Monday, October 24, 2011
Catch Up
こんいちは!

I realized I haven't done much updates about what I have been doing. Keeping a blog isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be with everything I've been doing. With everything I've been doing I spend all day moving and by the time I return home I just don't want to write anything. So this post is just catching up.


September 27th[Tuesday] was my birthday, my 21st birthday. I couldn't help but think, "Who would have thought that I would spend my 21st birthday in Japan as an exchange student." All I cared about when I was in high school was just graduating and trying to figure out what I wanted to do, let alone think what I would want to do for my 21st. Even though the drinking age here in Japan is 20, and I'm all ready legal, my 21st birthday is the best birthday I've ever had.

The American girls in Ryokuchi Koen planned me a surprise party; but they had gotten me surprised twice. On my actual birthday they had surprised me with a fruit tart-like cake. It was right after dinner down stairs, everyone had left and I was helping Amanda fill up her backpack full of water bottles (she goes them pretty fast). I'm pretty sure we filled up eleven water bottles before heading up. But before I went all the way up the stairs Fujiwara-san wished me happy birthday both in English and Japanese which put a smile on my face. Fujiwara is definitely a father figure to all us girls in Ryokuchi Koen, he looks out for all of us.

When I got up stairs and turned the corner I was greeted with everyone singing happy birthday. I wasn't expecting such a surprise, apparently Julie had planned the whole thing. But I was so grateful that they had pulled this off for me especially since we've all only known each other less than a month. This just shows that time doesn't always mean anything. The cake was small covered with various fruits on top; strawberries, blueberries, peach slice, pear slice, apple slice, kiwis and some fruit we had no idea what it was. Inside there were strawberries too! And the classic Japanese Happy Birthday writing is on a piece of chocolate placed on the top of the cake.

Julie then told me that she was going to spend all day with my Saturday for my birthday weekend, and then Sunday all the girls of Ryokuchi Koen would take me out somewhere. Something to look forward to for the weekend since my original plan of going to Tokyo would not happen.

The week passed by like normal and Saturday arrived. Julie and I didn't leave anywhere until afternoon. We've been teaching our friend Fuka cursive writing since she needs to read and write it for her part time job, thus we met up with her for lunch and spent the whole afternoon together. Eventually we met up with Mai for dinner at Mos Burger before departing. Julie had told me that what she had planned was in the evening, but we had time so we walked back up to the dormitory before we left for this destination. As we walked up the hill Julie had announced that everyone was going to Umeda again from a text she had gotten, and began complaining that everyone goes there to often and it's always to do the exact same thing. I didn't think anything of it at the time...

After freshening up Julie began to led me to where we were going which turned out to be the bowling ally that is close to campus and is basically on the main road. Excited I hurried to the elevator with Julie to go to the top floor of the building. Well, I had the surprise of my life when everyone was there waiting at the elevator when the doors opened. It was such a surprise, I turned five shades of red instantly earning many comments about it. I even got presents! The girls in Ryokuchi Koen pitched in and bought me a soccer ball while Mai and Fuka had bought me a little blanket you use when studying (or in general, but mostly when studying), a mug with cats on it, and a pen holder.

The night went by quickly with two games of bowling, me winning the first game on the lane I was in, and the Julie won the second game. But out of the two lanes that we were using Nick had us all beat with over 140 points. But the night didn't end with bowling, it was the arcade. The main purpose though was to go to the purikura machine, one of Japan's famous icons in pop culture.

With my birthday wrapped up, the next few days were just filled with going to school and enjoying life in Japan. From playing soccer with some Chinese exchange students who we met last Monday to just sitting outside on campus all day. Especially the later. Relaxing on the main lawn is what I have done basically all week after classes. People come out and play sports or practice. One club though that stands out is the double dutch team. Yes, double dutch team. I've seen them various times and watching them practice is absolutely amazing; the things they do just makes me stare in awe.

Julie has recently joined the team though with the efforts of Natsuki who started to talk to the team for Julie since she was to anxious to do it by herself. The few that were still there were extremely friendly and wanted Julie to try jumping a few times. It was honestly intimidating, I haven't jumped rope like this since I was an elementary school students. But the two guys teased Julie to try and make her relax along with the two girls there. Eventually one of the girls though came over and pulled me out to try. It's so difficult if you don't get the timing just right. (>_<) At least I was better than John who had tried a few times, haha.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Typhoon
こんにちは!

Yesterday was the first day of school and it wasn't exactly as bad as I was expecting it to be although Tuesdays are going to be my busy days.

The day start out as normal, hitting the alarm clock off at seven in the morning to get ready to go down and get breakfast. I never take a shower in the morning anymore since I don't have a hair dryer and my hair will not dry in time for school with all the humidity. Breakfast is only from 7-8:20 in the morning which isn't a lot of time. By the time I get ready it's roughly 7:45 am and Julie is usually ready to go down by this time as well.

Once breakfast is done Julie and I went up stairs to finish whatever we need to do, hair, make-up, gathering all the things we need for school. Julie, Ellie (who joined us at the main door to the dormitory), and I left for school calling out "Ittekimasu" as we left.

*A quick note for those who don't know, when you leave home you call out Ittekimasu which literally means "I'll go and come back" and is usually met with Itterasshai which means "Please go and come back." Something similar is used when one comes back home. You call out Tadaima "I'm home" and you are greeted with Okaeri nasai "Welcome home."

Thankfully I checked the weather and grabbed my umbrella because it was raining when we stepped outside. The walk was about 15 minutes but the main street that leads up to the school and we have became accustom to was filled with people. All you could see was different colors from the umbrellas and they were all the college students with a few business men and women mixed in the crowd. At the time I think I might have been in shock with how many people there were when we weaved into the crowd. And honestly it probably about the same amount of people that go to NAU but I'm not use to everyone being in a small space at once. The stares probably didn't help the situation.

There were a few men stationed throughout the street warning when there were cars coming through the street or anything else that we would need to move away from.

For Tuesdays I have three classes; JPN 2b (JPN Literacy), Naginata, and JPN Language & Society.
 JPN 2b is hard. The class focuses on writing and reading Japanese but the teacher doesn't speak very much English which is in a sense a good thing because we are forced to speak Japanese. But the downside is this is a writing class which involves grammer, kanji, and other things that need to be explained how and why it's worked in the way it does. The teacher, Kawashima-sensei, is really nice but I don't think she really knows how to teach Japanese to foreign students.

Naginata was amazing. I'm going to make a more story-like post next time on my thoughts on Naginata on the first day.

And finally is JPN Language & Society. The teacher is Kite-sensei who is also my adviser during the stay here at Kansai University. After this class I'm happy that she is my adviser because she is super nice, and her class seems so interesting. The class focuses on a more linguistic which is great because my interest in linguistics has grown since my anthropology class last semester.

But today (the 21st) class was cancelled because of the typhoon in the area. I had only one class today so it was no big deal but we weren't suppose to leave the dorm unless we had to. The typhoon wasn't directly above us, we just felt the effects like lots and lots of rain. Around the afternoon thankfully the rain let up and the dorm manager allowed us to hurry to the seven eleven store to grab some food for lunch since they don't serve lunch at the dormitory.

Nothing much happened today just rain, rain and rain.