, so that will hopefully be pretty helpful. Thursday was pretty uneventful and after a day at class, we went to a ramen store. Ramen in Japan is so much better than the instant ramen we make at home. It normally has some type of meat and veggies along with it, and the broth tastes a lot better. The best part is that I can get a big bowl of ramen that always fills me up for only 185 yen (less than $2).
Afterwards, I headed back to my room because I had gotten into the climax of 1984 and I felt that I had to finish reading it. Comments on the book – I liked it all the way through, but I could care less for the ending. After finishing 1984, I went to the lounge where the SGE students and my fellow students were watching some type of Japanese old samurai movie. It was really funny. I came late to it though, so I have no idea what its name is.
Friday, I woke up and packed for our trip to Anamizu. We had a short culture class in the morning and then we got on a bus to spend an overnight stay in Anamizu. Kanazawa is on the edge of a fairly large peninsula, and Anamizu is a town that is farther up on the island area of the peninsula. KIT has a training facility there. (Don’t ask me what they use it to train for at an institute of technology, but who knows?!?)
We first rode the bus to Daijo-ji, a Buddhist temple in Kanazawa. It was over 300 years old with ornate Japanese architecture. It was beautiful. The monks of the temple gave us a tour around the temple, and showed us their Buddha house which is a national treasure or something. It was beautiful. After the tour, we had a tutoring session with the head monk on how to perform “sanzen” (a type of meditation).
Every part of the meditation had certain rules on how to do it. There was a certain way to get up onto the raised platform of tatami where the sanzen was performed. Also there was bowing a turning and hopping and all sorts of fun stuff. The proper way to sit for meditation is where you are cross-legged with your feet over your thighs. While we meditated, we were supposed to essentially not pay any heed to the world and let the sounds go in one ear and out the other.
It was a really neat experience. The monks really tried to have us achieve a good idea of what the life was like there, and it was really neat how they gave up their lives to be as they were. They start sanzen every morning at 4 am. There is no closing of eyes in sanzen either, so sleeping is strictly forbidden. They actually have a monk that walks around with a stick in case you fall asleep. We only did it for about 5-10 minutes, but you really got a taste of it.
Next, we got back on the charter bus to head to Anamizu until we stopped about an hour later at Nanao Fisherman’s wharf. It was basically a Japanese style mall with a fish market on the first floor. I got a ramune bottle, which makes me happy. The place reeked of fish, which doesn’t particularly strike my fancy, but it was a nice break from the bus ride.
After getting on the bus again and riding for another hour or so, we arrived at the compound. The rodes were so interesting, because these islands are made out of volcanoes and therefore there is no beach, it goes from mountain right into the sea. There’s no coast and no flat area for roads. The whole ride was with a mountain on one side and the sea on the other – very pretty.
We arrived at Anamizu and bowed ourselves in. This place is so traditional Japanese. Once we came inside, we took off our shoes and placed them in cubby holes and traded them with slippers to use inside. In our room, there were 3 bunk beds, 6 lockers, and a 3-matt tatami floor. The toilets were all Japanese style – a hole in the ground with flushing capabilities, practically. And when you entered the toilet room (because it’s not really a bathroom or a restroom), you had to change into different slippers.
Once we partially moved in, we had a welcoming meeting, where we were told of our responsibilities while being there. Because the compound has a small staff, we would clean everything ourselves. Everything down to folding the blankets and making our beds was very regimental. After the meeting, we had free time in which my group just sat around on the tatami and talked.
Once the SGE students came, the fun began. We helped them move quickly, and then we moved down to the sea edge to have a “barbeque”. It was very Japanese style – so much seafood that I’d never even consider eating, but there was also some good stuff for us. BEEF – gosh, there’s no beef in this country, I swear, but gosh, did it taste good off the grill. As well as corn and chicken and unions. Yummy. I spent the whole time grilling just because I enjoyed it, and I like the small chat you get to talk to while you’re busy. I don’t like the awkward silences we get when trying to talk to the Japanese students, and if you’re both busy or giving out food or something, it’s much more easy to relax and have a good time.
The barbeque was really fun, and in the Japanese style, we cleaned up after ourselves afterward. You have no idea how fast things can get done until you ask a group of Japanese students to clean up. They’ve been cleaning up after themselves for their whole lives and you can tell. Right from elementary school, they begin help cleaning the school every day. I’ve never seen an area cleaned up so quickly.
I didn’t notice until we went back inside how much I reeked of fish. I hadn’t noticed it by the grill and I didn’t eat any fish, but the cooking of the fish definitely showed on my clothes and me. I was ready for a shower. One problem – in this compound, everything is Japanese style, including the baths, which means they are public! At least there was no mixing of genders, but I definitely felt a little uncomfortable for a while. The bath felt nice though – like a hot tub.
Afterwards, we went over to someone else’s room for games a Japanese snacks. One of my SGE roommates had brought Japanese snacks to share and we played “batsu” (punishment) games. If you lost and you were a guy, we got to paint your fingernails, and if you were a girl, you had to eat some really hot snacks. I got lucky and never lost, but I painted a few fingernails, hehe. Tried a few yummy Japanese snacks as well, so it was a good night.
We were woken up at 630 by a PA announcement that was one of the longest I’ve heard ever. I swear the music lasted at least 5 minutes. I guess there’s no snooze button at the compound. We headed down to the gym at 7 for a traditional morning meeting. We did “rajio taiso” (morning exercises) as a group, which was essentially a series of stretches that most Japanese do at their school or office to start off their day. I hadn’t done it since Mrs. Semba’s class in high school, and it was a nice little exercise.
After rajio taiso, it was time for our cleaning chores. Each room was assigned to a specific area to clean. Our room got the “ofuro” or bathroom, so we got to spray it down and squiji (sp?) it clean. Afterwards, we went up to our room to fold our blankets properly for inspection.
Finally it was time for breakfast, and luckily there was some bread besides the traditional Japanese breakfast, which normally involves some kind of soup, salad, fish or eggs. I got to make some toast, which was excellent. Then it was time to head for our culture class for the day (yes, it is a Saturday and we did have to have class because we’re in Japan). The class was on religion in Japan, and I had a lot of trouble staying awake, but so did the SGE students as well, so it was quite humorous.
After the lecture was finally over, we got to head back down by the sea for a bay cruise. We took lots of pictures, and the boat was very nice. It was like any other bay cruise of the liking, and the scenery was very close to any other cruise along a not so populated area. We saw two different bridges, which they made sure to point out because one of our projects is to make a bridge with a Japanese partner that we’ve been paired up with.
Then it was time for lunch after we got back. Of course, it was curry, which I don’t really like so I had a large lunch of rice for a meal. Sometimes I’m too picky for my own good, but I’m getting better, and it was just the spiciness that got me this time. I ate a little, but then my mouth was burning and I had to go buy a drink.
Soon it was time to head back to KIT. We had only one bus on the way here because the SGE students had to come up later, but this time we had two buses to take us back, and we could ride either, mixing the students. We ended up on the Japanese bus because Americans all save their seats really early. It was really fun on the way back. We played a card game with them that I’m sure I’ve played before in the states, but I don’t know what it’s called, but in following with all my card training, I did pretty well at shocking the Japanese students with my playing skills.
In the middle of the bus ride, we stopped at a rest stop, where I got the type of ice cream that I had gotten the time the bird stole it, and it was very good, in its entirety this time. We then got back on the bus and Robyn and I decided to do a bit of studying. The Japanese students had fun trying to help us on elementary shapes and terms, and they teased us about the dialogue that we had to practice. They were a lot of fun.
After we arrived back at KIT, it was time to head out for the Hyakumangoku festival, a historical annual festival in Kanazawa. There was supposed to be a parade with Odori dancers, but because it was rainy, it was canceled, but of course, we didn’t find this out until we had already spent the 330 yen to get to downtown Kanazawa. We decided to go down the roads and roads of food tents that were set up for the events and grab supper. It was like the midway, with lots of yummy foods that are for fair-like things. It was really fun going down the sidewalks and ordering random foods from the vendors.
