Typhoon and class party
It's been a pretty ordinary week, although it seems like it's gone pretty fast, actually. I was going to update on Wednesday, but there wasn't much to say since we've gotten into a routine of classes and stuff. It turned out that we didn' t have a vocab quiz on Monday since we hadn't gotten a schedule, but then we had almost a double quiz on Tuesday with some of Monday's words covered as well as Tuesday's words. We still haven't had all that much homework yet, just worksheet-like exercises for each day, no special projects or anything, even for the English-language classes. There's been some reading for Kim-sensei's linguistics class, but the first assignment for him isn't due until next Tuesday, and it's just answering some questions related to one of the readings. We haven't had anything really for Rycroft's literature class yet. Which reminds me, we're supposed to start reading Natsume Soseki's Kokoro in translation, but we forgot to check copies out of the Ajisai room's library. Oops. Oh well, we can probably do that Monday. I've already read it anyway, so I'll just quickly reread it some evening.
On Tuesday, I found a bunch of cds that I thought were worth getting. First, we were in the campus co-op store and we saw a deal where if you buy two albums from their basket of used cds at 525 yen each, you could get a single as a "present" (free). That seemed like a decent deal to me when I found in the basket a L'arc~en~ciel singles collection cd (their stuff is pretty hard to find really cheap because they're so popular) and a Yellow Generation cd (they're not as well-known, but their one album is less than two years old so it's often not very cheap yet) plus an Aikawa Nanase single (I seem to be collecting her stuff now because I like it and it's often pretty cheap). So I got those three there. Then, after class we went to Fukatsushoubou, which is the used manga/cd/game place in Okamoto. I found a rack there of exceptionally cheap cds which I really hadn't looked at before. When I scoured that rack, I managed to find five albums I wouldn't mind collecting, three of which were 280 and two of which were 180 apiece. Most of those weren't albums I was especially looking for, but for that cheap, I figured why not. One of them was the second Field of View album (I'd gotten the first one last week), and another was a Hysteric Blue album (I'd bought a different one by them for 300 yen on my previous trip to Japan).
Jumping ahead a bit to talk about more cds, today (Friday) we went back to Fukatsushoubou and I looked at the same discount rack. This time I found an Aikawa Nanase album in there for 180 yen, which is a pretty good deal since it has 11 songs, three of which I know I like already. I also got a single (for 105 yen) by Hamasaki Ayumi with four distinct songs and thirteen tracks total (which is rare for a single). What was even better was a discount basket in a Tsutaya of all places (which is usually a place to rent dvds, but also has areas for used cds, dvds, and video games). This basket held a bunch of mixed up albums and singles, each for 105 yen. There I found another Aikawa Nanase album, this one containing 16 (!) songs, several of which I know I like. That was probably the best deal I've found yet. I'm not sure exactly how many albums she has, but I know of four, and I'll probably get the fourth one for 300 yen when I go back to that store in Shin-Nagata. I was expecting to get two of hers there, but one of them I found cheaper at Fukatsushoubou, which I didn't anticipate. The find at Tsutaya was completely random and unexpected; I didn't even know that one existed until today. We also briefly went back to another place in Sannomiya near the Tsutaya, where I saw an access album for 480, but I'm going to wait to compare prices at Shin-Nagata again. I suspect access albums are around 1000 apiece there, but I want to check first.
Wednesday evening there was a typhoon. Even though there's an official name for it, just like any hurricane or tropical storm, I don't know what it is because it's only ever called "typhoon #21" on the news and stuff. I think typhoon #18 was the one that had disrupted our arrivals in Japan; the two in between had probably hit China or something. Anyway, #21 had actually exhausted itself somewhat by the time it got to us, so the effect was mostly just a thunderstorm, thank goodness. My host mother said we were supposed to be in the eye of the storm, too. I heard places like Kyushu and other places farther west got hit harder. We were actually more affected by the rainstorm in the morning, which was supposed to be separate from the typhoon. In Okamoto on our way to school, it rained *really* hard. I was lucky I'd accepted my host mother's offer of a raincoat, which kept most of me dry. My schoolbag didn't fare quite so well though because my umbrella isn't very big. Luckily though, it wasn't raining when we got out of class. Because the typhoon was coming, we decided to eat in Shin-Nagata, check out the store I'd found before, and then go home early in the afternoon so we would be home long before more bad weather arrived.
