On Ohanami and other things
Saturday night, the Asian Studies program and Japanese Club had our Ohanami festival. About six-hundred people attended the event, which is far more than anticipated. As a member of Japanese Club, I had to help out. I attended to and made the poster for スーパーボール (Super Ball). It was a game in which kids try to scoop bouncy balls into a cup/net from a pool of water. I was there for almost the entire three hours (along with a Japanese exchange student) managing the game. There were tons of kids! I got splashed pretty often, but it was fun nonetheless. I even got to practice Japanese, which, to me, was the highlight of Ohanami. I was so surprised--I could understand and speak so much more than I expected! A lot of what was spoken was about food, which is kind of cool, as my class is only just finishing our chapter on food. I didn't think a lot of the vocab we just learned sank through, but apparently it did. It makes me really happy that I was able to understand and speak so much. It's made me even more excited to keep learning the language.
We had a number of events set up at Ohanami. There was calligraphy, origami, various traditional games, water games (like super ball), and more. We had two taiko groups perform, and there was a dance (Bon-odori) that we (Japanese Club) had to learn to go with one of the songs. When the song began to play, we showed other people how to dance to it. We also sang the song 「桜」, which Japanese Club (as well as anyone taking Japanese) had to learn in order to perform for Ohanami. Twas fun.
And, OH MY GOODNESS was there a ton of food. I've never seen so much sushi in my life. Even after six-hundred people came and ate, afterward there were still about six HUGE plates left over, which were divided between the eight or nine people from J-club who weren't too tired to grab some after Ohanami. I got a small plate of sushi. 美味しかったです!
Overall, Ohanami was an enjoyable experience. I got to wear the yukata I've had for ten years (got it in Disney World when I was in third grade; never had the occasion to actually wear it) and I got to practice my Japanese. Fun fun.
Sadly, I don't have any pictures, really. Just one of the sign I made for super ball before I finished it, and a picture of me in my own yukata.
Again, this isn't the finished poster. By the time I was done with it, there were about six sakura blossom pictures I printed off the internet, colored, and cut out on it. There was also glitter. Lots and lots of glitter.
My yukata. My first chance to wear it in the ten years I've had it. This picture was taken in Seth's dorm a couple hours after Ohanami (I had to help clean up/went to get sushi), so it kind of looks like crap here.
Two weeks ago, my meal plan money ran out. And then, for whatever reason, I couldn't transfer any money from my savings account to my checkings, so I was left sort of... slightly foodless for some time. In that past couple of weeks, I've lost about seven or eight pounds. Of course, that's also paired with increased DDR playing. Recently, while I've been playing DDR at the student union, the arcade guy has come up, opened the change chamber, clicked or pressed something in there which has given me free games. It's been pretty marvelous, I'll tell ya what. Thanks to that, I managed to discover some of my DDR favorites, including "Healing Vision", "Afronova", and "Daikenkai". I even discovered some other songs I did not expect. Namely this:
The Sailor Moon Sailor Stars opening song,「負けない」! I was so excited when I found it. I love this song, but it's especially awesome because I've been on a Sailor Moon kick as of late. If you didn't know, they re-released the manga in the states last year. Happy times.
So, yeah. Ohanami and Sailor Moon, yo.
On a different note, I think it's time to get back to work on "Slipping Between My Fingers". A number of creative writing folk (mostly professors) have been saying it's good to work on a novel while you're in college. Therefore, I think that as soon as summer break starts, I'm going to get back to writing it. Hopefully ideas will come to me this time, or that I can at least force them out, because goodness knows I haven't gotten very far in it as of yet.