We were hoping to head to karaoke after grabbing dinner but the leaders of the group decided not to because it was too expensive because it was a holiday weekend. Hopefully, we’ll have another chance. While most of the group headed back to campus, Robyn and I wandered around for a little through the stores. There was one store that was solely devotes to selling socks! Nothing else – just socks. It was amazing, and we had walked by it before, but this was our first chance to go in. I bought the cutest socks ever, and you’ll have to ask me to see them sometime! We found out that on a Saturday night in Kanazawa, everything closes at 8 so we were kind of forced to head back around then.
We took a bus back to campus, but it didn’t really go all the way back to campus, and we were lucky to have found campus from where we were, but we did it. I think Robyn and I are getting pretty good at getting around Japan together. Knowing more the spoken and written language definitely helps, and it really encourages us to keep up our studying!
Well, off to more events of the night . . . maybe, sleep!
I miss you all!!
Thursday, June 9, 2005
3 days down . . . about 27 to go . . .
So, tomorrow morning I go onto my fourth day of classes. I have a unit quiz in language class where I`m supposed to have 10 dialogues memorized. I don`t know who can possibly memorize these word for word, but I`ve started to give up on the possibility. I also have a computer term quiz in the Japanese for Science and Technology.
One of my friends was put into a lower level than me and she asked to move up, and today they told her that the language class isn`t so much harder, but the Japanese for Science and Technology class will be really hard with long readings assigned each night. So they gave her the choice of changing or not. Do we get a choice? No, which I probably wouldn`t change away from class 3 anyway, but it seems the work load is already large enough without all the readings in Japanese and the projects that are soon to come. My point here is to learn as much as possible. I just hope they grade easily. I really only have to pass to get credit, so I might just go for the passing at 60%.
I`m kind of running out of things to blog about. Now that we`ve been in class 4-5 hours a day with hours of homework to do besides, I don`t really have much that is interesting to write about. The most exciting time of most of these days is going to meals, and what next will be put on my plate. The only thing I can put on here would be a journal that I`m writing anyway for culture class. It`s just random observations I`m making on differences in the culture from America to Japan. If you guys would like to read that, just to make sure I`m alive and all, comment and I`ll start putting those up as blogs.
An interesting thing happened to me today. I had gotten some ice cream after lunch (oh, how Japanese food makes me crave sugar afterwards . . . ) and we decided to walk around a bit outside before our next class started in a few minutes. Suddenly something swifted by my shoulder and flew out in front of me. It freaked me out. It was a large hawk, maybe an eagle, that was at least a foot to maybe a foot and a half tall. After I had gotten over the surprise of a bird flying that close to me; I swear it could have landed on my shoulder, I looked to take another bite of my ice cream, and it was gone!!!!! The eagle had come down, grabbed the ice cream out of my hand and flown away to enjoy its prey! I hadn`t even noticed that the wrapper was empty until after it had flown away. I think the Japanese around me were laughing inside, but we just started out bursting out laughing. We couldn`t stop laughing for about a half an hour, and the laughs continued into class. I found out a few minutes later from a British lady who is there for some reason that this happens all the time, and all the students are watching out for their food if they are outside. I feel like a performer in a bird show as the large hawk comes and takes food from my hand . . . but this hawk was wild.
Oh, if you out of curiosity want to know what time it is here, add two hours to the current time and put it in the next set of 12 hours. For example, if it`s 9 pm in Indiana time, then it`s 11 am here the next day.
We also met our partners today for another part of the Japanese for Science and Technology. We are going to have a bridge building contest between pairs of one Japanese student and one American student. My partner seems awesome. She is also in a more technical field of study than civil so I doubt we do fantastically. Why are they always civil projects? I`m a biomedical / mechanical engineer - I do things that MOVE. Okay, enough of the rant on civil engineering projects - I better go memorize some dialogues.
Toodles!
One of my friends was put into a lower level than me and she asked to move up, and today they told her that the language class isn`t so much harder, but the Japanese for Science and Technology class will be really hard with long readings assigned each night. So they gave her the choice of changing or not. Do we get a choice? No, which I probably wouldn`t change away from class 3 anyway, but it seems the work load is already large enough without all the readings in Japanese and the projects that are soon to come. My point here is to learn as much as possible. I just hope they grade easily. I really only have to pass to get credit, so I might just go for the passing at 60%.
I`m kind of running out of things to blog about. Now that we`ve been in class 4-5 hours a day with hours of homework to do besides, I don`t really have much that is interesting to write about. The most exciting time of most of these days is going to meals, and what next will be put on my plate. The only thing I can put on here would be a journal that I`m writing anyway for culture class. It`s just random observations I`m making on differences in the culture from America to Japan. If you guys would like to read that, just to make sure I`m alive and all, comment and I`ll start putting those up as blogs.
An interesting thing happened to me today. I had gotten some ice cream after lunch (oh, how Japanese food makes me crave sugar afterwards . . . ) and we decided to walk around a bit outside before our next class started in a few minutes. Suddenly something swifted by my shoulder and flew out in front of me. It freaked me out. It was a large hawk, maybe an eagle, that was at least a foot to maybe a foot and a half tall. After I had gotten over the surprise of a bird flying that close to me; I swear it could have landed on my shoulder, I looked to take another bite of my ice cream, and it was gone!!!!! The eagle had come down, grabbed the ice cream out of my hand and flown away to enjoy its prey! I hadn`t even noticed that the wrapper was empty until after it had flown away. I think the Japanese around me were laughing inside, but we just started out bursting out laughing. We couldn`t stop laughing for about a half an hour, and the laughs continued into class. I found out a few minutes later from a British lady who is there for some reason that this happens all the time, and all the students are watching out for their food if they are outside. I feel like a performer in a bird show as the large hawk comes and takes food from my hand . . . but this hawk was wild.
Oh, if you out of curiosity want to know what time it is here, add two hours to the current time and put it in the next set of 12 hours. For example, if it`s 9 pm in Indiana time, then it`s 11 am here the next day.
We also met our partners today for another part of the Japanese for Science and Technology. We are going to have a bridge building contest between pairs of one Japanese student and one American student. My partner seems awesome. She is also in a more technical field of study than civil so I doubt we do fantastically. Why are they always civil projects? I`m a biomedical / mechanical engineer - I do things that MOVE. Okay, enough of the rant on civil engineering projects - I better go memorize some dialogues.
Toodles!
Monday, June 6, 2005
First day of classes
To answer Jesseca's request. I do have an address, but I'm not too fond of putting that on the internet for anyone to read and send who knows what to me. So, if you want my address, send me an email to my school address, and I'll reply back with my address.
So, today was my first day of 6 weeks of classes. After eating a bit of breakfast in my room, I headed for my first two hours of class. This was Japanese Commmunication II, a two-credit hour course of intense pure Japanese speaking. My teacher handed out syllabi and other random papers. I hope I was rightly placed into this course. She speaks in Japanese all the time, and there often words that I don't know. I guess that's the whole point. Instead of like how a normal class goes, in our class we are going to focus purely on speaking communication. We aren't going to spend a lot of time on grammar, but instead, we're going to practice what we know and how to use it in different situations. It seems like I'll learn the most this way, but I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to keep up. She wants us to speak purely in Japanese, which I know is good for learning, but it's frustrating at times when you don't know how to say what you want. Plus, I'm not very good at using what I know to put the words into my head into words in Japanese, so it can be frustrating at times, but I'm sure I'll be fine.
After 2 hours of class where we went over at least a page of terms that we had come across and what we wanted to know, we headed to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. I just ate some soba, but I was pretty full afterwards. I found out at lunch that the other two classes were reviewing over stuff that I definitely did know, so maybe I was placed in the right level.
