sayonara, japan

So I've been home now for more than 24 hours, and it feels both very weird and very normal at the same time. It was sad for me to get on the airport tram and realize that the handles are once again too tall for me to use, unlike in Japan, where they are perfect. :( I'm also not used to seeing people drive on the right side of the road again, so I'll probably put off driving anywhere as long as possible. On the other hand, it is very good to be home and see my family/friends. :)

These past four months in Japan have really been an unforgettable experience. I've met so many amazing and unique people from all over the world, who I hope to stay in touch with, especially if I start globe-hopping and visit their respective countries! I had a fantastic experience in a home-stay (almost everybody else I knew in homestays always had something to complain about, but I never did), and I not only formed a strong relationship with my host mom, but also learned a lot about day-to-day Japanese culture and life. My Japanese has improved immensely (if I do say so myself), and I will definitely have to keep studying from here on out so I don't forget everything (especially what I learned in IJ600 about formal/academic Japanese). And of course, I think I've grown as a person - for example, I feel much more confident about traveling to strange places by myself; Japan has definitely honed my map-reading skills! Anyway, basically I had a wonderful time in Japan and can't wait to go back someday! :D

So to wrap up my Japan experience, here are a couple of lists.

Things I Will Miss About Japan*
*not including obvious and specific things like people and places, though naturally I will miss them the most

- speaking Japanese! Granted, I spent probably as much time in Japan speaking English as Japanese, but I will definitely miss being immersed in the language. 
- public transportation. I loved riding the bus and subway everywhere, especially using my commuter pass!
- TV. Japanese variety shows are the best! Also I really liked the kanji/quiz shows, too. As an added benefit, no matter what I watched, it counted as studying Japanese! I will also miss being able to watch TV on my electronic dictionary, because that was just cool. :D
- convenience stores. They are everywhere and actually really convenient, whether to buy onigiri for a snack or even to print out pictures! I loved wasting time in conbini (as they call them in Japanese).
- 100-yen shops! Loved shopping there, because there was always so much awesome stuff for so cheap.  The quality is so much better than dollar shops here, too.
- vending machines everywhere. I didn't use them that often, but it was still nice to have them available. Also, Japanese drinks are pretty tasty.
- karaoke. Definitely need more real karaoke places in the States! Basements and bars don't count.
- ready availability of Japanese cuisine. Particularly things like ramen, udon, and donburi.

My Japan Experience in Numbers
- Time spent: 3 months, 3 weeks, 4 days
- Pictures/videos taken: 1,410
- Cities visited: 6 (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Gifu)
- Classes taken: 5
- Ferris wheels ridden: 3
- Shinkansen rides: 2
- Clubs/bars visited: 3 
- Karaoke nights: 3
- Onsen visited: 1
- Trips to Disneyland: 2
- Totoro towels bought: 2
- Mugs collected: 6
- Analog Fish CDs bought: 3
- Uniqlo bags found in my room when I packed: 7

So with that, sayonara Japan! Until we meet again. :)

bye-bye, nagoya!

So I'm currently posting from a youth hostel in Asakusa, on my last night in Japan! I still can't wrap my head around the fact that this time tomorrow, I'll be back home in America (probably sleeping). But before I get too into my mental state at the moment, a quick recap of what brought me here:

On Monday night, I went for my last round of karaoke with my classmates! Naturally, it was a blast. :D The next day, my seminar class had a nabe party to celebrate the end of our group projects. Nabe is basically like hot pot, except that you start out with flavor in the pot (there are all kinds, from cheese to curry to sesame and soy milk), and then at the end you add in either rice+egg or udon to finish it up. It was delicious! Afterward there were lots and lots (and lots) of dishes to clean up, though. >_<

Wednesday and Thursday were spent shopping/packing/studying; nothing too interesting there.

Giant shaved ice!

Friday was my last final and last day at Nanzan! :( I took my Japanese final in the morning (it was easy, I think, but I doubt I'll ever get it back so I'll probably never really know), then went to go eat shaved ice with my IJ600 friends! It was a really weird shop that also served green tea pasta and banana rice, among other things...the servings were also enormous! We ordered three shaved ice things, and we failed utterly at finishing them. -.-' And then Song-yi and I went to Lily's apartment to kill time before the CJS farewell party; I finally sat under a kotatsu (a heated table with a blanket), and it was heavenly! We need to start using them in America, though I guess if we did my productivity would just disappear - once you get under the kotatsu, all you want to do is just sleep there!

Anyway then we headed to the farewell party, which was crowded with probably all the international students (both those going home and those staying), plus a lot of host families, and in some people's cases (or at least one), real families! My host mother came too, and I got to introduce her to all the people I'd been telling her about for ages (friends, classmates). Then we all took lots of sentimental group pictures, which made me get all emotional about leaving. >_<

One of many sentimental group photos

After the party, I went out to a club with my classmates! We got in for free, by using various member's cards borrowed from friends, which was awesome. It was my first time at a club and was actually really fun (and hot and crowded). :D And then I had to leave early to catch the last bus (as usual), and as it happened it really was my last bus before leaving Nagoya. :( I spent most of the bus ride trying not to tear up when I thought about leaving; I was successful, for the most part. :)

Saturday I spent finishing up packing and cleaning my room! It was really weird and depressing to see my room all bare; I guess it'll just have to wait until the next host student comes along! Then I went with my host mom to send my suitcases to the airport through a delivery service (to save me having to lug them around), and then she sent me to the station! It was a very anti-climactic farewell (my host mom is not one for sentimentality), but it's okay because I'm sure I'll come back and visit them sometime. We did exchange gifts earlier, also - she gave me some placemats and tissue holders that she'd sewn herself! Hopefully I'll put them to good use. :)

Disney hats!

Then, after meeting with Song-yi at Ueda and wandering around Nagoya Station with Mary, I was off to Gifu! There I met up with a friend I'd met at Nagoya Swings, and we went to a swing dance party. Needless to say, it was lots of fun; again, my only regret is not learning about these dance groups earlier! Anyway, after lots of dancing, I took the train back to Nagoya and got on a night bus to Tokyo! Then after a long bumpy night (hard to get too comfortable on a bus), I arrived at Tokyo Disneyland! I thought it was fitting that I came to Disneyland right after coming to Japan, and then again right before leaving. :) My friend Anna and I spent the whole day there, courtesy of free tickets my host mom was gracious enough to give me, and it was ridiculously fun! It was not the same as it was when I came in August; now everything was Christmas themed and also really cold! Anna and I bought Disney hats to keep ourselves warm (also they were extremely cute). We managed to ride all of the big attractions (except the Winnie the Pooh ride, which was inexplicably popular; I'll have to ride it someday to figure it out), and we even rode the teacups 4 times! It was a great day. :D And then I came to the hostel and here I am now!

As for my current mental state: I am still very sad to have left Nagoya; I miss all my friends and classmates already, and I haven't even left the country yet! Both Anna and I still can't believe that we'll be back in the US so soon; we are also both a little worried about reverse culture shock - I bet when I land in the airport I'll be slightly shocked by how many "foreigners" there are everywhere...anyway, I still have lots to do tomorrow, so I want to get to bed now. There will definitely be a sentimental wrap-up post eventually; these four months have meant too much for me not to rave about them a little bit more. :) So, until then!

do i really have to go home?

So inserting pictures into my last post was complete fail on my part...I totally forgot that I was going to that until now, oops. -.-' But today I'm updating from my laptop (for once), so all my pictures are in easy access! This time I will definitely have pictures!

This past week has been full of shopping and friends (not so much studying, which could be bad...), because I've entered souvenir-buying modehile also trying to see people while I still can. Anyway, as a result I've been having lots of fun (and spending lots of money...).

On Wednesday, I went ice-skating on plastic! (Or just plastic-skating, I guess). It was a very tiny little rink and was much harder to skate on than actual ice, but it was definitely an interesting experience. I had imagined that it would be some sort of really special plastic, but really it was just kind of ordinary plastic boards. I discovered that I am worse at skating than I thought I was, but my friend Evan evidently is naturally talented or something, because even though it was only his second time skating ever, he had really good form and looked like a pro going around the turns...not fair. :P Anyway, I am very happy that Evan and Andy came with me that day, because everybody else bailed. -.-'

Jana and Eunjin playing taiko!

On Thursday in my Japanese class, we had a farewell party for all the people going back home this semester - a grand total of six out of twenty. People put on little performances, and it was really entertaining: singing a song about tofu, playing the ocarina, teaching Korean sign language, playing taiko drums, imitating the teachers/classmates (everybody almost died laughing), singing a traditional Scottish song. They also gave the people who are going home presents, which was ridiculously nice and a complete surprise! I opened it later and it was a pretty little bowl plus chocolate. :) It was a nice celebration, even though the next day we had class as usual. -.-' Still, it was a great way to wrap up the semester; even though academically this class has been really hard, my classmates are awesome so it's also been really fun. <3

And then on Friday, I went to one of my classmates' dorm for dinner! It was a spur-of-the-moment event, but in the end there were 9 of us, plus the three other classmates who lived in the same dorm. We all helped make Indonesian fried noodles and fried rice, which were really yummy, and just joked and talked and had an all-around good time. :)

Mary in the light tunnel!