Along the lines of writing, my Creative Writing class is driving me NUTS right now--and I'm not the only one. It's a small class, so we're all rather close, and we've been discussing class lately. The teacher is too aggressive (we've brought this up with her in the past), and it's become pretty unorganized in the past few weeks. Today the class was supposed to have finished a book, but only three or four people actually finished it. The professor somehow took the fact that not even half of the class finished it as a personal insult. I wonder if she realizes that it's the week before exams, and we're all busy with papers, projects, and studying for finals. It's difficult to get everything in, and sometimes people have to leave something out because not everything can get done in time. The prof. asked the class what we would do if we were in her position. I was the first to respond, saying that I would give the class more time. And I honestly would. If more than half the class doesn't finish the novel, then clearly there is a wide issue disallowing everyone from doing so at the moment. It's not like we're all slackers, though a few people may be. I've read and done everything for the class and all of my other classes up to this point, so obviously this is a rare occurrence. Furthermore, I'm annoyed that the professor always dismisses our suggestions/opinions when she asks us to give them to her. Some time ago, Seth sent her an email that the atmosphere in the class was making it hard for workshop to achieve its full potential in terms of giving people adequate critique on their writing. She said she was grateful that it was brought to her attention and wanted us to give her honest feedback on the class so that she could improve. However, when we did, she excused everything we said as untrue. She did that again today. She asked us why we didn't get the reading done, so we told her why. Immediately, she said that all we were doing was giving excuses. Beyond that, when she asked us what we would do in her position, she said she would do whatever we suggested, but of course, she ignored our suggestions when we told her. Why does she even bother asking our opinions at all if she's just going to ignore them?
Dangit, and while I'm at it, I might as well bring this up. The other day, she was telling us about her two friends whom she calls "the gingers". She said it was okay that she called them that because they call her "the brown girl" (she's Indian), then jokingly added that no one in the class could call her that. So the entire class joked to her about it, asking if they could call her that. I said, "Hey, I'm brown, too. Can I call you that?" Instantly, she said, "Oh, please, Michelle. You're not brown. Look at how much browner I am than you. You're white as could be." Uh, I didn't know it was a competition. I thought you were twenty-six, not five. Good grief. So, because I'm a light shade of brown, I'm somehow inadequate. Why should a grown woman who almost has a masters degree and has just gotten accepted into another grad program feel the need to invalidate someone over their skin color? Geez.
Anyway, I just figure I won't offer my thoughts in class anymore, as they're always ignored. (I suppose this isn't a very huge threat, as there's only two days of class left.)
Ah, yes. Next week is finals week, and then freedom in the form of summer vacation shall be upon me. I can almost taste the flavor of non-university food (or, indeed, food at all) on my tongue.
We had a number of events set up at Ohanami. There was calligraphy, origami, various traditional games, water games (like super ball), and more. We had two taiko groups perform, and there was a dance (Bon-odori) that we (Japanese Club) had to learn to go with one of the songs. When the song began to play, we showed other people how to dance to it. We also sang the song 「桜」, which Japanese Club (as well as anyone taking Japanese) had to learn in order to perform for Ohanami. Twas fun.
And, OH MY GOODNESS was there a ton of food. I've never seen so much sushi in my life. Even after six-hundred people came and ate, afterward there were still about six HUGE plates left over, which were divided between the eight or nine people from J-club who weren't too tired to grab some after Ohanami. I got a small plate of sushi. 美味しかったです!
Overall, Ohanami was an enjoyable experience. I got to wear the yukata I've had for ten years (got it in Disney World when I was in third grade; never had the occasion to actually wear it) and I got to practice my Japanese. Fun fun.
Sadly, I don't have any pictures, really. Just one of the sign I made for super ball before I finished it, and a picture of me in my own yukata.
Again, this isn't the finished poster. By the time I was done with it, there were about six sakura blossom pictures I printed off the internet, colored, and cut out on it. There was also glitter. Lots and lots of glitter.
My yukata. My first chance to wear it in the ten years I've had it. This picture was taken in Seth's dorm a couple hours after Ohanami (I had to help clean up/went to get sushi), so it kind of looks like crap here.