We then headed to the culture class in another building. This classes pure aim is to teach us about the culture about Japan, and we have to keep a daily journal of culture observations that we make during our stay. Our teacher is a lady who was born and raised in Japan, but then she went to college and then stayed 30 years in the US. She studied anthropology in America, and she seems to be a very interesting person. She seems to have a good idea of the culture differences in Japan and it will be interesting to ask her questions on culture differences that we come about.
Then it was study time. I had to write journals for the culture class as well as learn 14 terms for Japanese Communication and learn 20 or so terms for the technical Japanese class. I also still have yet to practice dialogues with my partner for Japanese Communication.
After a bit of studying, we head to a restaurant to eat. We went to the same restaurant as I had the chicken katsu at before. I guess it's called Kasanchi. I got something that looked good on somebody else's plate. I asked what it was and found out its called karage. So I ordered it, and was karage with rice. Of course, I find out that it was fried pork after I ate it, but that's how life is in Japan.
Then I came back and wrote some and did some homework and such.
So, today was my first day of 6 weeks of classes. After eating a bit of breakfast in my room, I headed for my first two hours of class. This was Japanese Commmunication II, a two-credit hour course of intense pure Japanese speaking. My teacher handed out syllabi and other random papers. I hope I was rightly placed into this course. She speaks in Japanese all the time, and there often words that I don't know. I guess that's the whole point. Instead of like how a normal class goes, in our class we are going to focus purely on speaking communication. We aren't going to spend a lot of time on grammar, but instead, we're going to practice what we know and how to use it in different situations. It seems like I'll learn the most this way, but I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to keep up. She wants us to speak purely in Japanese, which I know is good for learning, but it's frustrating at times when you don't know how to say what you want. Plus, I'm not very good at using what I know to put the words into my head into words in Japanese, so it can be frustrating at times, but I'm sure I'll be fine.
After 2 hours of class where we went over at least a page of terms that we had come across and what we wanted to know, we headed to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. I just ate some soba, but I was pretty full afterwards. I found out at lunch that the other two classes were reviewing over stuff that I definitely did know, so maybe I was placed in the right level.
We then headed to the culture class in another building. This classes pure aim is to teach us about the culture about Japan, and we have to keep a daily journal of culture observations that we make during our stay. Our teacher is a lady who was born and raised in Japan, but then she went to college and then stayed 30 years in the US. She studied anthropology in America, and she seems to be a very interesting person. She seems to have a good idea of the culture differences in Japan and it will be interesting to ask her questions on culture differences that we come about.
Then it was study time. I had to write journals for the culture class as well as learn 14 terms for Japanese Communication and learn 20 or so terms for the technical Japanese class. I also still have yet to practice dialogues with my partner for Japanese Communication.
After a bit of studying, we head to a restaurant to eat. We went to the same restaurant as I had the chicken katsu at before. I guess it's called Kasanchi. I got something that looked good on somebody else's plate. I asked what it was and found out its called karage. So I ordered it, and was karage with rice. Of course, I find out that it was fried pork after I ate it, but that's how life is in Japan.
Then I came back and wrote some and did some homework and such.
Sunday, June 5, 2005
Sightseeing in Kanazawa
For the rest of last night -
Robyn and I couldn't find anyone so we went to look for a meal ourselves. Luckily, we found some other 外人 (foreigners) that are also in the program standing outside a restaurant thinking about going in. We joined these students, who are from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. We had fun deciphering the menu as a group and finally ordered after a bit. They said that it was a favorite restaurant of the local students, and I could see why. For 600 yen (a little less than 6 dollars), I got miso soup, rice, some cold soba, and a large piece of breaded chicken (katsu). It was excellently delicious, and I'll be sure to visit there again.
Somewhere after dinner, we went back to the dorm to check and see if the classes are up. I made it into the most advanced class!!! So I guess I didn't do too badly on the placement test. This of course means that I'll have the biggest challenge possible, but I'm up for it. I kind of miss being busy (Rose syndrome), so it'll be a welcomed change. I'll be in the class with Phil and some other Rose peeps, but sadly, Robyn was put into class 2. I think she should go talk to the teachers since she has had 5 years of Japanese as well, but she's going to wait it out a bit first.
After checking the class lists, Robyn and I randomly walked around Kanazawa, just looking around and not being duds. After remembering that I needed an alarm clock store, the search was on. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find an alarm clock in Japan. After a drug store and 2 supermarkets, we finally found one in a convenience store - for over 1000 yen!! So, I ended up paying about 10 dollars for a cheap alarm clock, but hey, I'll live.
We found our way back to the dorms and headed to bed kind of early.
Today we had completely off from school, and the SGE group organized sight-seeing for us. Now, just so everyone understands, in my 5 years of taking Japanese, I have done 2 reports on Kanazawa - one in high school and one in college. Because of this, I'm pretty knowledgeable of the sights around it, and I really wanted to go see everything. Because it's impossible to see everything in one day, we went to see Kenroku-en (Kenroku garden), a wagashi making store. and one other venue. I chose to see Ninja-dera (dera=temple even though its not really a temple).
First we went to Ninja-dera. It was a house made by an enemy of the lord of the time to allow for many secrets and quick exits. It reminded me a lot of the Haunted Castle for all of the Fort Wayne peeps out there. At the time when it was built, there was a law saying that no house could be above 3 stories, but in this house, there are 29 stair cases connecting 7 different "half" stories. It's really old, being moved to its current location in 1643. It has trap stairs, hidden stairs, an inside bridge for the tea ceremony, a lookout, a well that also served as a tunnel, a trick offertory box, and the light stairs. It was completely awesome!!
Next, we went to a supermarket to buy obento (boxed lunches). I grabbed some yakitori (grilled chicken with sauce on a skewer) and something that we like to call waffle balls (They were shaped like balls a little smaller than golfballs and they tasted like waffles.) I also got a pastry that looked like cinamon raisin with some icing on top.
We then went to the remains of the Kanazawa Castle. Not much really, only the gate is left, but its pretty magnificent itself. When I say gate, I don't mean a little gate. It has a name by itself - its the Ishikawa gate. We had our obento near a nice little garden with a pond.
Afterwards, we did a little shopping before heading to the wagashi making shop. Wagashi are Japanese sweats made from bean paste. In Japan, they are prized sweets that are normally particular to thea area. We went to the third floor of the shop, where they had demonstrations on how to make wagashi. It was fun cause it was like playing with play-doh that you could eat after you were done. We made 3 different designs of wagashi, and although mine didn't look like the teachers exactly, I think I still did pretty well.
After a little bit of time of buying stuff at the store under where we made the wigashi, we headed up to Kenrokuen Garden. Now, I've written two reports on Kanazawa and each of them were mostly on Kenrokuen Garden, so I'll give a little history. Kenrokuen is one of the three most beautiful man-made gardens in Japan. It's name is from a garden combining six themes of beauty. It's a 27-acre garden of green. It has waterfalls, fountains, bridges, streams, ponds, areas of different types of trees, and anything else you think of when you think green.
We walked around and took hundreds of pictures. Phil, Robyn, and I had lots of fun. After an hour or so, it was time to meet to leave. We met up with the rest of the group and headed off back to campus. We were all exhausted by this point from the heat and all the walking so we were ready to head back.
After a long wait for a bus and getting back to campus, we headed to a ramen store. I had ramen with rice, but there was so much ramen that I could barely finish all the rice or ramen broth. It was excellent and only 315 yen! Afterwards, I went and got some Jushi na Furutsu (Juicy Fruits) at the convenience store. They are like little balls of icy fruit. They were really yummy.
Well, that's about it. Then I came back here to write to you all.
Tomorrow's my first day of class. Hopefully, it'll go well, and I'll be able to understand the teacher adequately enough to learn. It seems like at times here, I feel like I know a lot more than most people, but then most of the time, I feel like everyone else knows far and above what I do. Hmm, we'll see. . . I'm sure I'll make it through. I always do!