The next day, my host mom took me and my friend Mary to Nabananosato to see Christmas illuminations! We'd been seeing commercials for it on TV for a while, and I wanted to go but it's kind of far from Nagoya, so I didn't think I'd be able to. But I did, and it was awesome! On the way there we stopped at Kariya Highway Oasis, the place with a ferris wheel that we went to way back in September (or October?), which also had some cool illuminations. The ferris wheel was visible from really far away, while we were still driving there, because the spokes were all lit up and there was nothing else visible around it. Then we headed to Nabananosato! It's a really popular place, so on the way there we had to park somewhere else and take a shuttle there, after waiting in line for a while. When we finally got there though, it was pretty awesome. There were Christmas lights everywhere, plus light-ups for the momiji, or Japanese maples, which were also really beautiful. There was something called Island Fuji, which was basically a moving observation deck that started on the ground but slowly moved up to way high in the sky - none of us had any idea beforehand how it worked, so when we saw it we were all amazed (but nobody around us was). It looked like a giant UFO, actually. I would have loved to go on it, except the lines were ridiculously long (again, very popular and crowded place).

Me and my host mom!

Then we got to the tunnel of light, which was exactly what it sounds like - a giant tunnel made of millions of lights, all in the shape of little flowers. It was really cool and also really long, so we just kind of wandered around surrounded by twinkling lights - it was great. Then we came out and saw the main attraction: Fuji and the sea. It was gigantic Mt. Fuji made of lights, plus a huge 'ocean' that spread out from the foot of the mountain up to the spectators. It was quite a big area, and also I think it may have been on top of a pond. The lights would change colors to imitate waves, and Mt. Fuji also periodically switched from blue to pink and purple and back again. There were even dolphins that 'jumped' in front. It was pretty breathtaking. :) After that we braved the crowds in the gift shop to buy souvenirs, because with the admission ticket you get 1000yen worth of vouchers to use inside, which we figured would be a waste not to spend. And then we lined up to take the shuttle bus back to the parking lot, which ended up taking an hour and fifteen minutes! It was crazy how many people there were waiting and how long it took for all of us to get back to the parking lot - I'm pretty sure there were still tons of people waiting after we got on our bus. So in the end we didn't get to eat dinner at all, but survived on donuts that Mary had brought us, and got home late and tired, but happy. :)

Collection of our student IDs, where most of us look really different!

And then yesterday I went shopping with my classmate Lily! I managed to find some souvenirs and we had noodles together before heading to Nagoya Station, where we met up with a bunch of our other IJ600 classmates for dinner! Our German classmate Jana said that the restaurant we were going to had the best tonkatsu in Nagoya, and it was delicious! Kind of expensive, but you could have as much salad and rice as you wanted, so we all came out very full. Then we wandered around to look at the illuminations around Nagoya Station for a little bit (not as cool as Nabananosato, of course, but still pretty!), before going back up the towers to sit around Starbucks and talk. I think we were being a very obvious and noisy/obnoxious group of foreigners, but it was lots of fun. And then we walked to Fushimi Station together (because my commuter pass doesn't include Nagoya Station), and then I went home.

This morning I went with my host mom to do official stuff like canceling my national health insurance, which really made me realize how little time is left! This time next week, I'll be on a plane on my way home, probably either sleeping or watching movies, which is hard to believe. I'll definitely be very sad to leave (I'm already starting!), but at least I'll know that even after I go home, I'll have friends all over the world (and lots even just in the US) who have offered me a place to stay if I ever visit, so that's a comforting thought. :) Anyway, there's still some time and lots of things to do before I start getting (too) sentimental, so for now I'll focus on those and end here! There should be time for at least one more post before I leave Japan, plus maybe some reflections during my final layover in Toronto, so stay tuned! :D

time flies

There are literally only two weeks left before I leave Nagoya - my night bus to Tokyo is scheduled for 11:30 on the 18th, which is in exactly two weeks and two hours! Unbelievable. I've already started thinking about how every time I do something or go somewhere, it could be my last chance to do it, which is really kind of depressing. All I can do is keep telling myself that hopefully I'll be back in a couple of years for the JET program, and even though I probably won't end up in Nagoya, I can at least come back and visit. That, and just try and make the best of what's left!

Anyway, these past couple weeks have been pretty fun.  Last Wednesday, I went to a kimono lesson, where I got to try on a kimono! I even learned how to tie the obi, though honestly I think I've already forgotten how. -.-'  After we had put on the kimonos (it took a long time! There are more layers and steps than you'd think), we all sat around and had some tea and snacks, after taking pictures, of course. It was kind of short, but a fun experience; the two teachers were very nice and so were the other students - one of them was a fellow Nanzan international student! They asked if I wanted to continue and take lessons, so that eventually I'd be able to put on a kimono by myself, but I figured I wouldn't really have time so I declined. They put me (and everybody else) on their blog, though! You can check it out here. :)

The next day was Thanksgiving, but I did absolutely nothing special. Also, apparently turkey is basically impossible to get in Japan; my host mom has never eaten it, and said that most Japanese people probably haven't! Crazy. I told her if she ever came to visit me in the US, I would have my mom make some for her (because I don't know know how to roast turkey). Anyway, I am sad to have missed out on turkey and stuffing - this was my first Thanksgiving away from home! (Though not the first without family; there was that one time my parents went off to Italy without me...:P)

On Friday, though, I went out with some of my classmates, which was really fun. We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and unlike a lot (most?) Chinese restaurants in Japan, this one was actually owned by Chinese people! Which probably explains why it was so yummy. After that we went to an izakaya, where our Korean classmate agreed to treat us all to whatever food we wanted (but not drinks). He said that it if it were Korea, he'd treat us for everything, drinks and all, but Japan is just too expensive. Anyway, it was very nice of him. :)

Saturday I spent at the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens! I wasn't expecting too much, but it was actually quite pretty. The momiji (Japanese maple) leaves have finally changed color, so there were brilliant red trees all over, plus flowers and all the other cool plants. All we really did was look at the plants there, so there's not too much else to say about Saturday...

On Sunday, though, I went and danced in A Christmas Carol, like I mentioned in my last post. Or rather, I swing danced for one song during the intermission of the play, but it was actually a lot of fun! I met up with the other Nagoya Swings people in the morning, and after a quick rehearsal we went to a cafe to eat lunch and pass the time before the show started. The play was actually called A Christmas Carol With A Heart, and was basically A Christmas Carol, except set in Texas. It was pretty entertaining, especially when the little Japanese kids said their lines in English. :D Afterward I went shopping with my friend Mary, who was in the play, and we (finally) did purikura (print club) together! We'd been wanting to pretty much since we got here, so it was nice to actually do it.

And then this Wednesday, I went on a field trip to tour the Toyoto plant! Toyota City is very close to Nagoya; it took us about an hour by bus. We went to a few different facilities, where we got to see the welding and part of the assembly process. It was actually really cool, and the welding was unexpectedly beautiful - the sparks flying everywhere looked like fireworks. Last we went to the Toyota Museum, where we saw a quick performance by a robot that could play the trumpet (not really sure how that related to cars, but it was cool), climbed inside lots of Toyota cars, and looked at some exhibits. :D

Yesterday, I went out for karaoke, again with some of my classmates. It's been a while since I went to karaoke, so I was really excited to go again. For some reason, the place we went to was a combination karaoke/rent-a-car place. O_o Anyway, we were there for 4 hours, all of which were lots of fun - I thought it was funny how a lot of us knew the same anime songs. :D Hopefully I'll get to go karaoke again before I leave!

So that was the past two weeks! As for the next two, they'll probably mostly involve lots of presentations and studying for finals, but hopefully also lots of fun and good memories! :) At the very least, I know my last few days will be action-packed. The plan so far is: dance party in Gifu, night bus to Tokyo Disneyland, day at Disneyland, Ghibli Museum the next morning, and then home!

