blog from Japan 5
I feel like I am blogging too much, hahah. But, I want to keep a journal so I can remember all the things that I experienced here so even if you think that I am blogging too much that's not my problem. :P
On to this past week-
Tuesday was the dreaded elementry school visit. When I saw that in the final e-mail listing from the CIEE staff, I was shocked. It wasn't mentioned ever before, and I wasn't looking foreward to it at all. Most of you know that I can't really handle little kids that well, I don't know how to. We even had to think up an activity to do with the kids, (and Japanese elementry school classes are about 40 kids each class.) What to do??
Well, thankfully for me I was paired up with Naoko. She didn't really know what to do either, but at least we weren't alone. We had a second grade class, and we were both wondering: What do second graders like to do?? It turns out that they didn't care. Those kids were so excited to have us in their class it didn't matter what it was that we did. When we got to their class, they had just finished gym class, and were getting ready for lunch. We had a good lunch; it was some sort of stew with chicken and veggies, jelly sandwich, salad, and some other kind of sandwich (maybe it was just butter? I think it was.) After lunch we went outside and played (all the kids were outside though so it was hard to keep track) and then we helped them clean their classroom after that. The little girls really loved holding our hands and dragging us around, and the boys didn't talk to us very much.
We played the games that they came up with for us, and we ended up playing rock, paper, scissors for our game. It was the whole class against me, if they won they stayed and if they lost they had to sit out. It was fun, and we played in English so they learned how to say it in English. At the end of the day, they were so cute. I noticed that Japanese people wave when you leave them, and I think it's adorable. They gave us some pictures that the staff took, but because of laws in Japan I can't post them online. Sorry, but you'll have to wait until I get home. It's just another thing to look foreward too!!
Wednesday we went to Kamakura!! It was so neat, if you don't know about Kamakura, click the link. It was slightly sucky because it rained all day, and we had to be in our 6 person assigned groups but other than that it was fun. We went to a shrine (which are for Japan's religion Shinto) and then to lunch. Lunch was delicious, we had some sort of kara age chicken, soup, rice... oh it was so good. Our tour guide, K-san gave us all souvineer coasters with our names writen in kanji on them, which I think for everyone but me and Joanne, she chose herself for us which was so sweet. Since Joanne is Korean, she has kanji for her name already and for my she put 光鈴 which means "light" and "bell," and is slightly different than the kanji I found for my name, but it's very cute. Our adorable tour guide then took us to get soft serve ice cream. I tried sweet potato and vanilla, it was really good too.
Next we went to a temple, which is for Buddhist traditions. I don't like temples as much as shrines, I don't think they're a pretty, but we went to the temple that has the huge, famous Buddha statues. K-san, our tour guide asked us to do one of the prayers in the temple area because it was for people who have lost their children. Emily and I did it, but the rest of the group couldn't because of their own reasons. One of the most bothersome things was that one of the guys in my group has absolutley no respect for traditions at all. There are a bunch of places in the temples where you cannot take pictures, there are signs all over and they're in ENGLISH. Joanne, Emily and I had to keep yelling at him not to take pictures even though K-san told him already. :/
My camera died, so I am relying on Emily's pictures for you to see Kamakura but she hasn't put up the pictures yet. After we finished the tours, we said good bye to our guides and K-san hugged us all. She was a really sweet little old lady, and she seemed really sad to leave us. Emily, Geri and I went to some shops that Emily saw along the way and then we went to the beach. Even though it was raining, it was still neat because it was my first time to see it.
After that, we went to a place for dinner and had ommurice, which is an egg omlet over rice. It was pretty huge and it was pretty good too. I stayed full the rest of the night, so I was happy. The train ride from Kamakura home was pleasant too, because it was getting late (like 7:30) so it wasn't crowded at all. Geri talked almost the whole time back, which I just started blocking out because I was so tired by that point I really didn't care anymore. Sometimes I don't know what to say to her, because she doesn't like everything that I do like. What I mean is, if I say that I like something she says that she doesn't (such as actors, idols, Johnny's, pretty much everything.) So, I guess you could say that I don't know how to handle her. And I missed the stop that I should have gotten off at, and had to back track to come home which sucked. I pretty much took a shower and went to bed because I was so tired.