Robyn and I couldn't find anyone so we went to look for a meal ourselves. Luckily, we found some other 外人 (foreigners) that are also in the program standing outside a restaurant thinking about going in. We joined these students, who are from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. We had fun deciphering the menu as a group and finally ordered after a bit. They said that it was a favorite restaurant of the local students, and I could see why. For 600 yen (a little less than 6 dollars), I got miso soup, rice, some cold soba, and a large piece of breaded chicken (katsu). It was excellently delicious, and I'll be sure to visit there again.
Somewhere after dinner, we went back to the dorm to check and see if the classes are up. I made it into the most advanced class!!! So I guess I didn't do too badly on the placement test. This of course means that I'll have the biggest challenge possible, but I'm up for it. I kind of miss being busy (Rose syndrome), so it'll be a welcomed change. I'll be in the class with Phil and some other Rose peeps, but sadly, Robyn was put into class 2. I think she should go talk to the teachers since she has had 5 years of Japanese as well, but she's going to wait it out a bit first.
After checking the class lists, Robyn and I randomly walked around Kanazawa, just looking around and not being duds. After remembering that I needed an alarm clock store, the search was on. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find an alarm clock in Japan. After a drug store and 2 supermarkets, we finally found one in a convenience store - for over 1000 yen!! So, I ended up paying about 10 dollars for a cheap alarm clock, but hey, I'll live.
We found our way back to the dorms and headed to bed kind of early.
Today we had completely off from school, and the SGE group organized sight-seeing for us. Now, just so everyone understands, in my 5 years of taking Japanese, I have done 2 reports on Kanazawa - one in high school and one in college. Because of this, I'm pretty knowledgeable of the sights around it, and I really wanted to go see everything. Because it's impossible to see everything in one day, we went to see Kenroku-en (Kenroku garden), a wagashi making store. and one other venue. I chose to see Ninja-dera (dera=temple even though its not really a temple).
First we went to Ninja-dera. It was a house made by an enemy of the lord of the time to allow for many secrets and quick exits. It reminded me a lot of the Haunted Castle for all of the Fort Wayne peeps out there. At the time when it was built, there was a law saying that no house could be above 3 stories, but in this house, there are 29 stair cases connecting 7 different "half" stories. It's really old, being moved to its current location in 1643. It has trap stairs, hidden stairs, an inside bridge for the tea ceremony, a lookout, a well that also served as a tunnel, a trick offertory box, and the light stairs. It was completely awesome!!
Next, we went to a supermarket to buy obento (boxed lunches). I grabbed some yakitori (grilled chicken with sauce on a skewer) and something that we like to call waffle balls (They were shaped like balls a little smaller than golfballs and they tasted like waffles.) I also got a pastry that looked like cinamon raisin with some icing on top.
We then went to the remains of the Kanazawa Castle. Not much really, only the gate is left, but its pretty magnificent itself. When I say gate, I don't mean a little gate. It has a name by itself - its the Ishikawa gate. We had our obento near a nice little garden with a pond.
Afterwards, we did a little shopping before heading to the wagashi making shop. Wagashi are Japanese sweats made from bean paste. In Japan, they are prized sweets that are normally particular to thea area. We went to the third floor of the shop, where they had demonstrations on how to make wagashi. It was fun cause it was like playing with play-doh that you could eat after you were done. We made 3 different designs of wagashi, and although mine didn't look like the teachers exactly, I think I still did pretty well.
After a little bit of time of buying stuff at the store under where we made the wigashi, we headed up to Kenrokuen Garden. Now, I've written two reports on Kanazawa and each of them were mostly on Kenrokuen Garden, so I'll give a little history. Kenrokuen is one of the three most beautiful man-made gardens in Japan. It's name is from a garden combining six themes of beauty. It's a 27-acre garden of green. It has waterfalls, fountains, bridges, streams, ponds, areas of different types of trees, and anything else you think of when you think green.
We walked around and took hundreds of pictures. Phil, Robyn, and I had lots of fun. After an hour or so, it was time to meet to leave. We met up with the rest of the group and headed off back to campus. We were all exhausted by this point from the heat and all the walking so we were ready to head back.
After a long wait for a bus and getting back to campus, we headed to a ramen store. I had ramen with rice, but there was so much ramen that I could barely finish all the rice or ramen broth. It was excellent and only 315 yen! Afterwards, I went and got some Jushi na Furutsu (Juicy Fruits) at the convenience store. They are like little balls of icy fruit. They were really yummy.
Well, that's about it. Then I came back here to write to you all.
Tomorrow's my first day of class. Hopefully, it'll go well, and I'll be able to understand the teacher adequately enough to learn. It seems like at times here, I feel like I know a lot more than most people, but then most of the time, I feel like everyone else knows far and above what I do. Hmm, we'll see. . . I'm sure I'll make it through. I always do!
Saturday, June 4, 2005
The Evil Test and a Free Day
Today, I woke up at 645 (I`m getting bettter . . .) and began studying. We had a placement test at 10 am that would determine which level we would be put in for the program. I was quite worried about this test because this is my last chance for studying Japanese, and I`d like to make the program as useful as possible for me.
So, I studied quite a bit. Sadly, because I brought the wrong binder and didn`t bring my book from class, I didn`t have much to study with. Luckily, mom bought me a Japanese grammar book, which proved to be a very useful tool in studying Japanese. It was a nice review of everything I had learned over the years, along with a few verb forms that I have yet to learn. I spent the morning reading over the book.
At 10, it was time for the placement exam. Overall, it wasn`t too bad. There were two forms that I was unsure of, but I had read over them in the Japanese grammar book, so I went ahead and tried to guess the format. I definitely didn`t ace it, but I probably got around an 80% or so. I also had a speaking part of the exam. This didn`t go as smoothly. We were asked to do a self introduction, which I did fairly well on, but in the second part, they gave us a cartoon story board and we were supposed to explain what the story was. I looked at it, and I couldn`t even understand the story! So I did my best at explaining what was going on in each picture. I did horrible!
I`m not sure what will happen from that exam. I`m hoping that I will be placed in the proper level, but there`s nothing I can do about it now. It seems like everyone here is about the same level, so it seems wrong to split us into levels that separate us more. I just hope that whatever level I get placed at, I will learn the most possible. Kubota-sensei said we could request to move up levels so if I get placed in the first level, I definitely will.
Afterwards, I met up with Phil and Robyn and we got lunch at the cafeteria. I made a bad choice of sauce so I didn`t end up eating so much. Then we went back to the dorm to get stuff to go shopping. We went to a 100 yen store - much like a dollar store. Then, we headed to the supermarket to get supplies. Finally, we stopped by the bakery.
Supermarkets and bakeries are much different in Japan as they are in America. As soon as I walked in the supermarket, all I smelled was fish. It was crowded and small. The carts were peculiar in that they were more like racks that held the baskets that we normally carry around by themself. Also, its hard to find normal food there. I had a pain in the butt time trying to find food to eat for breakfast. I ended up with a small loaf of bread, a box of granola, and some fruit gelatin things that I`m still not sure about.
Then I headed back to the room to put everything away. After everything was good, Robyn and I headed to the study hall to use internet and so that I could update. I`m still not sure what we`ll do tonight. My feet hurt from walking around to the stores so I kind of want to sit around, but I know I shouldn`t because I`m in Japan and I shouldn`t rot away like that.
Well, I`ll update in a bit.
So, I studied quite a bit. Sadly, because I brought the wrong binder and didn`t bring my book from class, I didn`t have much to study with. Luckily, mom bought me a Japanese grammar book, which proved to be a very useful tool in studying Japanese. It was a nice review of everything I had learned over the years, along with a few verb forms that I have yet to learn. I spent the morning reading over the book.