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures in posts nowadays; I'm too lazy to get the pictures from my computer onto the family's computer. But maybe tomorrow I'll do it and add some pictures to this post, so check back later!

one month left

Oop, big gap between posts, sorry! Life in Nagoya has been alternating between normal (class days/during the week) and exciting (weekends). Since it's nearing the end of term (I go home in less than a month!), classwork and final projects are piling up like crazy. >_<

Anyway, on to the fun parts. Last Saturday I rustled up some friends and we went to the Nagoya City Art Museum, which was rather small but also had cheap admission, which was a selling point. It was mostly modern art, by artists from all over, plus one room of works by locals. My favorite piece was a self-portait that was really just a canvas with the words 'head' and 'feet' indicating his height, plus some descriptive words in between. After that we went to the Electricity Museum, which is free and meant for little kids (we were definitely the oldest people there who weren't accompanying children), but I think we all enjoyed it much more than the art museum. There were lots of interactive things where you could generate electricity and learn about it (though I'm pretty sure all of us were too lazy to actually read/figure things out in Japanese), plus a room of optical illusions. Very fun. :)

And then on Wednesday I went to Cat's Cafe to tackle the giant parfait again - nine people this time; we left about 2cm of sludgy chocolate ice cream melt at the bottom, so I guess that was technically a failture. But it was just as delicious, so that's all good. On Thursday I went shopping at Hills Walk, the new subway station/shopping area near my house (though the subway isn't done yet), with my lovely friend Mary, who used to be my bus buddy every day but has now moved into the dorms. :(

This weekend I had a gasshuku (kind of like camp?) with one of my seminar classes! We met Saturday afternoon on campus and then split off in our groups to various parts of Nagoya, gathering data for our projects. My group had some hazy/complicated ideas of trying to observe if people responded differently to international students/see how much onomatopoeia/mimetics they used when describing people. We had people describe their favorite foods and then Christmas trees; judging by the answers we got these were apparently very hard questions. It was also really hard finding people who would talk to us and who were also willing to be videotaped; we spent at least two hours wandering but were rejected by at least half of the people we approached. -.-'

With the hard part of the project over, the fun part began! We met up with the rest of our class for dinner, which of course included a nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) menu, plus yummy food. It was really funny to watch everybody (including the professor) get progressively drunker as time went on; Japan really is a drinking culture. After dinner we walked to a nearby supermarket to buy breakfast for the next day, and then we went back to the 'Nanzan hotel', aka the living space underneath our student center. I'm pretty sure it's often used for this sort of class/club campout; there were several big rooms of tatami mats, plus bathrooms, baths, and meeting rooms. I found the pile of futons underneath one of the shelves very comfortable, so I spent a lot of time holed up in there (and eventually ended up sleeping there, too). It was a fun night, with card games (with penalties for the losers) and chatting and chilling out.

In the morning we had to be out by 9, which sucked because we didn't sleep until late, and then we continued our project work. Our main task was to get the video files from our cameras onto our computers; as far as I can tell only one group actually succeeded. -.-' So after trying for about an hour and a half, my group gave up and just watched the video on the camera and starting taking notes from there. Since one of our group members was gone this weekend, we ended there and then I went home and went straight to sleep.

A few hours later, I got up, ate dinner, and then headed out for Nagoya Swings! Basically it's a group of people (foreigners and Japanese people alike) who meet once a month to swing dance. I only found out about them this month, from their blurb in a newsletter I picked up, but I really wish I had known about them before! Even though I didn't know anybody there when I went in, it was a very friendly atmosphere so that didn't seem to matter at all. I got there in time for a basic lesson, which was basically just review, but after that there was open dance, which was ridiculously fun! I haven't danced at all since June, so it was good to know that I hadn't forgotten how (except for apparently lindy hop -.-' Almost everybody danced east coast though, so no real problems there). There were some really good dancers there, and one of the teachers said I was pretty good, so that made me happy. :) It also turns out that Nagoya Swings is performing during A Christmas Carol, which is happening at Nanzan this weekend, and I volunteered to dance with them then, too! It's especially cool because my friend Mary is in the play, and now I get to go see it for free. :) So I will get to dance at least one more time before leaving Japan - although one of the guys I met yesterday said he knew of another dance thing somewhere and would give me details later, so there could be even more chances! Anyway, I was really happy to dance again, and it was definitely worth having to stay up late to finish my homework afterward. :D

fall break!

Apologies for taking so long to update; I am bad at finding time to post. -.-'

Anyway, last Friday morning was the start of fall break, so I got up bright and early to take the trains to Kyoto! My mom's friend was working there for the day, so the plan was for me to go to Kyoto, meet up with her daughter for a little bit, then drive back to Osaka. The train trip was uneventful, minus the part where I got on the wrong train and got to Kyoto half an hour later than expected. I met up with my mom's friend's daughter Kiko, who has lived in Japan since she was 5 and so mostly speaks Japanese instead of Chinese (like me with English!), and we had lunch, wandered around some shopping streets, and went to a cat cafe! Kiko wouldn't let me pay for anything, which was really nice of her. After that my mom's friend took me back to Osaka with her, which was a 4-hour drive, including stopping for dinner. And then I was really tired so I went to bed.

On Saturday my mom's friend and her husband both had work (they're both Chinese/Chinese literature professors at different universities), so I planned to explore Osaka by myself. My mom's friend took me to her university, then snagged a random student who happened to be going to the station and asked him to take me with him. He agreed, luckily, and we got on the train together, where I found out his (last) name was Watanabe and that he was on his way to a part-time job in Kyoto. He even looked up where I should go after getting off the train for me on his iPhone, which was really very nice of him. And then he got off the train and I continued on my merry way. After spending a long time wandering the underground of Umeda/JR Osaka station and staring at maps, I made a plan for the day. First stop: Shitennouji, Japan's first Buddhist temple (according to Wikipedia). It was still pretty early in the day so it was very quiet and peaceful. It was actually part of a big park-ish area full of temples and shrines and stuff, so I wandered around for a while.

Then I went to Osaka Castle, which led me to the conclusion that all Japanese castles are pretty much the same. The architecture is very similar, so they all look similar, and inside is usually a museum or at least has exhibits of some sort which encompass several floors, and then after climbing a lot of stairs you get to the top and see an amazing view. That said, I still really enjoy visiting them - Osaka Castle was quite pretty, with lots of gold decorations on the outside, and the view from the top was gorgeous, of course. When I wandered out of the gate, I was stopped by a volunteer tour guide who offered me a map of the castle. Since I'd already been I asked her instead where the nearest station was (the Osaka castle park is enormous!), and she said she'd take me there. She was a very lively middle-aged lady, and talked basically non-stop while we walked. And then somehow by the entrance we got mixed into a group of young (probably late 20s) salarymen who were also from Nagoya, and who got excited when they heard I was from America and took a picture with me. And then after some explanations of the castle architecture that I didn't understand, the tour guide entrusted me to the group of salarymen and told them to take me to the station, which was the second time in one day I was told to go somewhere with some random Japanese people. Anyway, we only went as far as the parking lot before splitting ways, and then I got back on the subway to head to my next destination, the HEP 5 building.

The HEP 5 building is really just a big shopping mall, but it has a big ferris wheel on top, which of course I went to go ride. I went around sunset because I figured that would be pretty, but I couldn't actually see much sunset so it would have been cooler to go when it was all dark. Still, a ferris wheel is a ferris wheel, and I enjoyed it. After that I wandered around killing time in stores before meeting up with Anna and Liz from Carleton, plus their friend from Kansai Gaidai. It was great to see them again (and meet their friend), and we had dinner together, which was fun. And then I went back to my mom's friend's house.

The next day my mom's friend took me to Nara, which was maybe an hour and a half away by car. It was a rainy rainy day, but there were still deer everywhere, just hanging out. My mom's friend said that they're basically wild deer and nobody takes care of them or anything, but they're completely used to people. You could buy deer senbei (crackers) to feed them, but I decided I wanted to see the giant Buddha at Todaiji first. The giant Buddha, or daibutsu, is the world's biggest bronze Buddha (again, thanks to Wikipedia), and it was huge! According to my admission ticket, its ears are over 8 feet tall, if that's any indication. It was very impressive. Next I decided I wanted to feed the deer, even though I know it is bad to feed wild animals. The interesting thing is that even though the deer can easily get to the stacks of deer senbei that the vendors sell, they don't even try to eat them until somebody buys them. Once you do, though, they crowd around you and starting nipping and pulling at your clothes until you feed them - they were really impatient and one of them even bit my butt! It was a little alarming, really. But then once I ran out they understood right away that I didn't have any more and lost interest. Much better than feeding monkeys. >_<

Once we got back to Osaka we collected my mom's friend's husband and went to eat dinner! I'd planned to take the train back to Nagoya in the afternoon, so I could get home around the same time as my host family and eat a late dinner with them, but my mom's friend and her husband wanted to have dinner with me and even insisted on buying me a shinkansen ticket for Nagoya! It was incredibly generous (shinkansen tickets are at least $100 each) but they wouldn't let me refuse, so I'm very grateful for how nice they were to me. :) Dinner was yakiniku and absolutely delicious! It was all-you-can-eat for a specific time period, so we ordered a lot of things, including beef tongue (which was surprisingly tasty) and stomach (not bad taste-wise but had a weird texture). The all-you-can-eat included dessert, so I had one vanilla ice cream with blueberry sauce and then another vanilla ice cream with hot sweet potatoes; needless to say, they were really really yummy. And then I got on the shinkansen and was back to Nagoya in less than an hour.

