Staying positive
I didn't want to write a journal entry when I was feeling down; it's much more fun to write a journal entry when you've had a great day. But in the spirit of documentation, I feel I must wrote about the disappointing as well as the good.
So yesterday I registered for classes and fortunately got both courses I wanted. I got the last spot for Intro to Japanese History, which is a surprisingly popular class, so I am really lucky. We had a registration lottery the day before, and I got number 131 out of 444 for registration. Sadly, I know the kid that got number 444. He actually wore the ticket inside his headband for the rest of the day, he thought it was so funny that he could be so unlucky. Anyways, registration was around 10 am, and afterwards I had to wait until 1:30 for the general meeting. I ended up hanging out with my friends in the cafeteria for about 3 hours, which was fun. But I had and still have this feeling like I should be striving to learn the language at every moment, and speaking English with my friends makes me feel guilty. Anways, after the meetings were over I went back to the dorm and read my library book and watched the Japanese version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Then I went out with three other people to find food.
The restaurant we finally decided on, though, "Gasuto," was kind of like a Denny's. It wasn't like the small restaurants I've been to before where you can talk to the owners and other customers. So it was kind of disappointing. And it was kind of frustrating because I had a hard time communicating with our waitress. Like, first I didn't understand that the drinks weren't included with the bill. So when my friends got up to go to the drink bar, this other waitress comes rushing up to them explaining that they have to order them separately. And then, when I got my miso soup it didn't come with one of those ladel/spoon things. So when my waitress came by, I tried to ask her if I could eat the soup without a "tool," which she didn't understand. So then I tried imitating me sipping the soup from the bowl, and asked her if it was okay. She still didn't understand. So then she asked me if I wanted a spoon, and I said yes. So she came back with this tiny spoon the size of my pinky finger, which I ate the soup with. I should have just sipped it and not have asked. One funny thing that happened, though, is when we first sat down. After taking a few minutes deciding what we wanted from the menu, we started to wonder when our waitress would arrive to take our orders. Then I noticed this little round plastic thing on the table with a button on it. I couldn't understand anything it said except for the end, "please press the button." So I told my friends, I think we're supposed to press the button when we're ready to order. But all of us were too afraid to press it. So I finally broke down and asked someone from an adjacent table, and turns it that is how you order. Funny how something so simple could be so confusing.
So today was the official opening ceremony of the 2006 Asian Studies program at Kansai Gaidai. Some important people from the American and Australian embassy gave speeches, along with some of the Kansai Gaidai faculty and students. My favorite was a speech delivered by the head of the Japanese language courses. She gave her speech in Japanese, on a level nearly everyone could understand. And she made a lot of funny jokes. Like, she set up her speech in a series of questions- a quiz of our knowledge of Japan. One of the questions was "are Japanese girls kirei?" And so she shook her head yes, and said, "like me. Very clean" (kirei means both clean and beautiful). Then she said, "But kirei also means beautiful. So I am both clean and beautiful." Everyone laughed at that one. I hope that she is my teacher for one of my Japanese language courses; the school hasn't posted the class assignments yet.
So after a great banquet with lots of free food, I ran back to the dorms to change out of my "semi-formal" attire and then ran back to campus for the Kyoto tour. I was planning on meeting my speaking partners there, but as it turned out we were divided into small groups and then paired up with small groups of Japanese students. So I didn't actually get to meet my speaking partners, unfortunately. Our tour guides were very friendly, however. But like the incident at the restaurant with the drinks and the miso soup, it was very hard to communicate with them in Japanese (although they were very patient and let us practice our Japanese even when they could speak perfect English). And then on the train, at one point I was sitting across from this Japanese girl, looked about my age, and our eyes kept meeting. So finally I tried talking to her, but she had a hard time understanding me. I asked her where she was going, which she understood, but when I tried to explain to her that I was going with a tour to Kyoto she didn't understand at all. So we just kind of awkwardly smiled and nodded at each other until her stop came up. I don't know, my confidence has kind of gone done recently due to botched conversations like this one.
We took the train to Kyoto with the hopes of going to Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion), but one of the people on the tour took a long time buying sunglasses so it closed on us. So we decided to go to Kiyomizudera (a famous temple), which was cool. But along the uphill road to the temple, the exchange students on my tour kept stopping at these cheesy souvenier places with plastic swords and cheap flutes and stuff. And so by the time we got to the temple we only had an hour to look around. And something else that was kind of frustrating: the people in my tour group kept talking millions of pictures, so we walked around the temple at a snail's pace and didn't get to see all of it. But really, I think I would have had fun at the temple if I wouldn't have been in a bad mood about all of the delays. It was just one of those days, you know. I do have to say, though, I had fun after the temple when we went to a restaurant where they brought the food out to us and we cooked it on a gridle on our table. And riding the buses and trains was pretty cool. The system seems a bit complicated, but I'm sure I'll get it eventually. When I stand up I still feel like I'm moving forward, from standing up on the trains and buses for so long. I meet my host family on Sunday, but tomorrow I have absolutely nothing to do. So I think I'll walk to Hirakata station and check out the shops. Hopefully I can find some people to talk to down there, maybe at the park. Afterwards maybe I'll go to the library. I don't know... nothing really exciting. But things will pick up because I'll meet my host family, then classes will start, and hopefully I'll be able to meet my speaking partners some time this week.