At 10, it was time for the placement exam. Overall, it wasn`t too bad. There were two forms that I was unsure of, but I had read over them in the Japanese grammar book, so I went ahead and tried to guess the format. I definitely didn`t ace it, but I probably got around an 80% or so. I also had a speaking part of the exam. This didn`t go as smoothly. We were asked to do a self introduction, which I did fairly well on, but in the second part, they gave us a cartoon story board and we were supposed to explain what the story was. I looked at it, and I couldn`t even understand the story! So I did my best at explaining what was going on in each picture. I did horrible!
I`m not sure what will happen from that exam. I`m hoping that I will be placed in the proper level, but there`s nothing I can do about it now. It seems like everyone here is about the same level, so it seems wrong to split us into levels that separate us more. I just hope that whatever level I get placed at, I will learn the most possible. Kubota-sensei said we could request to move up levels so if I get placed in the first level, I definitely will.
Afterwards, I met up with Phil and Robyn and we got lunch at the cafeteria. I made a bad choice of sauce so I didn`t end up eating so much. Then we went back to the dorm to get stuff to go shopping. We went to a 100 yen store - much like a dollar store. Then, we headed to the supermarket to get supplies. Finally, we stopped by the bakery.
Supermarkets and bakeries are much different in Japan as they are in America. As soon as I walked in the supermarket, all I smelled was fish. It was crowded and small. The carts were peculiar in that they were more like racks that held the baskets that we normally carry around by themself. Also, its hard to find normal food there. I had a pain in the butt time trying to find food to eat for breakfast. I ended up with a small loaf of bread, a box of granola, and some fruit gelatin things that I`m still not sure about.
Then I headed back to the room to put everything away. After everything was good, Robyn and I headed to the study hall to use internet and so that I could update. I`m still not sure what we`ll do tonight. My feet hurt from walking around to the stores so I kind of want to sit around, but I know I shouldn`t because I`m in Japan and I shouldn`t rot away like that.
Well, I`ll update in a bit.
Friday, June 3, 2005
Getting aquainted with KIT
Today, I woke up at 545 - a whole 4 hours of sleep to start off the day great! We had an apartment orientation at 10, where we went over the rules of the apartment and are duties for staying there.
We ate lunch in the cafeteria, which in itself is an interesting experience. You decide what you want to eat, and you buy a ticket specific to that at a machine that`s like a vending machine. After that, you go into where they prepare the food and you bring the proper ticket to the proper line. There you can get whatever you ordered. I had udon with some fish and fried rice. Udon is noodels in some kind of broth.
After lunch, we had an opening ceremony where the president of KIT came and made a presentation, and everyone was introduced. Now, according to Booher, he said that the president of KIT came to Rose to meet Midgely, and like so many others, Midgely didn`t arrive at the meeting. He shafted the president of a sister university in Japan, no less. "How RUDE!!" (think Michelle Tanner from Full House). I guess this is why so many people don`t like him . . . well, enough of politics.
Anyway, we all were presented to him, and we took turns bowing to him. Afterwards, there was a program orientation where they explained what we`ll be doing for the next 6 weeks. Then, the SGE made a presentation where they explained the rules for the bike rental because they collect old used bikes for us to use. Also, they are going to take us around to some of the sites of Kanazawa on Sunday.
After the SGE presentation, we ran back to our dorm to get our laptops. We had to take them to the IAIT of KIT so they could register them in their system and we could use internet using our own laptops. Also, they supplied us with brand new Fujitsu laptops. It`s a FMV-Bibilio MG50K for anyone who likes computers and wants to see it. Its really small, but its also adjusted for Japanese. The keyboard is a little different, which makes it hard to hit the apostrophe key, and the enter and shift key on the right side is one keyspace over which makes it interesting to try and type with. I think by the time, I`m adjusted to it, it`ll be time to go back to Rose, and get used to my own computer again. The computer is absolutely awesome though. Much more convenient than the computer Rose gave us - at least size wise.
After we got the new laptops, we went back to the dorm and were Rose-like. We rushed to the lounge where we would have internet access and could all read\write email and check blogs and such. It was a toolfest, let me tell you. Sadly, the router they have only has 6 outlets, so it makes it difficult for everyone to be tools at the same time. We`re all from engineering type schools so we all like that kind of stuff.
A couple hours later, it was time for the Welcome Party hosted by SGE. We first signed up for the place we would go to on Sunday. I was lucky and got Ninja-dera, a old house that I`ve written presentations on at least twice. It has a lot of secrets, but we`ll wait and see about those. Then we assembled by school to be introduced to the group of Japanese students and teachers who were to welcome us. We each did a brief self introduction in Japanese. It took quite a while. After some more formalities, it was time for food. They had french fries, pizza, chicken, yakitori, potato salad (which no one ate), some Japanese snacks and other Japanese/American food. They also had plenty of Japanese drinks to drink. We went around and mingled with the Japanese students. It was a lot of fun to talk to them all. Actually, the party ended up continuing 2 hours late, where we forced to leave because the lights automatically turn off outside at 9 pm.
I then went back to the apartment, showered and headed to bed on the futon.
We ate lunch in the cafeteria, which in itself is an interesting experience. You decide what you want to eat, and you buy a ticket specific to that at a machine that`s like a vending machine. After that, you go into where they prepare the food and you bring the proper ticket to the proper line. There you can get whatever you ordered. I had udon with some fish and fried rice. Udon is noodels in some kind of broth.
After lunch, we had an opening ceremony where the president of KIT came and made a presentation, and everyone was introduced. Now, according to Booher, he said that the president of KIT came to Rose to meet Midgely, and like so many others, Midgely didn`t arrive at the meeting. He shafted the president of a sister university in Japan, no less. "How RUDE!!" (think Michelle Tanner from Full House). I guess this is why so many people don`t like him . . . well, enough of politics.
Anyway, we all were presented to him, and we took turns bowing to him. Afterwards, there was a program orientation where they explained what we`ll be doing for the next 6 weeks. Then, the SGE made a presentation where they explained the rules for the bike rental because they collect old used bikes for us to use. Also, they are going to take us around to some of the sites of Kanazawa on Sunday.
After the SGE presentation, we ran back to our dorm to get our laptops. We had to take them to the IAIT of KIT so they could register them in their system and we could use internet using our own laptops. Also, they supplied us with brand new Fujitsu laptops. It`s a FMV-Bibilio MG50K for anyone who likes computers and wants to see it. Its really small, but its also adjusted for Japanese. The keyboard is a little different, which makes it hard to hit the apostrophe key, and the enter and shift key on the right side is one keyspace over which makes it interesting to try and type with. I think by the time, I`m adjusted to it, it`ll be time to go back to Rose, and get used to my own computer again. The computer is absolutely awesome though. Much more convenient than the computer Rose gave us - at least size wise.
After we got the new laptops, we went back to the dorm and were Rose-like. We rushed to the lounge where we would have internet access and could all read\write email and check blogs and such. It was a toolfest, let me tell you. Sadly, the router they have only has 6 outlets, so it makes it difficult for everyone to be tools at the same time. We`re all from engineering type schools so we all like that kind of stuff.
A couple hours later, it was time for the Welcome Party hosted by SGE. We first signed up for the place we would go to on Sunday. I was lucky and got Ninja-dera, a old house that I`ve written presentations on at least twice. It has a lot of secrets, but we`ll wait and see about those. Then we assembled by school to be introduced to the group of Japanese students and teachers who were to welcome us. We each did a brief self introduction in Japanese. It took quite a while. After some more formalities, it was time for food. They had french fries, pizza, chicken, yakitori, potato salad (which no one ate), some Japanese snacks and other Japanese/American food. They also had plenty of Japanese drinks to drink. We went around and mingled with the Japanese students. It was a lot of fun to talk to them all. Actually, the party ended up continuing 2 hours late, where we forced to leave because the lights automatically turn off outside at 9 pm.
I then went back to the apartment, showered and headed to bed on the futon.