We ate lunch at a Chinese-style restaurant called Bamiyan, which was pretty yummy and pretty reasonable. I had ramen and a few gyouza (potstickers? is that what they're called in English? or dumplings I guess) and Jeff had chahan (fried rice) and the other gyouza (we ordered a set of ten). We might go there again some time. I had never been to one, but I guess Jeff had encountered them when he'd studied in Kanazawa last summer (2003). After that, I showed him the store I'd found. We didn't buy anything that time, but we did end up wandering around that shopping road for a bit. I hadn't actually explored it when I'd found the store by myself because I hadn't wanted to get home too late. We discovered a 100 yen shop (where I got a cd display case) and a Domino's. Apparently Japan does have Domino's, but it's like three times as expensive as in America, plus they put some "interesting" stuff on pizza. We might do it once sometime, just to see, but that isn't going to be a regular thing. If I really want pizza, I'll go to La Pausa and pay 600-some yen for a pizza meal which seems pretty close to thin crust pizza in America, instead of paying for half of a meal which can be anywhere from 2000 to 3500 yen depending on size and toppings.
Thursday we didn't do much after class except go to karaoke for a bit. Not too much to say about that except that while the price was pretty reasonable, the rooms weren't very insulated, so we could hear songs from nearby rooms. Oh yeah, in my class though two of the Australian students presented a couple of newspaper articles, which was pretty interesting. One was about names for different alcohol levels of alcoholic drinks. I think it was for the different proofs. Some of the names were clever and related to how kanji was written. For example, the kanji for "100" has only one added stroke to make it different from the kanji for "white." So the name for 99-proof uses that kanji for white because 100 - 1 = 99. Get it? The other article was about shotgun weddings, which meant that eventually we got into a discussion about abortion and sex education in schools. Yeah, we sorta wandered from the topic a bit, but it didn't seem to matter. The point of the exercise wasn't really for the presenters to only talk about their articles; sparking a discussion was good too. I don't know when I'll have to do one: it's decided week by week, but perhaps in a couple weeks I'll volunteer.
Today we went to a party hosted by students in an English conversation group. It was pretty fun. Tickets had cost 500 yen, but there was enough food for dinner, plus everyone got a prize of some candy on the way out. After we ate, we played some games. I thought the structure of the games was really interesting. There were five contests where four people competed in something. Everyone else was divided up into seven teams which would each bet on who would win the contest. Before the result, each would hold up a number from 1 to 4 indicating the team choice. The teams that chose correctly each got two points. Whichever team had the most points at the end won and all of the members got a prize (which turned out to be a tea set, oddly enough). My team didn't win, but Savi's did so he showed us the prize later. It was an interesting setup because nobody had to compete in any contest that they didn't want to do, but everyone was still participating, and despite the visibly individual contests, the game overall was very team-oriented. For example, if someone from your team went to compete, you basically had to vote for them, even if you thought that one of the other contestants was more likely to win.
I didn't compete in anything myself, but the contests were still really fun to watch. The first one wasn't so much of a contest because each of the four (they were all Japanese students in the first round) had to take a cream puff and eat it, but one of the four contained Japanese mustard (ew!). So they all had to act as if they were eating a normal cream puff, and then each team voted on who they thought had the mustard one. They called this game something like "Russian cream puffs," alluding to Russian roulette. It turned out that the guy who had it was a good actor, and one of the other guys pretended that he had it, to confuse everyone. The guy who had it was a good sport about it, although he did run and wash his mouth out afterwards.