Today was the first day of class! It was exciting, but also so far a little disappointing because there are not many Japanese people in my classes. In my Japanese class, there are about... 10 of us from CIEE and then the rest are people from other programs. Listening to them give their self-introductions today made me cringe because of their pronunciation. I'm not elitist about it either, because I know that I mess up sometimes too but some of their pronunciation was worse than Kelsey's and I can't even imitate it. I sat next to someone that I hadn't ever talked to before, and he's actually from Univeristy of Denver. After class, he and I went to the book store together and bought the books for that class (okay, we have 5 books, two of which we don't need right now. 3 of them cost about 60 bucks and people were talking about how it was expensive. Yookoso that we used for first year and second year was ... how much? Like, 150 at least right?? I don't think that it's too expensive :/)
After that, I went and hung out by Emily's class until she was done. We went to Family Mart to get lunch together and I had a curry steamed bun and an egg rice ball which was actually really good. Tomorrow though, I think that we're going to have to get food from 7-11 if we want to go to one of the international student clubs. Maybe we will have instant ramen or something, HAHAHA. Actually, instant ramen is very popular and a lot of people eat it... not surprised by that, are you??
Because of the way Sophia's registration works, you go to class before you register... weird, I know. Anyways, I went with Emily to the Japanese Cinema class she's going to take. I knew that I wouldn't want to take that class because it sounded exactly like CJ's class last semester, and it IS exactly like CJ's class last semester. They're even using the same book, although here they don't make you buy as many text books. So far, I have heard that everyone's books are online (except one person I have talked to) so that's nice.
After that, we had another hour to kill before the Survey of Japanese Literature class started. George went with us to the post office (I think it's a post office) so Emily could get money and then we went to the book store again. We went to the Lit class, and it sounds very interesting and I am very excited for it. We're going to be reading a lot of The Tale of Genji, which I wanted to read and almost bought... and now I have an excuse to buy it :) Even though that's also online, the professor said that if we buy anything to buy that book.
Next, Emily and I went to the book store (a real one but it's still on campus.) I gave in and bought some Sophia Univeristy sweat pants, they're black with purple letters on them. I was thinking I would need a medium, but we found the samples and the small is huge so I bought that. They're very nice. :)
Tomorrow, I have Japanese class, Modern Japan history class and then approaches to Japanese society class. Saturday afternoon, I will be going on an adventure to campus to watch the karate club practice and see if I can join. If I do join, I am going to be busy busy.
This is my tenative schedule-
timeMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday9:00Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45) 10:00 11:00 Modern Japan (until 12:30) Modern Japan (until 12:30) 12:00lunchlunchlunchlunchlunch (maybe the SIESC circle meetings too) 1:00 2:00 3:00Survey of Japanese Lit (3:15-4:45)Approaches to Japanese Society (3:15-4:45) Survey of Japanese Lit (3:15-4:45)Approaches to Japanese Society (3:15-4:45) 4:00 5:00 karate club practice until 7 6:00 karate club practice until 8 karate club practice until 8 7:00
See, that's nice and packed right? But I think this is what I want, depending on how the classes tomorrow assign homework. With those huge breaks every day I can potentialy get homework done, I found the library today so I can go there when I want to or I can come home too I think. Wednesday is stupid because there is one class and then what? Thankfully, Hiroko-san said that the CIEE activities are usually on Wednesday, and I wanted to do most of them so that works out nicely.
Tomorrow night and Saturday morning/afternoon I will be able to Skype with everyone so I am excited for that. Sunday morning I might be able to for a while, but I am going to Harajuku again (with Chelsea) to investigate the used clothing shops that I saw last Sunday. I heard that they are cheap and good clothing so I want to see for myself. I also want to see the cosplayers again, and take some more pictures of them. George said that he wanted to come with us this weekend, but I think that if we are clothes shopping he would get bored. We'll see though, he might not want to come anymore because of this stupid tif (tiff? How do you spell that??) he got into with Chelsea over a word. It was annoying and I really don't want to explain it again, but it was basically a "that's not a real word" "yes it is" fight, and I don't want him to fight with her because she's my house mate and I really like talking to George a lot. He reminds me of Chin-san from Japanese class, it's really creepy.