Thursday, June 2, 2005
From one side of the counntry to the other
NOTE: There is a new post for this day, but it is under this part.
So, its actually June 3, but I had a bit of an internet break because I left my host family`s house. I hope everything is going well where you all are! I miss you all!!
Just a note: apostrophes are really hard to do on Japanese computers, so until my computer is registered, youll just have to live without them.
I woke up at 545 this morning so I still didn`t get more than 4 hours of sleep (grr, jetlag, again). I hung around until 7 or so because my host sister and father were leaving for work at 730. I sat around while they got ready, and then I waved them good-bye. I then went back to my room to pack up and fix my nails and such. Afterwards, I hung out in the living room and read my Japanese grammar book.
Around 1020 or so we went to the Gamagori station and purchased the tickets for the journey. I took the normal train from Gamagori to Nagoya, and then I took a 3-hour express train, Shirasagi, from Nagoya to Kanazawa. It was so weird on the train - at one point, everyone stood up, and the seats swiveled around so that we always would face forward. It was really crazy, and I had no idea what was going on. These were nice seats - they reminded me of first class plane seats, yet they swiveled around so that we could face the other direction when we changed directions at a station.
3 hours later, we arrived in Kanazawa. I ate the excellent obento (box lunch) made by my host mom there. I sat around for a while waiting for some Americans to walk by with no avail.
Well, time for the welcome party. I`ll update later. Till then . . さよなら！
So, its actually June 3, but I had a bit of an internet break because I left my host family`s house. I hope everything is going well where you all are! I miss you all!!
Just a note: apostrophes are really hard to do on Japanese computers, so until my computer is registered, youll just have to live without them.
I woke up at 545 this morning so I still didn`t get more than 4 hours of sleep (grr, jetlag, again). I hung around until 7 or so because my host sister and father were leaving for work at 730. I sat around while they got ready, and then I waved them good-bye. I then went back to my room to pack up and fix my nails and such. Afterwards, I hung out in the living room and read my Japanese grammar book.
Around 1020 or so we went to the Gamagori station and purchased the tickets for the journey. I took the normal train from Gamagori to Nagoya, and then I took a 3-hour express train, Shirasagi, from Nagoya to Kanazawa. It was so weird on the train - at one point, everyone stood up, and the seats swiveled around so that we always would face forward. It was really crazy, and I had no idea what was going on. These were nice seats - they reminded me of first class plane seats, yet they swiveled around so that we could face the other direction when we changed directions at a station.
3 hours later, we arrived in Kanazawa. I ate the excellent obento (box lunch) made by my host mom there. I sat around for a while waiting for some Americans to walk by with no avail.
Well, time for the welcome party. I`ll update later. Till then . . さよなら！
arriving at KIT
After I got the nerve to get on a Japanese bus by myself, I had to wait an hour for the next correct one to come. There`s probably about 40-50 buses leaving from that one station, and I was looking for bus 32-35. When the bus came (3 minutes early), I jumped on and followed suite of others who had just gotten on.
The bus has two doors - one in the middle and one in the front. You get on using the one in the middle. Once you get on, you grab a slip of paper that has the number of the stop that you got on. Then you sit and wait while the bus stops at what seems like every block. My ride was about 30 minutes or so to the college. Its most likely actually not that long, but with all the stops, it took forever.
Once the screen in the front of the bus announces that the next stop is yours, you push a button that are located near the seats on the side of the bus. This indicates to the driver that he needs to stop at the next stop. Once you arrive, you move to the front of the bus. You bring the proper amount of money, as indicated by a different screen at the front of the bus. If you don`t have the correct amount of change, never fear! There is a change machine at the front of the bus as well. When you are about to get off, you put your change along with the ticket that you got at the beginning of the ride in what lookds like a trash can receptor. I assume this machine reads your slip and makes sure that you pay the correct amount. Its all very technical.
So once I arrived at KIT, I had no idea where to go. I ended up going into the nearest building. The lady at the reception desk almost looked scared of me. She asked if I was a "ryugakusei" (exchange student) and then she went through a series of numbers to call the correct people with. Of course she had a lot of trouble and couldn`t find anyone at the time, so she asked me to wait. After a little bit, she asked me to come back to the desk. She showed me a map and in broken English, told me to go to the building across the streeet.
Once there, there were two Japanese ladies to meet me with my luggage. They looked like they hadn`t expected to see me, and they said that I was the third person who had arrived. They directed me back outside, loaded me into a car, and took me over to the dorm. The dorm is called Nishikawa Heights and is the international dorm. Its a very old dorm - you can even tell from the outside. We got on a very small elevator and went up to the fourth floor. When we went into the room, it was very interesting.
There was a small genkan (entry area) that is lower than the rest of the apartment. You take off your shoes and leave them there. To the right as soon as you come in there is a bathroom - more like a shower room. Its an area with a sink to change in connected to a large standup shower. I`d like to point out that the toilet is not in the room with the sink and the shower as in America. The toilet itself is kind of peculiar. Its mostly normal except that on the top of the tub where the water collects, there is a faucet where water comes out instead of a flat top as in America. When you flush the toilet and the tank refills, the water first comes up out of this spout so that you can wash your hands with the same water that will refill the tub. Its quite funny, but efficient as the Japanese always are.
Past the shower room, there is an open area that serves as a kitchen with a smalll table to eat on. Besides this, there were 3 6-tatami mat bedrooms. One of which is a spare, one of which is mine, and one of which is my roommates who at that time was not there yet. In each of the bedrooms, there is a desk and a wardrobe along with a large closet where the futon and sleeping linens are stored.
The desk was quite peculiar. When closed, it looks like a wardrobe as well, but you pull down the part that becomes the surface of the desk, and one of the "drawers" pulls out to become a chair for the desk. Its quite cute.
Now, I`ll explain what a tatami mat is. Its made of a straw-like material that is weaved into a pattern. If anyone has seen my favorite sandals, its made of that stuff. Its about a yard by 2 yards wide. Dimensions of rooms in Japan are given by the number of tatami matts that cover the floor. Mine is a 6-tatami mat room, meaning that it is about 3 yards by 4 yards wide.
Once I saw myself around the apartment, I started unpacking. I found out that I had brought a lot more clothes than i thought. It was really frustrating though because the wardrobe had an area that you could hang things up in, but I didn`t have any hangers to use. (I was able to buy some a few days later). I tried to set up my computer, but I didn`t see any internet access ports in the room.
After I was unpacked, I didn`t know what to do. No one else was there, so I didn`t have anyone that I could go around Kanazawa with. So I took a nap. Now, I know I shouldn`t since I`m having so much trouble with jetlag anyway, but the boredom and the tiredness toook over.
By the way, Japanese futons are as hard as rocks. And the pillows aren`t much better. I am used to very soft beds and futons kill me. I really don`t know how I`m going to make it through the next 6 weeks. I don`t know if Japanese don`t like comfort or if they just like hard things, but it seems to be a general trend. Couches are basically nonexistant and the chairs that replace them are normally wood or very thinly padded. Its another difference in cultures, I suppose.
After my nap, I woke up and decided to look around the laundry room and lounges. When I tried to get into the laundry room using my key, for some reason I couldn`t get it to work, and I spent quite a bit of time fighting with it. Suddenly, the door came open. This stunned the crap out of me because I wasn`t expecting anyone to be around anywhere. It was one of the Japanese teachers. She introduced herself as Tanaka-sensei. She was speaking Japanese to me, but at that time I was so stunned and tired, that I was having trouble trying to comprehend. She was asking if I needed to do laundry, and I had trouble explaining that I was just roaming around to see something besides my own room.
I then headed over to the lounge to see the supposed internet connection. I thought I found an outlet, so I went and got my computer, but then I realized it was just my imagination, and there was no internet connection in the room. So instead, I sat and wrote in my journal quite a while. After about an hour or so, a few Japanese college students walked in. They introduced themselves as A-chan, E-chan, and Sa-chan. Oky to explain names: Japanese names are always ended by a suffix denoting formality and levels. -chan is used for close friends and family. Their names really aren`t single letters, but they shortened them to make it easier for us.