The next day I went to an onsen (hot spring) with some of my classmates! Actually it is apparently more of a public bath than a real onsen, but it was basically like a spa and fantastic. The one thing about going to an onsen in Japan is that you always go in naked, which was a little awkward, but the water was so nice that we stopped worrying about it. There was an outdoor bath, which was really great with the wind blowing, plus things like a milk bath, sauna, and what were basically giant pots that you could climb into. It was very relaxing. After that we dressed in the loose-fitting clothes they gave us and met up with the boys to eat lunch, and then we decided to try out the sauna-type rooms. Basically they were rooms of varying (hot) temperatures where you could go in and lie down (and sweat) on top of heated rocks (or just on the floor). It was nice but too hot for me, so I ended up just taking a nap on the mats outside. It was all in all a very lazy experience, but I was still somehow really tired when I went home.

On Tuesday I took it easy and didn't really do anything, but then on Wednesday I went to the university festival! There were booths run by various clubs and teams selling food lining the road, plus a big stage with various performances all day. There were also lots of things going on inside the buildings, like an okama (male cross-dresser) cafe, which I slightly regret not going into because I think it would have been amusing, but there were actually a surprising number of boys in school-girl uniforms wandering around (maybe the cafe members on break?), so I probably didn't miss much. I think the school festival is a chance for people to dress in costume to advertise their events, because I also saw a lot of other random costumes, too. Anyway earlier I had been recruited to talk about America (aka bring pictures of Carleton/Atlanta and explain them) at an international cafe-type thing, so after lunch I went and did just that for an hour.

And then this Saturday I went to Meijo University's school festival, which was much bigger than ours and also more crowded. I spent the whole day watching dance performances, some of which were really cool, plus participating in a Ghibli trivia quiz. :D

Sorry this ended up being such a long post; thanks for reading it all (if you did)!

pre-halloween fun

Whew! These past days have been a blur - all of a sudden life seems to picking up the pace again. Also it's finally starting to get colder in Nagoya, which is exciting because that means soon I'll be able to wear more of the sweaters and cold-weather clothes I brought. :)

So on Wednesday a bunch of international students went to this place called Cat's Cafe (not a real cat cafe, unfortunately) and take on the challenge of eating a giant parfait. It literally comes in a bucket, piled up with fruit and whipped cream, and costs 5500 yen, which is over $60, so it's not something you can just order on a whim. We had to wait for a really long time while they made it, but when it finally came we were all in awe, because it was so enormous and delicious-looking. But there were 11 of us and we were hungry from waiting, so we ended up demolishing the whole thing in about fifteen minutes. Taste-wise and experience-wise, it was very worth it. :D

On Thursday I participated in an international student tea party (for lack of better terminology), hosted by the tea ceremony club at Nanzan. There were only 5 international students there, but it was a very small Japanese-style room, so that was probably a good thing. We got to drink macha, or green tea, and eat the ricidulously sweet sweets that come with it, all while learning the right ways to bow and drink the tea, which included rotating the cup before and after drinking. They also let us try whisking the tea ourselves, but mine didn't become nice and frothy and light green like the others' - one of the club members suspected that the water wasn't hot enough (I went last), so I'll take that explanation instead of me just being a failure. :P It was all very ceremonious and a really nice chance to experience the tea ceremony (we have a tea ceremony class at Nanzan but I'm not taking it). The club members were also really nice, so I'm thinking of going back sometime.

Friday was the Nagoya Koryuu Kaikan dorm's Halloween party, which is apparently a really popular annual event. I thought it was just a party thrown for the international students, with maybe a few Japanese students mixed in, but as it turns out there were tons and tons of Japanese students (plus international students) there - I'm pretty sure there were at least 200 people, all crammed into the dorm's common room and lobby area. It cost 900 yen to go, since they had food and drinks, which made me not want to go at first, but in the end I think it was worth it. I met a lot of new Japanese people and talked to some I hadn't seen in a while, so it was pretty fun. It was also really cool to see everybody's costumes - they were a lot more into it than I expected, especially for a country that doesn't actually celebrate Halloween. I guess people everywhere like the chance to dress up in costume for a day. I suppose that also explains why there are Halloween decorations all over the stores - they don't celebrate the holiday per se (even Halloween parties aren't that common), but they really like decorating for it. Anyway, after the party one of my classmates invited a couple of us to her apartment to eat something before going home, which was very nice of her - she's an international student like us, from Mexico, but she lives on her own and is planning to enroll as a real (4-year) student at Nanzan, which is impressive.So we all bought some snacks at a nearby supermarket and brought them to her little one-room apartment, which was very cozy and fun. We also made plans for Saturday, which was the Inuyama festival!

Inuyama is technically in the countryside, but Japan is so densely populated that even the countryside has houses everywhere and looks like a city (to me). We got there by train, with really cool reversible seats (you could change which direction they faced, to make groups of seats facing each other or rows one behind the other) and pretty scenery, which made it feel like we were actually going somewhere. It was about a half-hour by train, which was impressive because one of our classmates commutes from there every day. Anyway, when we got there we found our way to the castle and wandered around all the stalls; while waiting for the aforementioned classmate-who-lives-in-Inuyama, Andy, we bought a bunch of festival food from the stalls and had lunch. Then finally all the people we were waiting for showed up and we went into Inuyama Castle! Inuyama Castle is the oldest castle in Japan, and the steps for each story were surprisingly steep - each one went all the way to my knees (granted, that's probably shin-level for most people, but still) - but fun to climb, and the view from the top was absolutely gorgeous.

When we came out Andy's host mother decided we should all try one of Inuyama's specialty foods, whose name I have forgotten, but is basically grilled tofu with miso on a stick and quite yummy, so she bought us all one stick each, which was very generous of her. And then she invited us all to her house to eat dinner before going back to the festival after dark, which was even more generous! It was also very tasty, and then she played some piano for us and made Andy play violin, and then we were off again to the festival! The big attraction for Inuyama festival is the parade of floats (like the dashi at the Nagoya festival, only according to Inuyama's website they're called yama instead), which are hung with 365 lanterns once it gets dark and then move down the streets. It was ridiculously beautiful and very impressive to see them turn them around corners, with all the lanterns swinging around and bouncing once they set the yama back down. Earlier in the day we also got to see one of the giant sheds where they keep the floats for the rest of the year, which was also cool.

And then on Sunday I went with a few of my classmates to the international fair at COP10, the international conference for biodiversity that's being hosted in Nagoya until the end of this month. We had to go for class, because we've been studying all this environmental/biodiversity vocabulary because of it, but it was actually pretty interesting. Learning all the random vocabulary like 'overhunting' and 'threatened by extinction' actually came in handy, too (which I guess was the point). We went to a lot of booths and also watched a performance of people tying their yukata/kimono obis all by themselves, which I didn't think was possible - I don't know what that had to do with biodiversity, but it was pretty cool anyway. After going around all the booths, we found a place to eat lunch, which happened to be next to a game center. Eating at the restaurant gave us free plays at the game center (though two of us didn't know what they were for so we refused them -.-'), so we went there for a bit. We didn't end up winning anything, but we did do purikura again, bringing my total purikura count up to three!

After that I met up with my friend Mary and we watched our friend Naoko do some cool fire-baton-stuff at her school festival - it was all dark and raining, but the darkness made the fire look even cooler, and the rain didn't really affect the fire at all. It was really really beautiful, though they made us watch from inside because of the fire hazard. -.-'

So that was my crazy week. This weekend is finally our fall break, which is from Friday until Wednesday, including three days of school festival time. It's our only real break other than weekends, because Nanzan doesn't observe a lot of national holidays, ostensibly because we get six days off for the festival (I think they're just mean). I'm planning to go visit my friend's mom in Osaka, then spend a day at an onsen with some of my classmates! Definitely looking forward to it. :)

culture culture culture

I never know how to start a blog post, and today I'm feeling uninspired, so I'm just going to jump straight to the describing-what-I've-been-doing part.

Last Wednesday I went to go see kabuki! Kabuki is one type of traditional Japanese theater; one distinct feature is that all the actors are men, even for female characters (though apparently nowadays some kabuki theaters do have female actors). Ironically, kabuki was initially created and performed by women, but first women then young men were banned from kabuki for being too erotic (or something like that). Anyway, the CJS office at Nanzan gave international students the chance to see a performance for only 3000 yen (a little more than $30), which is really cheap for kabuki, so it was a great opportunity. Before going, we had to attend a lecture given by Watanabe-sensei, who I believe is the theater director at Misono-za, the theater we went to. Apparently even Japanese people need extra background knowledge before seeing kabuki; it's not something you just buy a ticket and go see.