The other four were actual contests. The first was an ice-cream eating contest; the next was a contest to blow up a balloon and pop it by sitting on it (which a guy from my team won); the third was a Coke-chugging contest (which this one Japanese-American guy who apparently drinks alcohol all the time won with amazing speed); and the fourth was a contest to hold one's breath. It was all very amusing, especially watching people cheer on the various contestants. I'm pretty glad I went to the party.
It's getting late now, so I'm going to stop writing. I was going to post some pictures, but I'll have to do that tomorrow. Tune in next time! ^.~
On Tuesday, I found a bunch of cds that I thought were worth getting. First, we were in the campus co-op store and we saw a deal where if you buy two albums from their basket of used cds at 525 yen each, you could get a single as a "present" (free). That seemed like a decent deal to me when I found in the basket a L'arc~en~ciel singles collection cd (their stuff is pretty hard to find really cheap because they're so popular) and a Yellow Generation cd (they're not as well-known, but their one album is less than two years old so it's often not very cheap yet) plus an Aikawa Nanase single (I seem to be collecting her stuff now because I like it and it's often pretty cheap). So I got those three there. Then, after class we went to Fukatsushoubou, which is the used manga/cd/game place in Okamoto. I found a rack there of exceptionally cheap cds which I really hadn't looked at before. When I scoured that rack, I managed to find five albums I wouldn't mind collecting, three of which were 280 and two of which were 180 apiece. Most of those weren't albums I was especially looking for, but for that cheap, I figured why not. One of them was the second Field of View album (I'd gotten the first one last week), and another was a Hysteric Blue album (I'd bought a different one by them for 300 yen on my previous trip to Japan).
Jumping ahead a bit to talk about more cds, today (Friday) we went back to Fukatsushoubou and I looked at the same discount rack. This time I found an Aikawa Nanase album in there for 180 yen, which is a pretty good deal since it has 11 songs, three of which I know I like already. I also got a single (for 105 yen) by Hamasaki Ayumi with four distinct songs and thirteen tracks total (which is rare for a single). What was even better was a discount basket in a Tsutaya of all places (which is usually a place to rent dvds, but also has areas for used cds, dvds, and video games). This basket held a bunch of mixed up albums and singles, each for 105 yen. There I found another Aikawa Nanase album, this one containing 16 (!) songs, several of which I know I like. That was probably the best deal I've found yet. I'm not sure exactly how many albums she has, but I know of four, and I'll probably get the fourth one for 300 yen when I go back to that store in Shin-Nagata. I was expecting to get two of hers there, but one of them I found cheaper at Fukatsushoubou, which I didn't anticipate. The find at Tsutaya was completely random and unexpected; I didn't even know that one existed until today. We also briefly went back to another place in Sannomiya near the Tsutaya, where I saw an access album for 480, but I'm going to wait to compare prices at Shin-Nagata again. I suspect access albums are around 1000 apiece there, but I want to check first.
Wednesday evening there was a typhoon. Even though there's an official name for it, just like any hurricane or tropical storm, I don't know what it is because it's only ever called "typhoon #21" on the news and stuff. I think typhoon #18 was the one that had disrupted our arrivals in Japan; the two in between had probably hit China or something. Anyway, #21 had actually exhausted itself somewhat by the time it got to us, so the effect was mostly just a thunderstorm, thank goodness. My host mother said we were supposed to be in the eye of the storm, too. I heard places like Kyushu and other places farther west got hit harder. We were actually more affected by the rainstorm in the morning, which was supposed to be separate from the typhoon. In Okamoto on our way to school, it rained *really* hard. I was lucky I'd accepted my host mother's offer of a raincoat, which kept most of me dry. My schoolbag didn't fare quite so well though because my umbrella isn't very big. Luckily though, it wasn't raining when we got out of class. Because the typhoon was coming, we decided to eat in Shin-Nagata, check out the store I'd found before, and then go home early in the afternoon so we would be home long before more bad weather arrived.