I had a very successful conversation with them, where we talked about me and them, and the program. They were SGE students - Students for Global Exchange, they would be around during our stay and help us out with getting around campus and such. It was a lot of fun talking to them, and I could relax so I could talk to them much more fluently than normal.
Japanese has multiple levels of formality in conversation. While with my host family, we always spoke in the casual form, as I did with the students. I became much more used to this aspect of the language during my homestay which was awesome, and made talking to the students much easier. The problem was that when trying to talk to the professors, you should use the more formal part, and when trying to talk to Tanaka-sensei, I only could speak in plain form easily, which made that conversation even more difficult.
Around 10 o`clock, we went down to the first floor so that we could welcome the students that came for the free pick-up. About 12 students came for the pick-up, a few of them rose students. I hooked up with one of the Rose students because I felt an immense need to speak English. I helped one of the guys into his room and such.
This happened the last time I went to Japan as well. I get English-sick. After so much Japanese, I feel an immense need to dispel a lot of words on English quickly - to have a nice long conversation in Japanese. It might be my need for speaking so much, but it definitely gets me depressed.
So after talking to him for a while, I went back to my room to head to sleep. Later, Robyn and my roommate arrived so I spent a while talking to each of them. Eventually, I got to bed around 130 in the morning.
The bus has two doors - one in the middle and one in the front. You get on using the one in the middle. Once you get on, you grab a slip of paper that has the number of the stop that you got on. Then you sit and wait while the bus stops at what seems like every block. My ride was about 30 minutes or so to the college. Its most likely actually not that long, but with all the stops, it took forever.
Once the screen in the front of the bus announces that the next stop is yours, you push a button that are located near the seats on the side of the bus. This indicates to the driver that he needs to stop at the next stop. Once you arrive, you move to the front of the bus. You bring the proper amount of money, as indicated by a different screen at the front of the bus. If you don`t have the correct amount of change, never fear! There is a change machine at the front of the bus as well. When you are about to get off, you put your change along with the ticket that you got at the beginning of the ride in what lookds like a trash can receptor. I assume this machine reads your slip and makes sure that you pay the correct amount. Its all very technical.
So once I arrived at KIT, I had no idea where to go. I ended up going into the nearest building. The lady at the reception desk almost looked scared of me. She asked if I was a "ryugakusei" (exchange student) and then she went through a series of numbers to call the correct people with. Of course she had a lot of trouble and couldn`t find anyone at the time, so she asked me to wait. After a little bit, she asked me to come back to the desk. She showed me a map and in broken English, told me to go to the building across the streeet.
Once there, there were two Japanese ladies to meet me with my luggage. They looked like they hadn`t expected to see me, and they said that I was the third person who had arrived. They directed me back outside, loaded me into a car, and took me over to the dorm. The dorm is called Nishikawa Heights and is the international dorm. Its a very old dorm - you can even tell from the outside. We got on a very small elevator and went up to the fourth floor. When we went into the room, it was very interesting.
There was a small genkan (entry area) that is lower than the rest of the apartment. You take off your shoes and leave them there. To the right as soon as you come in there is a bathroom - more like a shower room. Its an area with a sink to change in connected to a large standup shower. I`d like to point out that the toilet is not in the room with the sink and the shower as in America. The toilet itself is kind of peculiar. Its mostly normal except that on the top of the tub where the water collects, there is a faucet where water comes out instead of a flat top as in America. When you flush the toilet and the tank refills, the water first comes up out of this spout so that you can wash your hands with the same water that will refill the tub. Its quite funny, but efficient as the Japanese always are.
Past the shower room, there is an open area that serves as a kitchen with a smalll table to eat on. Besides this, there were 3 6-tatami mat bedrooms. One of which is a spare, one of which is mine, and one of which is my roommates who at that time was not there yet. In each of the bedrooms, there is a desk and a wardrobe along with a large closet where the futon and sleeping linens are stored.
The desk was quite peculiar. When closed, it looks like a wardrobe as well, but you pull down the part that becomes the surface of the desk, and one of the "drawers" pulls out to become a chair for the desk. Its quite cute.
Now, I`ll explain what a tatami mat is. Its made of a straw-like material that is weaved into a pattern. If anyone has seen my favorite sandals, its made of that stuff. Its about a yard by 2 yards wide. Dimensions of rooms in Japan are given by the number of tatami matts that cover the floor. Mine is a 6-tatami mat room, meaning that it is about 3 yards by 4 yards wide.
Once I saw myself around the apartment, I started unpacking. I found out that I had brought a lot more clothes than i thought. It was really frustrating though because the wardrobe had an area that you could hang things up in, but I didn`t have any hangers to use. (I was able to buy some a few days later). I tried to set up my computer, but I didn`t see any internet access ports in the room.
After I was unpacked, I didn`t know what to do. No one else was there, so I didn`t have anyone that I could go around Kanazawa with. So I took a nap. Now, I know I shouldn`t since I`m having so much trouble with jetlag anyway, but the boredom and the tiredness toook over.
By the way, Japanese futons are as hard as rocks. And the pillows aren`t much better. I am used to very soft beds and futons kill me. I really don`t know how I`m going to make it through the next 6 weeks. I don`t know if Japanese don`t like comfort or if they just like hard things, but it seems to be a general trend. Couches are basically nonexistant and the chairs that replace them are normally wood or very thinly padded. Its another difference in cultures, I suppose.
After my nap, I woke up and decided to look around the laundry room and lounges. When I tried to get into the laundry room using my key, for some reason I couldn`t get it to work, and I spent quite a bit of time fighting with it. Suddenly, the door came open. This stunned the crap out of me because I wasn`t expecting anyone to be around anywhere. It was one of the Japanese teachers. She introduced herself as Tanaka-sensei. She was speaking Japanese to me, but at that time I was so stunned and tired, that I was having trouble trying to comprehend. She was asking if I needed to do laundry, and I had trouble explaining that I was just roaming around to see something besides my own room.
I then headed over to the lounge to see the supposed internet connection. I thought I found an outlet, so I went and got my computer, but then I realized it was just my imagination, and there was no internet connection in the room. So instead, I sat and wrote in my journal quite a while. After about an hour or so, a few Japanese college students walked in. They introduced themselves as A-chan, E-chan, and Sa-chan. Oky to explain names: Japanese names are always ended by a suffix denoting formality and levels. -chan is used for close friends and family. Their names really aren`t single letters, but they shortened them to make it easier for us.
I had a very successful conversation with them, where we talked about me and them, and the program. They were SGE students - Students for Global Exchange, they would be around during our stay and help us out with getting around campus and such. It was a lot of fun talking to them, and I could relax so I could talk to them much more fluently than normal.
Japanese has multiple levels of formality in conversation. While with my host family, we always spoke in the casual form, as I did with the students. I became much more used to this aspect of the language during my homestay which was awesome, and made talking to the students much easier. The problem was that when trying to talk to the professors, you should use the more formal part, and when trying to talk to Tanaka-sensei, I only could speak in plain form easily, which made that conversation even more difficult.
Around 10 o`clock, we went down to the first floor so that we could welcome the students that came for the free pick-up. About 12 students came for the pick-up, a few of them rose students. I hooked up with one of the Rose students because I felt an immense need to speak English. I helped one of the guys into his room and such.
This happened the last time I went to Japan as well. I get English-sick. After so much Japanese, I feel an immense need to dispel a lot of words on English quickly - to have a nice long conversation in Japanese. It might be my need for speaking so much, but it definitely gets me depressed.
So after talking to him for a while, I went back to my room to head to sleep. Later, Robyn and my roommate arrived so I spent a while talking to each of them. Eventually, I got to bed around 130 in the morning.