The stage! After this I found out cameras are forbidden.

We met in front of the theater at 3:45 and didn't leave until almost 9:30 (we brought our own dinners and ate them in the theater during the breaks); there were four different acts (unrelated to each other) in the evening, and we watched them all. The theater was very impressive, and also filled with lots of places to buy omiyage (souvenirs, usually food), in true Japanese fashion. We went in and found our seats, which were pretty high up but still had a good view of the stage. The shows were very long and basically unintelligible, speech-wise (there were headsets for rent that explained what was happening in Japanese), and I fell asleep in every one (big surprise), but I still enjoyed the experience a lot. The costumes were very pretty and we had also received (poorly written) English explanations of each of the acts beforehand, so we weren't completely clueless as to what was going on. One thing that surprised me during the show was the people yelling out the names of the actors; after the show Watanabe-sensei explained that this is also a traditional part of kabuki. We also got to go underneath the stage (we weren't actually allowed backstage) with Watanabe-sensei, which was really cool and really nice of him to do - none of us were expecting it. All in all I think it was a very worthwhile experience, though I don't know if I would necessarily go see it again.

On Thursday, five of us went to my friend Evan's house for dinner, which was great. We met his host parents (I'd met his host dad once but not his mom) and chatted and spent some time looking at pictures of their grandson and of the houses his host dad had designed/built (he built the house they live in too), but the real highlight was dinner. There was a wood stove and a fire pit in the house that they used to cook, which I thought was pretty cool. We had aiyu, a type of fish, potato salad, potatoes, sweet potatoes, boiled eggs, pork, and sesame-rice-things-on-a-stick (they have a real name, but I forgot it), all of which was delicious. When we were all done eating and ridiculously full, they brought out dessert: yogurt jelly with mulberries on top and candied chestnuts - needless to say, they were fantastic. And then after that there were pears! Good food, good times. :) I envy Evan his host mom's cooking and the view from his room (he has a giant window that looks out over the city), but not the giant spiders that live in his house (luckily I didn't see any while I was there). :P

Anna and the origami!

And then on Friday, my friend Anna from Carleton came from Hirakata, Osaka to stay for the weekend! It was really really awesome to see her again and hear about life at Kansai Gaidai. :D She got to Nagoya on Friday night, so we ate dinner (after much searching for a restaurant; I don't know where anything is) and then met some of my friends at an izakaya. Unfortunately we missed the last bus to my house (which is at 11), so I had to get my host mom to come pick us up at the station and bring us home (and I still feel bad about it, even though she says her sons did it all the time). On Saturday, we went to Oasis 21 and wandered around the COP 10 station there, which was themed 'the lives that are connected by water'. I made a fortune teller to stick on the wall-o'-origami and held a tiny turtle! We also watched a performance by a Mongolian musician (which reminded me of my friend Helen, who is doing her Fulbright in Mongolia!), which was pretty awesome - at one point he did this amazing thing involving overtones, which I tried to catch on video. After that we wandered around the Sakae area and looked at all the stalls set up for the Nagoya festival! There were a lot of stages and performances and lots and lots of food vendors, but we had to ge home in time for dinner so we didn't buy anything.

A puppet on the dashi, staring right at me.

The next morning, we met up with some of my friends to stake out spots for the parade! We were about two hours early and the parade was late, so there was a lot of just waiting, but in the end we got perfect spots: we were sitting on a tarp on the corner of the intersection where performances happened and had a great view. The parade was pretty cool, but there were lots of gaps in between groups (probably to let traffic through periodically) and it was kind of slow-paced. But we got to see some traditional dashi (shrine-float-things) with puppets on them, which were pulled along by groups of men - they were really heavy so turning them around was a big deal. It was pretty impressive to watch. We also saw lots of little children and the floats they made, Nana-chan, the giant doll that stands by Nagoya Station (only minus her legs and arms, which was kind of weird), a lot of marching bands, and some ninjas, to name some highlights. Eventually we decided we would rather eat food than watch the rest of the parade (it was way behind schedule and past 2:00), so we made our way to the food stalls we saw yesterday and got food! I ate a tornado potato, which was basically a fried whole curly potato on a stick, a stick of yakitori (actually I suspect it was chicken intestines but don't really want to know), and tamasen, or a fried egg sandwiched between shrimp senbei crackers. Like festival food in America, it was a little expensive and probably bad for my health, but worth the experience. :) Then we went to the Higashiyama Zoo because they had free admission (thanks to the festival), but we only had about 30 minutes before it closed and it was also really depressing - unlike American zoos, there was much less space and most of the animals we saw were basically just in cages. This could have been because it was about to close and so they put them in cages for the night, but still. After that, we headed to the Higashiyama Sky Tower, which gave us a lovely view of the sunset around the city. And then Anna had to go home, which was sad, but I hope to go visit her and the other Carleton folks at Kansai Gaidai sometime!

My tornado potato!

That concludes the adventures of this week; thank you for reading. :)

festivals and ferris wheels

So it's been a veerry long time since my last post, but in my defense I seemed to have caught a stomach bug last week and really didn't feel like doing anything but sleeping. Also it appears my last post was as boring as I predicted (judging by the lack of comments), so sorry! This one should be slightly more exciting. :)

As mentioned, I did spend one night in the dorm, but as I didn't venture from my room to explore at all, I can't really compare it to the ones in America. I stayed in a very nice little single with my own bathroom (tiny bathtub and everything) and a little veranda even (I think it may be for hanging laundry). One difference I can say is that apparently you're not allowed to have friends in your room; they're allowed in the common room until 11 but not after that! Which is a little crazy when I think about how much time I spend in other people's rooms/in the lounges at Carleton. The front door was also locked like the dorms at Carleton, but instead of a OneCard you use your room key and a code, which was kind of fun to do. Anyway, I think I may be heading back to the dorm for a few nights later this month, so maybe I'll have more to say then.

Me with Sakura Panda! Also a little bit of my friend Evan.

Last weekend was a pretty exciting one. As I think I've said before (or maybe I forgot), this year is Nagoya's 400th anniversary of becoming a city! As a result, there are lots of celebrations happening - autumn is also the season for festivals, so there is lots of excitement. Anyway, last weekend Nagoya had a yuru-kyara festival, which I went to with some friends. Yuru-kyara, or yuru-character,  basically means 'mascot', as in the kind where people wear giant costumes! I think it was mainly targeted for little kids, but I actually enjoyed myself immensely. There were characters from all over Japan (and even some of the audience were from places as far as Hokkaido), and we ran around taking pictures of/with them and buying character goods. My favorite was Negiccho, who is basically a giant green onion. :D We also watched a performance of some people dressed up as famous historical characters like Togukawa Ieyasu (the shogunate, who lived in Nagoya), which was fun. They also danced with a few characters, which I thought was hilarious.

The next day, because I had no homework (for once), my host mom took me to a little amusement center in the middle of nowhere called something Oasis (for some reason oases are popular here). The main reason we went was to ride the ferris wheel, because I told her about how I really like them (I've already been on two since coming to Japan and have plans to ride at least one more), but we also tasted senbei crackers at a senbei store, watched a drum performance, and watched somebody carve feathers out of wood with chainsaws.

Since then life has been pretty tame- yesterday was the first Saturday I didn't go explore somewhere with friends, mostly because they were all off somewhere else, but I did have a nice day visiting a fabric store with my host mom and exploring Tokyu Hands, the 'creative life store'. We also rented a movie (Public Enemy), which was fun. Anyway, I think the newness of Japan is wearing off and my schedule is becoming routine. Not that it isn't fun anymore, but now it's starting to feel like regular life instead of every day being an adventure - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Next weekend, though, my friend Anna from Carleton is coming to Nagoya, just in time for the Nagoya Festival, which I am ridiculously excited for! :D There are only 10 Saturdays left before I leave Nagoya, so I'll keep trying to make the most of them. :)

nanzan vs carleton

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in the past couple of days (other than having Thursday off for the equinox and going shopping then and Saturday, plus a phone call from my parents), but in the aforementioned phone call my parents said I should update more often, so here's an effort to do that. Also it's a good excuse for procrastinating on my schoolwork. :)

Since I've discovered that college in Japan is pretty different from college in the US, I thought I'd compare the two in this post (though that might be long and boring, sorry), though really I'll just be comparing Nanzan and Carleton specifically, since I probably can't generalize too broadly with my experiences. I'm currently in a homestay, as I'm sure you know, but actually this Wednesday I'll be spending the night in a dorm, because my host parents are going to Hokkaido and didn't want to leave me all alone in the house (or something like that). That should be pretty interesting and also probably pretty different from Carleton dorms, so I'll probably post again after that. Today I'll stick to campus and all that.