I'll send out a link to the pictures once Emily gets them posted. :)
On to this past week-
Tuesday was the dreaded elementry school visit. When I saw that in the final e-mail listing from the CIEE staff, I was shocked. It wasn't mentioned ever before, and I wasn't looking foreward to it at all. Most of you know that I can't really handle little kids that well, I don't know how to. We even had to think up an activity to do with the kids, (and Japanese elementry school classes are about 40 kids each class.) What to do??
Well, thankfully for me I was paired up with Naoko. She didn't really know what to do either, but at least we weren't alone. We had a second grade class, and we were both wondering: What do second graders like to do?? It turns out that they didn't care. Those kids were so excited to have us in their class it didn't matter what it was that we did. When we got to their class, they had just finished gym class, and were getting ready for lunch. We had a good lunch; it was some sort of stew with chicken and veggies, jelly sandwich, salad, and some other kind of sandwich (maybe it was just butter? I think it was.) After lunch we went outside and played (all the kids were outside though so it was hard to keep track) and then we helped them clean their classroom after that. The little girls really loved holding our hands and dragging us around, and the boys didn't talk to us very much.
We played the games that they came up with for us, and we ended up playing rock, paper, scissors for our game. It was the whole class against me, if they won they stayed and if they lost they had to sit out. It was fun, and we played in English so they learned how to say it in English. At the end of the day, they were so cute. I noticed that Japanese people wave when you leave them, and I think it's adorable. They gave us some pictures that the staff took, but because of laws in Japan I can't post them online. Sorry, but you'll have to wait until I get home. It's just another thing to look foreward too!!
Wednesday we went to Kamakura!! It was so neat, if you don't know about Kamakura, click the link. It was slightly sucky because it rained all day, and we had to be in our 6 person assigned groups but other than that it was fun. We went to a shrine (which are for Japan's religion Shinto) and then to lunch. Lunch was delicious, we had some sort of kara age chicken, soup, rice... oh it was so good. Our tour guide, K-san gave us all souvineer coasters with our names writen in kanji on them, which I think for everyone but me and Joanne, she chose herself for us which was so sweet. Since Joanne is Korean, she has kanji for her name already and for my she put 光鈴 which means "light" and "bell," and is slightly different than the kanji I found for my name, but it's very cute. Our adorable tour guide then took us to get soft serve ice cream. I tried sweet potato and vanilla, it was really good too.
Next we went to a temple, which is for Buddhist traditions. I don't like temples as much as shrines, I don't think they're a pretty, but we went to the temple that has the huge, famous Buddha statues. K-san, our tour guide asked us to do one of the prayers in the temple area because it was for people who have lost their children. Emily and I did it, but the rest of the group couldn't because of their own reasons. One of the most bothersome things was that one of the guys in my group has absolutley no respect for traditions at all. There are a bunch of places in the temples where you cannot take pictures, there are signs all over and they're in ENGLISH. Joanne, Emily and I had to keep yelling at him not to take pictures even though K-san told him already. :/
My camera died, so I am relying on Emily's pictures for you to see Kamakura but she hasn't put up the pictures yet. After we finished the tours, we said good bye to our guides and K-san hugged us all. She was a really sweet little old lady, and she seemed really sad to leave us. Emily, Geri and I went to some shops that Emily saw along the way and then we went to the beach. Even though it was raining, it was still neat because it was my first time to see it.
After that, we went to a place for dinner and had ommurice, which is an egg omlet over rice. It was pretty huge and it was pretty good too. I stayed full the rest of the night, so I was happy. The train ride from Kamakura home was pleasant too, because it was getting late (like 7:30) so it wasn't crowded at all. Geri talked almost the whole time back, which I just started blocking out because I was so tired by that point I really didn't care anymore. Sometimes I don't know what to say to her, because she doesn't like everything that I do like. What I mean is, if I say that I like something she says that she doesn't (such as actors, idols, Johnny's, pretty much everything.) So, I guess you could say that I don't know how to handle her. And I missed the stop that I should have gotten off at, and had to back track to come home which sucked. I pretty much took a shower and went to bed because I was so tired.
