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
Monday, November 22, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
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)!
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)!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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. :)
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. :)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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. |
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! |
 |
| A puppet on the dashi, staring right at me. |
 |
| My tornado potato! |
Sunday, October 10, 2010
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.
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. :)
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. |
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. :)
Monday, September 27, 2010
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. :)
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. :)
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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).
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.
- 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)