Two weeks ago, my meal plan money ran out. And then, for whatever reason, I couldn't transfer any money from my savings account to my checkings, so I was left sort of... slightly foodless for some time. In that past couple of weeks, I've lost about seven or eight pounds. Of course, that's also paired with increased DDR playing. Recently, while I've been playing DDR at the student union, the arcade guy has come up, opened the change chamber, clicked or pressed something in there which has given me free games. It's been pretty marvelous, I'll tell ya what. Thanks to that, I managed to discover some of my DDR favorites, including "Healing Vision", "Afronova", and "Daikenkai". I even discovered some other songs I did not expect. Namely this:
The Sailor Moon Sailor Stars opening song,「負けない」! I was so excited when I found it. I love this song, but it's especially awesome because I've been on a Sailor Moon kick as of late. If you didn't know, they re-released the manga in the states last year. Happy times.
So, yeah. Ohanami and Sailor Moon, yo.
On a different note, I think it's time to get back to work on "Slipping Between My Fingers". A number of creative writing folk (mostly professors) have been saying it's good to work on a novel while you're in college. Therefore, I think that as soon as summer break starts, I'm going to get back to writing it. Hopefully ideas will come to me this time, or that I can at least force them out, because goodness knows I haven't gotten very far in it as of yet.
Along the lines of writing, my Creative Writing class is driving me NUTS right now--and I'm not the only one. It's a small class, so we're all rather close, and we've been discussing class lately. The teacher is too aggressive (we've brought this up with her in the past), and it's become pretty unorganized in the past few weeks. Today the class was supposed to have finished a book, but only three or four people actually finished it. The professor somehow took the fact that not even half of the class finished it as a personal insult. I wonder if she realizes that it's the week before exams, and we're all busy with papers, projects, and studying for finals. It's difficult to get everything in, and sometimes people have to leave something out because not everything can get done in time. The prof. asked the class what we would do if we were in her position. I was the first to respond, saying that I would give the class more time. And I honestly would. If more than half the class doesn't finish the novel, then clearly there is a wide issue disallowing everyone from doing so at the moment. It's not like we're all slackers, though a few people may be. I've read and done everything for the class and all of my other classes up to this point, so obviously this is a rare occurrence. Furthermore, I'm annoyed that the professor always dismisses our suggestions/opinions when she asks us to give them to her. Some time ago, Seth sent her an email that the atmosphere in the class was making it hard for workshop to achieve its full potential in terms of giving people adequate critique on their writing. She said she was grateful that it was brought to her attention and wanted us to give her honest feedback on the class so that she could improve. However, when we did, she excused everything we said as untrue. She did that again today. She asked us why we didn't get the reading done, so we told her why. Immediately, she said that all we were doing was giving excuses. Beyond that, when she asked us what we would do in her position, she said she would do whatever we suggested, but of course, she ignored our suggestions when we told her. Why does she even bother asking our opinions at all if she's just going to ignore them?
Dangit, and while I'm at it, I might as well bring this up. The other day, she was telling us about her two friends whom she calls "the gingers". She said it was okay that she called them that because they call her "the brown girl" (she's Indian), then jokingly added that no one in the class could call her that. So the entire class joked to her about it, asking if they could call her that. I said, "Hey, I'm brown, too. Can I call you that?" Instantly, she said, "Oh, please, Michelle. You're not brown. Look at how much browner I am than you. You're white as could be." Uh, I didn't know it was a competition. I thought you were twenty-six, not five. Good grief. So, because I'm a light shade of brown, I'm somehow inadequate. Why should a grown woman who almost has a masters degree and has just gotten accepted into another grad program feel the need to invalidate someone over their skin color? Geez.
Anyway, I just figure I won't offer my thoughts in class anymore, as they're always ignored. (I suppose this isn't a very huge threat, as there's only two days of class left.)
Ah, yes. Next week is finals week, and then freedom in the form of summer vacation shall be upon me. I can almost taste the flavor of non-university food (or, indeed, food at all) on my tongue.