I'll start with some background for the two schools, which are pretty different even on a basic level. Nanzan is actually a 'school corporation' (or that's what it says in the brochure), including university, junior college (middle school), junior and high schools, and a primary school. Nanzan University has about 9500 undergrads plus around 500 graduate students, coming to a total of roughly 10000 students, while Carleton is only undergrad and has about 2000 students. Nanzan is also a Catholic institution (which actually I didn't realize until I got here, but I don't feel like it makes much difference in day-to-day life), while Carleton is non-denominational. Carleton is a liberal arts school, whereas Nanzan students can focus on things like law or engineering. I should note that I'm actually a student of the Center for Japanese Studies, which is separate from the normal undergraduate program; we have a required Japanese course and several CJS-only classes, though we do have the chance to take a limited number of 'open' courses with Japanese students.

Speaking of classes: the required Japanese course for CJS students is 8 credits per semester, while all of the other classes we can take are 2-3 credits each - you can tell how important Japanese is by the fact that it's worth 4 times as much as our other classes. We're supposed to register for 14-18 credits each, including Japanese, which I think is great because this semester I'm taking 5 different courses, instead of the usual 3 (or 4) at Carleton. Registration was a paper process, which surprised me, and the way they decided who could stay in classes of limited enrollment was by literally drawing names out of a bucket. I think I prefer the online-by-randomized-registration-number method, if only because it's easy to tell right away whether or not I made it into a class.

Moving on to the schedule. As a CJS student, I have Japanese class all morning and then all my other classes in the afternoon. Every class that isn't Japanese only meets once a week, for from an hour and a half to two hours and fifteen minutes at a time, depending on the class. As far as I can tell, there's a campus-wide lunch break with no classes from 12:35-1:30, which means everwhere is ridiculously crowded, and everybody also gets Wednesday afternoons off, which is quite nice. Granted, at Carleton it's possible to have afternoons or whole days off depending on the classes you take, but it's nice knowing that everybody is free at the same time. Nanzan is also weird and sometimes makes us have class on national holidays; I was told that the reason behind this is the fact that we get several days off for the university festival, so it balances out. Also I should mention that this is Nanzan's second semester; in Japan the school year starts a lot earlier, so the international students that are here for a year are really getting the last and first halves of two different school years.

Another thing: internet here is very bureaucratic and complicated; this may be a Japanese thing because internet access is (surprisingly) not as easily available or as cheap as it is in the US. Before using the computers we had to endure a long and boring orientation where we got our usernames and had to pick passwords that were exactly 8 characters in length and didn't use any words that could be found in an English dictionary (which was surprisingly hard to do, because even combinations of words in Japanese sometimes amount to English dictionary entries). We also had to agree to only use the computers for educational purposes (which I'm pretty sure nobody follows), and as far as I know nobody has figured out how to check our Nanzan emails yet, because apparently it can only be done from one building on campus. I also went through another orientation to be able to bring my laptop and connect it to the school's lan by cable (wireless is a different orientation entirely); I had to bring in my laptop and have them check it carefully to make sure I had anti-virus software and the latest versions of Firefox, IE, and Google Chrome. -.-'

The biggest difference that I can tell, though, is campus life. It seems like most Japanese college students are commuters, so they live with their parents but spend anywhere from an hour to two hours or more going to/from school every day (my commute is about an hour). Even the dorms aren't on campus; from my understanding they're not really Nanzan's dorms, but rather privately-run residences that are close to Nanzan - CJS arranges housing in dorms for their students, but I think for normal Japanese students living in dorms, they just had to find them themselves. As a result, nobody really lives on campus, which means there really isn't campus life. There are lots of clubs and always club activities going on, but big campus events like Carleton's Halloween concert or Mid-Winter Ball practically non-existent (I think); the closest thing is probably the university festival. This also means that on weekends campus is pretty much deserted, except for people doing club activities. I came to campus yesterday for a group meeting and all the dining halls were closed, the campus convenience store was closed, and even the library was closed. I guess if nobody lives on campus, there's no reason to have anything open on the weekends. But I still think it's weird.

Anyway, that's most of what I find different between Nanzan and Carleton, institution-wise. This ended up being a very long and boring post, so I apologize in advance to anybody who skips reading it just because it's too intimidating. Hopefully in the next post I'll have some insight into Japanese dorms, and maybe it'll be more exciting than this one. :)

this post is made of lists

Fun things I've done since my last post:
- went to a tiny club with friends and met some new Japanese people
- went to Nagoya Harbor and rode a giant Ferris wheel! It's probably my new favorite place in Nagoya (not that I really had a favorite place before...maybe it was Jusco, a department-store-ish place)
- started collecting stickers to trade in for a really cute Rirakkuma bowl! This means that for lunch I've been buying bread and hamburgers that have the stickers on them, which may be a bad thing, but I only need 30 stickers and I already have 6, so hopefully I can get the bowl soon! It's really really adorable. :D
- participated in a photoshoot for the admissions brochures at Nanzan! It was very staged and the pictures will probably all be very cheesy, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly and met some new people in the process, so that was fun. I'll probably be back in the US before I can see the results, though. :/
- handed out snacks to the tsukimi dorobou! This is a tradition that apparently only happens in my area (I asked some other Japanese students and they didn't know what it was), which is kind of like Halloween in America. Tonight is a full moon and tomorrow is the autumnal equinox (and a national holiday!), so this is the time where people go out for tsukimi, or moon-watching. Apparently on this day every year, little kids in the area run around to people's houses and get treats. 'Dorobou' means thief, so 'tsukimi dorobou' is something like 'moon-watching thieves'. I think before people would leave out plates of dango (round sweet dumpling-things on sticks) and the kids would take them, so that's where the thief part comes in, though nowadays they just get snacks (my mom handed out packets of mini Oreos).

Nagoya Harbor!

Cool things that have happened recently:
- my first real conversation (sort of) with my host dad! He goes out on business trips a lot and even when he's home he comes back from work really late, so I don't see him much. Also for some reason whenever he wanted to know something about me he would ask my host mom, even if I was there, so we had some sort of weird relay system going on. I think maybe he's just not used to having a girl in the house (both of their kids are boys), especially a foreigner, so maybe that's why? Anyway, yesterday we actually talked for the first time, so that was nice, considering I've been living here for almost a month now. :P
- realizing that in three days, I'll have been in Japan for a month! It really doesn't feel like it at all. I bet the next three months will fly by, too.
- getting bonus points on my first Japanese test! Or rather, half a bonus point, since it was +0.5, but still! It didn't really change my grade much, but I've never gotten bonus points on a test that didn't come from a bonus question before. Also, this was the test to make sure we really belong in IJ600, so I'm glad that I did well.

Really little things that are different in Japan:
- the paper size. They do have paper the same size as what we use in the US, but most of our handouts for class are printed out on giant sheets that we have to fold in half to carry around. In the end it's the same size as a packet of two double-sided sheets in the US, but it's still kind of weird
- the napkins. For some reason all the paper napkins I've used in restaurants feel kind of weird, like they have some really thin plastic layer above the paper. This is totally insignificant but I noticed it, so I felt like sharing. :)
- paper towels. Or lack thereof - most bathrooms don't have paper towels, and only some of them have dryers, so everybody carries around little towels of their own to use. It's actually very green, if you think about it, and also better than China, where toilet paper is not always guaranteed either. Plus I bought a very cute Totoro towel while in Tokyo and I get to use it all the time.
- vibrate mode on cell phones. It's called 'manner mode' instead of 'vibrate', which I think is very Japanese (in the sense that you're being polite to others by turning off the sound) and also amusing.

and so it begins

I can't believe I've only been in Nagoya for two weeks (and two days) - looking back on my last post, everything there seems like it happened ages and ages ago. I guess it's a good thing, since it means I've done lots of fun/interesting things since then.

Classes have been going on since Thursday, which is almost exactly a week now, although it's only been the international students so far; Japanese students start tomorrow! I'm very happy with my schedule; I've been able to stay in all the classes I registered for, and they all seem pretty fun. Japanese class is actually probably my hardest class (which is definitely the opposite of what it's like at Carleton), because 600 level is really no joke. Most of the people in the class have been taking Japanese for around 4 years, so coming in from only 2 years worth of experience makes class kind of overwhelming, especially since all the other students are so good at Japanese. We have three teachers, one of whom is very nice but also really scary/strict; the other two seem pretty energetic and fun. Japanese class is also five days a week, for roughly 3 hours a day - they're not kidding when they call the classes Intensive Japanese! It's certainly a change being at the bottom of my class, but I'm sure by December my Japanese will have improved tremendously. My other classes all seem really interesting. Japanese linguistics is actually phonology, which I've never studied before, and it's a class with Japanese students so I'm looking forward to it (the first real class is tomorrow), and Japanese culture has a very friendly teacher and some really interesting topics, like women's language and the concept of uchi/soto (inside/outside) in Japanese culture. I also really enjoyed my first calligraphy class; we learned the names of/how to use the instruments and spent the rest of class writing the character for 'moon' over and over again. It sounds boring, but it actually takes a lot of concentration and is hard to get right. Still, it's great to be taking an art class again. Observation and analysis of Japanese activities will probably be the most interesting class; it's an open class with Japanese students and basically we'll be interacting with each other and other Japanese people and analyzing those interactions. The professor is really funny and laid-back, and he also knows my Japanese teacher from Carleton! It's a small world.