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
A Great Day in Japan!
Well, yesterday was completely awesome!
Even though I woke up at 2 am, and then 5 am, I still had a magnificent day! (Stupid jetlag!) We ate breakfast at 9 am, and then went out to Nagoya around 10 am. You see, my host family doesn`t actually live in Nagoya. I think they live in more like a suburb of Nagoya. It`s called Gamagori. It`s about 40 minutes from Nagoya station by train. Once we arrived at Nagoya station, we took the subway to Nagoya castle.
The first thing we run into when we got onto the castle grounds was a Taiko drum exhibition. Sadly, it was just ending, but at least we got to hear it as we were walking in. Once it was over though, they opened up the largest drum for tourists to hit. My host family was eager for me to try it, so I went ahead and did it. Of course, there is procedure in all of this. You bow to the drum and make a wish, then you hit the drum, and then you bow again in respect of the drum. By the way, this drum is the largest drum in the world! It was at least 7 feet in diameter, it was put on its side so that you could strike it. Hitting it was like swinging a baseball hat as hard as you can. It made a really deep boom, which was awesome. Afterwards, we got a picture taken in front of the drum, so I have a picture of it if you want to come get me.
Next, we went to the golden dome. This dome contained the golden dolphins that are normally on top of the the castle. To Americans, they don`t really look like dolphins; they look more like a cross between a fish and a dragon. Because of the Japan Expo Aichi 2005, they had the dolphins off the top of the castle so that people could come see and touch them. We waited in quite a long line (it kind of reminded me of Cedar Point) that went through the history of the golden dolphins. There are two of them - one of them that was on the North side of the castle, and one to the south, and they called on of them the male and one the female. They had slight differences between the two. The original dolphins were put into place in the 1600`s. Throughout the years, the golden scales were stolen a few times, and during WWII, the castle was bombed and the original dolphins burned to the ground. They were reconstructed though for the castle. The golden dolphins serve as a proud symbol of Nagoya.
After a lunch of yakitori, katsu, banana ice cream, some sort of noodles, and something else (I can`t keep track of all this food.) , we went to the Nagoya Castle itself. Surrounded by a moat that now has deer roaming in it, the castle stands floors high. Although it`s not as much now within the skyscrapers of the city, it once stood out among the horizon, and it was said that the golden dolphins could be seen from 4 km away! Because of bombings during WWII, the castle is also a reconstruction, but they didn`t construct it exactly how it was. From the outside, it looks identical, but instead of the normal insides of a castle, a full museum is found inside, including a 3-D theater, relics from the times, and a sky view on the top. It was really awesome, but we were quite tired afterwards from all the stairs and the heat.
Its very hot here. Actually, it`s only probably about 90 degrees during the day time, but with a near 100% humidity almost all of the time, it makes it feel very hot.
After we saw the castle, my host sister and I took the subway to the Nagoya television tower. Its kind of like a mini version of the Eifle tower, to get a general idea of the appearance. On the top sky view, we looked around the city, and my sister pointed out a few of the sights to me. Afterwards, we went to Oasis 21, which was like a manmade garden type of thing. If you want to see pics you can put Oasis 21 Nagoya into the google image search engine. It was quite beautiful, and best of all, it was directly attached to the subway system
After the Oasis 21, we returned home to Gamagori. For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant. I think its funny how different Japanese Italian and American Italian can be. We center our attention on the pasta side of Italian. In Japan, Italian is all seafood. There was only one thing on the menu that didn`t have fish. I think Japan has got it closer though. They are an island nation like Italy is almost.
Afterwards, we returned to the house and I got out my gifts for them. I gave them an Indiana teddy bear with a Indiana quarter on its foot, chocoloate from DeBrand`s, and Monopoly. I think they liked everything. I taught them how to play Monopoly. It was great fun. Let me tell you, if you want to teach someone Japanese numbers, play Monopoly in Japanese. It was so fun that we kept playing until midnight when their father got home. I thought that meant I was over with jet lag, but I was wrong.
Sorry about that little breakfast break.
Even though I woke up at 2 am, and then 5 am, I still had a magnificent day! (Stupid jetlag!) We ate breakfast at 9 am, and then went out to Nagoya around 10 am. You see, my host family doesn`t actually live in Nagoya. I think they live in more like a suburb of Nagoya. It`s called Gamagori. It`s about 40 minutes from Nagoya station by train. Once we arrived at Nagoya station, we took the subway to Nagoya castle.
The first thing we run into when we got onto the castle grounds was a Taiko drum exhibition. Sadly, it was just ending, but at least we got to hear it as we were walking in. Once it was over though, they opened up the largest drum for tourists to hit. My host family was eager for me to try it, so I went ahead and did it. Of course, there is procedure in all of this. You bow to the drum and make a wish, then you hit the drum, and then you bow again in respect of the drum. By the way, this drum is the largest drum in the world! It was at least 7 feet in diameter, it was put on its side so that you could strike it. Hitting it was like swinging a baseball hat as hard as you can. It made a really deep boom, which was awesome. Afterwards, we got a picture taken in front of the drum, so I have a picture of it if you want to come get me.
Next, we went to the golden dome. This dome contained the golden dolphins that are normally on top of the the castle. To Americans, they don`t really look like dolphins; they look more like a cross between a fish and a dragon. Because of the Japan Expo Aichi 2005, they had the dolphins off the top of the castle so that people could come see and touch them. We waited in quite a long line (it kind of reminded me of Cedar Point) that went through the history of the golden dolphins. There are two of them - one of them that was on the North side of the castle, and one to the south, and they called on of them the male and one the female. They had slight differences between the two. The original dolphins were put into place in the 1600`s. Throughout the years, the golden scales were stolen a few times, and during WWII, the castle was bombed and the original dolphins burned to the ground. They were reconstructed though for the castle. The golden dolphins serve as a proud symbol of Nagoya.
After a lunch of yakitori, katsu, banana ice cream, some sort of noodles, and something else (I can`t keep track of all this food.) , we went to the Nagoya Castle itself. Surrounded by a moat that now has deer roaming in it, the castle stands floors high. Although it`s not as much now within the skyscrapers of the city, it once stood out among the horizon, and it was said that the golden dolphins could be seen from 4 km away! Because of bombings during WWII, the castle is also a reconstruction, but they didn`t construct it exactly how it was. From the outside, it looks identical, but instead of the normal insides of a castle, a full museum is found inside, including a 3-D theater, relics from the times, and a sky view on the top. It was really awesome, but we were quite tired afterwards from all the stairs and the heat.
Its very hot here. Actually, it`s only probably about 90 degrees during the day time, but with a near 100% humidity almost all of the time, it makes it feel very hot.
After we saw the castle, my host sister and I took the subway to the Nagoya television tower. Its kind of like a mini version of the Eifle tower, to get a general idea of the appearance. On the top sky view, we looked around the city, and my sister pointed out a few of the sights to me. Afterwards, we went to Oasis 21, which was like a manmade garden type of thing. If you want to see pics you can put Oasis 21 Nagoya into the google image search engine. It was quite beautiful, and best of all, it was directly attached to the subway system
After the Oasis 21, we returned home to Gamagori. For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant. I think its funny how different Japanese Italian and American Italian can be. We center our attention on the pasta side of Italian. In Japan, Italian is all seafood. There was only one thing on the menu that didn`t have fish. I think Japan has got it closer though. They are an island nation like Italy is almost.
Afterwards, we returned to the house and I got out my gifts for them. I gave them an Indiana teddy bear with a Indiana quarter on its foot, chocoloate from DeBrand`s, and Monopoly. I think they liked everything. I taught them how to play Monopoly. It was great fun. Let me tell you, if you want to teach someone Japanese numbers, play Monopoly in Japanese. It was so fun that we kept playing until midnight when their father got home. I thought that meant I was over with jet lag, but I was wrong.
Sorry about that little breakfast break.
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