Today was the first day of class! It was exciting, but also so far a little disappointing because there are not many Japanese people in my classes. In my Japanese class, there are about... 10 of us from CIEE and then the rest are people from other programs. Listening to them give their self-introductions today made me cringe because of their pronunciation. I'm not elitist about it either, because I know that I mess up sometimes too but some of their pronunciation was worse than Kelsey's and I can't even imitate it. I sat next to someone that I hadn't ever talked to before, and he's actually from Univeristy of Denver. After class, he and I went to the book store together and bought the books for that class (okay, we have 5 books, two of which we don't need right now. 3 of them cost about 60 bucks and people were talking about how it was expensive. Yookoso that we used for first year and second year was ... how much? Like, 150 at least right?? I don't think that it's too expensive :/)
After that, I went and hung out by Emily's class until she was done. We went to Family Mart to get lunch together and I had a curry steamed bun and an egg rice ball which was actually really good. Tomorrow though, I think that we're going to have to get food from 7-11 if we want to go to one of the international student clubs. Maybe we will have instant ramen or something, HAHAHA. Actually, instant ramen is very popular and a lot of people eat it... not surprised by that, are you??
Because of the way Sophia's registration works, you go to class before you register... weird, I know. Anyways, I went with Emily to the Japanese Cinema class she's going to take. I knew that I wouldn't want to take that class because it sounded exactly like CJ's class last semester, and it IS exactly like CJ's class last semester. They're even using the same book, although here they don't make you buy as many text books. So far, I have heard that everyone's books are online (except one person I have talked to) so that's nice.
After that, we had another hour to kill before the Survey of Japanese Literature class started. George went with us to the post office (I think it's a post office) so Emily could get money and then we went to the book store again. We went to the Lit class, and it sounds very interesting and I am very excited for it. We're going to be reading a lot of The Tale of Genji, which I wanted to read and almost bought... and now I have an excuse to buy it :) Even though that's also online, the professor said that if we buy anything to buy that book.
Next, Emily and I went to the book store (a real one but it's still on campus.) I gave in and bought some Sophia Univeristy sweat pants, they're black with purple letters on them. I was thinking I would need a medium, but we found the samples and the small is huge so I bought that. They're very nice. :)
Tomorrow, I have Japanese class, Modern Japan history class and then approaches to Japanese society class. Saturday afternoon, I will be going on an adventure to campus to watch the karate club practice and see if I can join. If I do join, I am going to be busy busy.
This is my tenative schedule-
timeMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday9:00Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45)Japanese class (until 10:45) 10:00 11:00 Modern Japan (until 12:30) Modern Japan (until 12:30) 12:00lunchlunchlunchlunchlunch (maybe the SIESC circle meetings too) 1:00 2:00 3:00Survey of Japanese Lit (3:15-4:45)Approaches to Japanese Society (3:15-4:45) Survey of Japanese Lit (3:15-4:45)Approaches to Japanese Society (3:15-4:45) 4:00 5:00 karate club practice until 7 6:00 karate club practice until 8 karate club practice until 8 7:00
See, that's nice and packed right? But I think this is what I want, depending on how the classes tomorrow assign homework. With those huge breaks every day I can potentialy get homework done, I found the library today so I can go there when I want to or I can come home too I think. Wednesday is stupid because there is one class and then what? Thankfully, Hiroko-san said that the CIEE activities are usually on Wednesday, and I wanted to do most of them so that works out nicely.
Tomorrow night and Saturday morning/afternoon I will be able to Skype with everyone so I am excited for that. Sunday morning I might be able to for a while, but I am going to Harajuku again (with Chelsea) to investigate the used clothing shops that I saw last Sunday. I heard that they are cheap and good clothing so I want to see for myself. I also want to see the cosplayers again, and take some more pictures of them. George said that he wanted to come with us this weekend, but I think that if we are clothes shopping he would get bored. We'll see though, he might not want to come anymore because of this stupid tif (tiff? How do you spell that??) he got into with Chelsea over a word. It was annoying and I really don't want to explain it again, but it was basically a "that's not a real word" "yes it is" fight, and I don't want him to fight with her because she's my house mate and I really like talking to George a lot. He reminds me of Chin-san from Japanese class, it's really creepy.
I'll send out a link to the pictures once Emily gets them posted. :)