As for fun stuff I've done in the past week, there's plenty of that, too. As I mentioned in my last post, I went to Sakae with some international students and some Japanese students; Sakae seems to be the hot spot for young people and I'll probably go there a lot - although unfortunately it's not on my commuter pass (next month I'll make sure it is). I was again there today for karaoke, too, which was fun. On Wednesday, the CJS office organized a field trip for the international students - we went to the Tokugawa Museum and Nagoya Castle, both of which were really interesting and beautiful. My favorite part of the museum was all the maps of Nagoya, which were huge and really detailed; another odd thing is that they were apparently drawn from all different directions (the labels were all oriented on different sides of the maps). The best part of Nagoya Castle was definitely the view from the top; you can see Nagoya spreading out in all directions, and it's breathtaking. On Friday I went to a party hosted by some other international students; they offered to let us spend the night so I did instead of leaving early to catch the last bus (which is at 11). It was a fun party and sometime in the middle of the night we left to go karaoke (I've only been in Nagoya two weeks but I've gone to karaoke 4 times already), which was again very exciting. On Saturday I went to Osu Kannon with my host mother to resume our mission of finding me a yukata, and this time we were successful! It's yellow with little bunnies on it, and I also bought a white obi to go with it, which was already premade into a bow so all I have to do is slip it on. :)

I also had what I guess was my first experience with culture shock yesterday - I haven't really had any trouble adjusting to life in Japan, but I guess there's always something. Up until now I'd been trying to spend lots of time downstairs with my host family, since I wanted to interact with them and not just stay holed up in my room. I also didn't want to leave my host mother all alone all the time, since my host father doesn't get home until late. Yesterday, though, she basically asked me to spend more time in my room. Apparently her sons (and most other Japanese students, apparently) would always just go straight to their rooms after dinner to study, so she was worried about my doing homework in the living room with the TV and everything, and also she wanted some time alone/time to talk with my host dad. It's very reasonable and also probably better for my studies (honestly I think I need the quiet/alone time too), but I just thought it was funny that my concern was for spending lots of time with the family, while hers was having time alone.

Anyway, I haven't started my homework for tomorrow (bad), so I'll end here. I'll try to update more often, but life is already starting to be crazy so we'll see how things turn out. :D

nagoya, week one!

I'm updating right now from an internet cafe, on probably the oldest and slowest computer they have (which explains why nobody was using it when we came in). From now on if I come here I'll bring my own laptop, though carrying it all the way here on the bus/train will probably be a pain. Also please excuse the lack of pictures, since I am on a public computer and don't have a flash drive or anything with me. :/

Anyway, the past few days have been pretty fun - we've had more orientation and today we registered for classes. It was a paper process, though, and apparently there's no way to know how much space is in classes with limited registration until we actually go to the classes, so my schedule may change. If I can stay in everything I registered for, though, that'll be great: Japanese Linguistics II, Japanese culture (which is really more like sociolinguistics, as its full name is Japanese Culture: Language and Society in Japan), Observation and Analysis of Japanese Language Activities (which is an open class with Japanese students), and calligraphy. This is in addition to the Japanese language class, which is every day for three hours a day (I'm probably going to have issues staying awake). I tested into Japanese 600, which is one level higher than I expected and also the hardest Japanese class offered this semester. I'm kind of scared to take it, since it seems really hard, but on the other hand I want to stay in it, since it'll probably be great for improving my Japanese. On the first day of classes (two days from now!) everybody takes another, probably more detailed test to see if they were put in the right class, so I'll be studying hard to try and learn all the Japanese 500 material before then. It's not as bad as it sounds, since we actually did a lot of the grammar, but that's 200 new kanji that I'm supposed to know, which could be bad. Anyway, we'll see. :)

So on Saturday I went to Sakae with a few other international students. Sakae is a pretty big station (and unfortunately not on my commuter pass) and has lots of shops and things to admire. First we wandered into a Maruzen bookstore, then decided to get lunch. We settled on (basically) the first one we saw, and then realized that we couldn't read the menu, because useful kanji like food names is not what we study at school. So we ordered by pointing, and I think I was one of the few people who actually knew what I was ordering (gyouza), so it was an interesting lunch. Then we walked through this underground mall to find the Oasis 21 center, which is a very strange-looking building with shops underneath. We went up to the top, which was pretty cool - it had a very shallow pond with a glass bottom, so you could see down below (and from the bottom it made cool ripple shadows), then wandered around some more shops. After that we wanted to go up the TV tower, but it cost 600 yen and we decided to just walk around instead, because there was some sort of festival going on. I still don't really know what it was for, but we sat and watched lots of Japanese kids dance hip-hop (it was a dance school and every class did a dance). It was pretty awesome, and also amusing because I'm sure they had no idea what the lyrics to the songs meant. There were some really little kids (maybe 6 or 7) who were really adorable (and good dancers).

On Sunday I went on a yukata hunt with my host mom, but apparently they are no longer selling them. :( On the flip side, I did get a skirt and leggings for 190 yen each, plus I tried takoyaki for the first time, which was pretty good. And then yesterday after orientation I met some new people and joined them for karaoke (actually I was only there for about 10 minutes) and then wandered around Yagoto station, which was pretty fun. Today we had a campus tour and welcome party, where I actually met and talked to some Japanese students, which was nice. We also made plans to go to Sakae later tonight, so that should be fun, too! It looks like it's shaping up to be a good semester, with interesting classes and fun people, so I'm excited! :)

destination: nagoya!

Auugghh I just spent the last half hour writing up a post and then it failed to publish, and somehow Blogger's auto-saving of drafts didn't work! I am very unhappy. :( I will try to recreate what I just wrote, but it will not be the same and I may not be as enthusiastic or detailed this time around, sorry!

So, having safely arrived in Nagoya via shinkansen (where I wanted to get a free Pokemon notebook by paying with Suica, but was unable to do; at least I had ice cream), I am updating from my host family's house! Up until now I haven't wanted to use their computer too much, but I won't be able to use the internet at school for a few days, so I wanted to update now while I could. Also I just showed my host mother Twitter and Facebook, which she seemed to think were pretty cool!

So far my host family has been great, although when I say 'host family' I really mean my host mother - my host father has been gone on business (actually he just got home) and my host brothers are living away at college, and even the dog (Silver, because she is black and white) stays outside all the time, so it's really just been the two of us. But she is really really nice, so it's been great - we talk a lot, mostly in Japanese, though her English is good enough that whenever there's something I don't understand, she usually knows the English for it (and then if not we use the electronic dictionary). We've gone grocery shopping a few times together - the first one we went to was huge and almost like a department store - the second story had clothes and toys and everything. Yesterday she took me to Nanzan via bus/subway so I knew how to get there (25-minute bus ride, then 3 subway stops, a transfer, then one more stop over, plus a short walk to campus), then we went to the local ward office to register me as an alien (a foreigner) and get insurance, and then I got a cell phone! Now I can send emails to people from my phone, because in Japan every cell phone has its own email address, so you just send emails from phone to phone like text messages. It's cool because I can also email normal addresses without needing internet, and if you guys email my cell phone I can read/respond like a text message. Or so I think; if you want to help me test it let me know and I'll send you my address!

My host house is also very nice - it's pretty big, I think, for a Japanese house, and I have my own room. It's pretty roomy (bigger than a Watson single, I think) and has a bed/desk/dresser/bookshelves. There's an air conditioner in my room, but I only turn it on in the evenings to conserve energy.

So this morning was the first day of orientation! I successfully made it to Nanzan by myself, then got ready for the placement test. I was worried about it (I'd never taken a language placement test so I didn't know what to expect) and spent last night studying kanji, but it was not bad at all. Hopefully I'll get into the level I want. After that was lunch (ramen with miso and lettuce), which I had with Stephen (the other Carleton student in the program), and then orientation. There are 143 international students total, from over 25 countries. I met a few of them already, but I should probably try and meet more and not rely on Stephen, who I already know. I did meet a girl who rides the same bus (and subway) as me, and this afternoon we talked while trying to figure out where her stop was (luckily she recognized the surroundings and hopefully got home safe), and also a boy whose host mother is a friend of my host mother. Actually it was funny because I knew what he was wearing today, due to my questions of what to wear for the entrance ceremony and our host mothers' communication, so when I saw him in the subway I asked if it was him and it was! Hopefully he wasn't too creeped out.