We ate lunch at a Chinese-style restaurant called Bamiyan, which was pretty yummy and pretty reasonable. I had ramen and a few gyouza (potstickers? is that what they're called in English? or dumplings I guess) and Jeff had chahan (fried rice) and the other gyouza (we ordered a set of ten). We might go there again some time. I had never been to one, but I guess Jeff had encountered them when he'd studied in Kanazawa last summer (2003). After that, I showed him the store I'd found. We didn't buy anything that time, but we did end up wandering around that shopping road for a bit. I hadn't actually explored it when I'd found the store by myself because I hadn't wanted to get home too late. We discovered a 100 yen shop (where I got a cd display case) and a Domino's. Apparently Japan does have Domino's, but it's like three times as expensive as in America, plus they put some "interesting" stuff on pizza. We might do it once sometime, just to see, but that isn't going to be a regular thing. If I really want pizza, I'll go to La Pausa and pay 600-some yen for a pizza meal which seems pretty close to thin crust pizza in America, instead of paying for half of a meal which can be anywhere from 2000 to 3500 yen depending on size and toppings.
Thursday we didn't do much after class except go to karaoke for a bit. Not too much to say about that except that while the price was pretty reasonable, the rooms weren't very insulated, so we could hear songs from nearby rooms. Oh yeah, in my class though two of the Australian students presented a couple of newspaper articles, which was pretty interesting. One was about names for different alcohol levels of alcoholic drinks. I think it was for the different proofs. Some of the names were clever and related to how kanji was written. For example, the kanji for "100" has only one added stroke to make it different from the kanji for "white." So the name for 99-proof uses that kanji for white because 100 - 1 = 99. Get it? The other article was about shotgun weddings, which meant that eventually we got into a discussion about abortion and sex education in schools. Yeah, we sorta wandered from the topic a bit, but it didn't seem to matter. The point of the exercise wasn't really for the presenters to only talk about their articles; sparking a discussion was good too. I don't know when I'll have to do one: it's decided week by week, but perhaps in a couple weeks I'll volunteer.
Today we went to a party hosted by students in an English conversation group. It was pretty fun. Tickets had cost 500 yen, but there was enough food for dinner, plus everyone got a prize of some candy on the way out. After we ate, we played some games. I thought the structure of the games was really interesting. There were five contests where four people competed in something. Everyone else was divided up into seven teams which would each bet on who would win the contest. Before the result, each would hold up a number from 1 to 4 indicating the team choice. The teams that chose correctly each got two points. Whichever team had the most points at the end won and all of the members got a prize (which turned out to be a tea set, oddly enough). My team didn't win, but Savi's did so he showed us the prize later. It was an interesting setup because nobody had to compete in any contest that they didn't want to do, but everyone was still participating, and despite the visibly individual contests, the game overall was very team-oriented. For example, if someone from your team went to compete, you basically had to vote for them, even if you thought that one of the other contestants was more likely to win.
I didn't compete in anything myself, but the contests were still really fun to watch. The first one wasn't so much of a contest because each of the four (they were all Japanese students in the first round) had to take a cream puff and eat it, but one of the four contained Japanese mustard (ew!). So they all had to act as if they were eating a normal cream puff, and then each team voted on who they thought had the mustard one. They called this game something like "Russian cream puffs," alluding to Russian roulette. It turned out that the guy who had it was a good actor, and one of the other guys pretended that he had it, to confuse everyone. The guy who had it was a good sport about it, although he did run and wash his mouth out afterwards.
The other four were actual contests. The first was an ice-cream eating contest; the next was a contest to blow up a balloon and pop it by sitting on it (which a guy from my team won); the third was a Coke-chugging contest (which this one Japanese-American guy who apparently drinks alcohol all the time won with amazing speed); and the fourth was a contest to hold one's breath. It was all very amusing, especially watching people cheer on the various contestants. I'm pretty glad I went to the party.
It's getting late now, so I'm going to stop writing. I was going to post some pictures, but I'll have to do that tomorrow. Tune in next time! ^.~