So yesterday I registered for classes and fortunately got both courses I wanted. I got the last spot for Intro to Japanese History, which is a surprisingly popular class, so I am really lucky. We had a registration lottery the day before, and I got number 131 out of 444 for registration. Sadly, I know the kid that got number 444. He actually wore the ticket inside his headband for the rest of the day, he thought it was so funny that he could be so unlucky. Anyways, registration was around 10 am, and afterwards I had to wait until 1:30 for the general meeting. I ended up hanging out with my friends in the cafeteria for about 3 hours, which was fun. But I had and still have this feeling like I should be striving to learn the language at every moment, and speaking English with my friends makes me feel guilty. Anways, after the meetings were over I went back to the dorm and read my library book and watched the Japanese version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Then I went out with three other people to find food.
The restaurant we finally decided on, though, "Gasuto," was kind of like a Denny's. It wasn't like the small restaurants I've been to before where you can talk to the owners and other customers. So it was kind of disappointing. And it was kind of frustrating because I had a hard time communicating with our waitress. Like, first I didn't understand that the drinks weren't included with the bill. So when my friends got up to go to the drink bar, this other waitress comes rushing up to them explaining that they have to order them separately. And then, when I got my miso soup it didn't come with one of those ladel/spoon things. So when my waitress came by, I tried to ask her if I could eat the soup without a "tool," which she didn't understand. So then I tried imitating me sipping the soup from the bowl, and asked her if it was okay. She still didn't understand. So then she asked me if I wanted a spoon, and I said yes. So she came back with this tiny spoon the size of my pinky finger, which I ate the soup with. I should have just sipped it and not have asked. One funny thing that happened, though, is when we first sat down. After taking a few minutes deciding what we wanted from the menu, we started to wonder when our waitress would arrive to take our orders. Then I noticed this little round plastic thing on the table with a button on it. I couldn't understand anything it said except for the end, "please press the button." So I told my friends, I think we're supposed to press the button when we're ready to order. But all of us were too afraid to press it. So I finally broke down and asked someone from an adjacent table, and turns it that is how you order. Funny how something so simple could be so confusing.
So today was the official opening ceremony of the 2006 Asian Studies program at Kansai Gaidai. Some important people from the American and Australian embassy gave speeches, along with some of the Kansai Gaidai faculty and students. My favorite was a speech delivered by the head of the Japanese language courses. She gave her speech in Japanese, on a level nearly everyone could understand. And she made a lot of funny jokes. Like, she set up her speech in a series of questions- a quiz of our knowledge of Japan. One of the questions was "are Japanese girls kirei?" And so she shook her head yes, and said, "like me. Very clean" (kirei means both clean and beautiful). Then she said, "But kirei also means beautiful. So I am both clean and beautiful." Everyone laughed at that one. I hope that she is my teacher for one of my Japanese language courses; the school hasn't posted the class assignments yet.
So after a great banquet with lots of free food, I ran back to the dorms to change out of my "semi-formal" attire and then ran back to campus for the Kyoto tour. I was planning on meeting my speaking partners there, but as it turned out we were divided into small groups and then paired up with small groups of Japanese students. So I didn't actually get to meet my speaking partners, unfortunately. Our tour guides were very friendly, however. But like the incident at the restaurant with the drinks and the miso soup, it was very hard to communicate with them in Japanese (although they were very patient and let us practice our Japanese even when they could speak perfect English). And then on the train, at one point I was sitting across from this Japanese girl, looked about my age, and our eyes kept meeting. So finally I tried talking to her, but she had a hard time understanding me. I asked her where she was going, which she understood, but when I tried to explain to her that I was going with a tour to Kyoto she didn't understand at all. So we just kind of awkwardly smiled and nodded at each other until her stop came up. I don't know, my confidence has kind of gone done recently due to botched conversations like this one.
We took the train to Kyoto with the hopes of going to Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion), but one of the people on the tour took a long time buying sunglasses so it closed on us. So we decided to go to Kiyomizudera (a famous temple), which was cool. But along the uphill road to the temple, the exchange students on my tour kept stopping at these cheesy souvenier places with plastic swords and cheap flutes and stuff. And so by the time we got to the temple we only had an hour to look around. And something else that was kind of frustrating: the people in my tour group kept talking millions of pictures, so we walked around the temple at a snail's pace and didn't get to see all of it. But really, I think I would have had fun at the temple if I wouldn't have been in a bad mood about all of the delays. It was just one of those days, you know. I do have to say, though, I had fun after the temple when we went to a restaurant where they brought the food out to us and we cooked it on a gridle on our table. And riding the buses and trains was pretty cool. The system seems a bit complicated, but I'm sure I'll get it eventually. When I stand up I still feel like I'm moving forward, from standing up on the trains and buses for so long. I meet my host family on Sunday, but tomorrow I have absolutely nothing to do. So I think I'll walk to Hirakata station and check out the shops. Hopefully I can find some people to talk to down there, maybe at the park. Afterwards maybe I'll go to the library. I don't know... nothing really exciting. But things will pick up because I'll meet my host family, then classes will start, and hopefully I'll be able to meet my speaking partners some time this week.