Anyway, tomorrow is academic orientation, which is exciting. I have high hopes for classes and want them to start already! I still haven't decided what to take, but I am excited nonetheless. And now I will stop here, and hopefully it will post correctly this time!

sayonara, tokyo

So today was my last day in Yokohama/Tokyo. We slept in, then got up and went to Kamakura with Megumi's mom. We spent some time walking down a little street of shops, looking for somewhere to eat lunch. We found a soba place and I ordered soba with duck (I think), which also came with 'soba tea jelly', which was interesting but pretty tasty. Apparently my lunch came from the 'good for your summer body menu', which I didn't realize until afterward but found amusing. It was my first time having soba, and it was very yummy. :)

Then we went and visited Hachimangu Temple, which apparently is very famous. It wasn't crowded at all, which was nice. We stopped to make wishes, and then Megumi's mom bought me a good-luck charm, which was really nice of her! It's in my purse right now, but I'm planning on putting it in my backpack so it can give me luck wherever I go. :)

After that we went to the Enoshima Aquarium! I haven't been to an aquarium in a couple years (either since our senior field trip or when I was taking my cousin around Atlanta; I can't remember), so it was fun. There were some really big sting rays and some really tiny jellyfish (not in the same tank, of course), plus lots and lots of creatures in between. I wanted to get a picture of the teeny jellyfish, but they were so tiny that my camera couldn't get a good picture. But I took lots and lots of pictures of the other things, like the giant crabs and penguins. We also missed the dolphin show, but saw the trainers giving them fish afterward, which was cool.

And then we went home and ate pizza and watched a segment about a transgendered celebrity who ran a 24-hour marathon, and so concludes my last day in Yokohama! It's been a really fun week, and I think also a good crash course/intro to Japan for me. I really hope I can come back to Tokyo for a few days after my finals end in December, because there's so much more to do and explore - I could probably live here for years and not get tired of it all. But tomorrow I head to Nagoya, where my study abroad will officially start! I'll meet my host family, go to orientation, and then start classes! I'm excited and nervous, because in Nagoya I won't have Megumi to rely on like I have been so much this past week, and I don't know how much English my host family speaks. Still, I guess it will be a chance for me to really test my Japanese skills - since everybody in Megumi's house speaks English, I haven't really had to speak much Japanese, but in Nagoya it may be my only avenue for communication. I am not looking forward to my placement test, since there is still a lot of kanji/grammar I haven't reviewed yet and should, but I'll be glad once it's over and classes start. I don't know yet what classes I'm taking or how hard they'll be, but it's been a long summer and I'm looking forward to school (yes, I'm a nerd).

Anyway, I still have lot to get ready before I leave tomorrow, so I'll stop here. I don't know when my next entry will be; I don't know yet if my host family has internet or not and orientation isn't until Thursday, so I'll just say bye-bye for now! :)

disneyland, fireworks, tokyo

Oof! Has it only been three days since I last posted? It feels like a lot longer, though I guess three days between posts is not very long. Although this is mostly because being in Tokyo with Megumi is like being on vacation and we go do fun things every day; once I get to Nagoya my posts may be less exciting and less frequent, especially as the semester goes on. :/

Anyway! Today's post will be very long, because there is three days worth of stuff to report on and I can't help but want to go into detail, if only so I can read back on it later and remember (my short-term memory sucks). So: on Friday we got up and headed out to go meet Megumi's friends! While we were waiting for them, I bought volumes 1 and 2 of 日本人の知らない日本語 ('Japanese that Japanese people don't know'). We had read a few pages of in Japanese class and it was really funny, so I wanted to get it while I was here in Japan and I did! So far I've only read a few pages of it (with the aid of my new electronic dictionary, which is awesome), but it's very amusing (and good practice, too). Then Megumi's friends showed up and we spent at least fifteen minutes and several escalator/elevator trips deciding where to eat; apparently this happens to them a lot. :D Eventually we settled on the place they had chosen in the first place and had lunch (although Megumi and I had kind of already eaten). I enjoyed what I ordered (daikon radish and potato croquettes, plus rice and then pudding for dessert) and Megumi's friends were quite friendly and seemed like really fun people (the conversation was mainly Japanese so I just listened for the most part), so it was a good time. Afterward we wandered around this huge building (the Marunoichi building, I think?) that was part business, part shopping center, and then Megumi and I left for Tokyo Disneyland!

Parade!

Tokyo Disneyland was as magical as Disneyworld in Orlando, even though it only has two parks and is smaller (plus a lot of the rides were exactly the same). Megumi and I both got excited as we walked across the bridge to the ticket window; Disney just has the same great atmosphere wherever it happens to be. We came just in time for the after-six passport, which is basically reduced admission for coming after 6PM, which left us four hours until the park closed. So first we rode Pirates of the Caribbean, which I think is slightly scarier ride in Japan than in Orlando - plus there was Barbossa and Davy Jones and Jack Sparrow, which was cool. I thought it was funny because they all still spoke in English, even though I bet 90% of Tokyo Disneyland's visitor's don't speak it. Next we stood in line for Big Thunder Mountain, which took a reaally long time but was awesome, and when we got out we got caught behind a parade, which was actually pretty cool to watch, with huge lighted floats and famous Disney characters. Once we got through, we only walked a little bit before getting caught behind the parade again, so instead of waiting we decided to ride It's A Small World, because it only had a 5-minute wait. It was actually pretty enjoyable, even though we both agreed beforehand that it's one of Disney's dinkiest rides (but classic). After that we rode Space Mountain (awesome) and saw Captain EO, a revival of an 80s short with Michael Jackson, in 3D, which was also pretty cool. And then we were exhausted and went home.

I want a yukata!

On Saturday, we had a lazy morning (though I did study some kanji; can't forget the placement test!) and then got ready to go see fireworks! The custom is to wear yukata when you go see fireworks, but even though Megumi/her mom have several yukata, there was only one obi, so Megumi let me wear it. It was complicated to put on (I'm not sure how you would do it by yourself), but it was really fun to wear and not as hot as I thought it would be. Shortly thereafter, I found myself having what I thought was a very Japanese experience, as I was eating a convenience-store onigiri, dressed in a yukata, sitting on the train to go see fireworks. :) Then we got to the fireworks place and settled on the sand (it was by a lake and very pretty with the sunset) with yakisoba to wait for the show. It was very breezy and cool; I also really enjoyed seeing everybody else's yukata, especially the little kids' because they were so cute! Then the show started and it was probably the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen - we were really close, so they were huge, and it was a pretty long show that included fireworks shaped like Doraemon and what I'm pretty sure were Goombas from Super Mario. It definitely made up for not having seen fireworks on the 4th of July this summer. :D

It makes your eyes bigger/look weird.

This morning, we got up early to go see Shougo-kun, an elementary school kid who Megumi tutors in English every week. He was really adorable and energetic, even though I think I might have made him a little nervous. We played 20 Questions with a Fruit By the Foot as the object; it was actually pretty unfair of us to make him try to guess it, considering they don't exist in Japan and neither does anything like them. But we gave him one and a Fruit Roll-Up at the end, so I suppose that makes up for it. :) After that we headed to Asakusa, which Megumi had never been to, either. We walked along a lot of shops and visited the temple, where we made wishes, stood in lucky smoke, and drew fortunes. Mine was 小吉, or 'better fortune' according to the English translation, so that was nice (usually I have bad luck with this sort of thing). Next was Shibuya, where we took pictures in a photo booth (or print club/purikura, as they say), which was fun. I'd done it before in China, but we could only pick the backgrounds for that one and the ones in Japan have about a million more options (or so it seemed). I was really bad at deciding how to decorate the pictures, but Megumi is a pro so they turned out quite nice. :) Then we walked to Harajuku and spent some time in a store called Kiddy's, where I bought a little Totoro towel (I really can't resist Totoro stuff; it's awful), which comes in quite handy since Japanese bathrooms don't have paper towels and not all of them have hand dryers. We didn't have time to do much more in Harajuku since we had to meet Megumi's dad at 6, as he was taking us out for sushi! It was my first time at a conveyor-belt sushi place, and I tried two new kinds of sushi (flounder and octopus), which I am proud of, because I am rather picky for a Chinese person and raw seafood is not really my thing. I'm sure I'll go out for sushi a few more times while I'm in Japan, so I will slowly work my way up to rawer and squishier things like sea urchin and salmon roe. :)

Tomorrow Megumi, her mother, and I are going to Kamakura, which should be fun, and then the day after I leave for Nagoya! I considered waiting to post this entry until after Kamakura, but that would have made it even more of a gargantuan post, so I will leave it for another day (possibly/probably tomorrow). Sorry that this one is so long; I probably could have posted earlier when there was less stuff to talk about but I've been pretty tired when we get back at night (maybe I'm still a little jet-lagged). Anyway, bye-bye for now; stay tuned for the end of Yokohama/Tokyo and the beginning of Nagoya! :D