Calligraphy and Tea Ceremony!!

Ahhh I'm such an idiot!! I knew the super rapid train came at 7:47 so I made sure to make it to the station on time to catch it. But when it came, I freaked out and second guessed myself, thinking Toyohashi (where the train was going to) was in the wrong direction and at the last second didn't board it.

And yeah it was going in the right direction, duh, so I had to wait another 10 minutes for the next train. 

At least I had time to do the rest of my homework. 

Today I decided to dress like a Japanese person (aka wear a skirt) but it was 25 degrees so I wore two pairs of leggings underneath, and I don't care if I get tons of stares for them, but I'm wearing my hot pink uggs because my feet are too cold in all my other shoes.

You guys, Japanese people don't wear pink. Or even bright colors for that matter. Everyone just wears shades of brown and black. So the first question I always get from Japanese people is "pinku ga suki?" 

In America people only ask me that after they've seen that I wear pink pretty much every day, but here it's boom, right off the bat.

And I always respond with "pinku ga daisuki!"

But just about every Japanese person I meet tells me I'm "kawaii" so whatevs!

Oh and random thing real quick, lately all my dreams have had Japanese in them! Like in them I've been speaking some Japanese, the other people in my dream have been speaking Japanese, and there's been kanji and Japanese characters in them too. 

Last night in my dream I was at the train station and I saw all the Japanese signs and stuff. 

Ahh this country is now invading my subconscious as well!!

Anyway, at the subway station this guy around my age was running for the chikatetsu (subway) when he took a humungous faceplant and slid a few feet across the floor! But he just picked himself up and kept running. It was sad but also really funny. Everyone else just walked right past like nothing happened!

I ran into Emma coming off the subway, so she and I walked to school together. She told me about how she went to an onsen with her host mom and host sister (who's older and doesn't live at home). They went last night and stayed till like 11! I was super jealous though. That's on my todo list. And according to Emma, it was only about 1200 yen, which is way cheaper than I was expecting!

We stopped by Lawson's to get lunch since we had the bank orientation during our lunch period today.

I got this awesome bread with jelly inside.

Damn I'm gonna miss Japanese breads so much when I leave!

When I walked into class today my sensei (we had the lady, Kandou sensei today) commented on how I was wearing a lot of pink again and that I like pink and I was kawaii lol. 

Later, when she was handing out papers for us to write letters on, she dug through the pile to give me all pink ones and everyone laughed. I love her!

She also told me I was a really fast writer, and that I must write in Japanese a lot because I always finished all the writing exercises before everyone else but my characters were still "kirei" (beautiful).

I have Kumazawa sensei to thank for that, making us write so many things like actual letters to people and stuff!

The next class was Japanese communication. Mutsukawa sensei must have had a fever or something because he was sweating like a pig and kept fanning himself while the rest of us were comfortable. Idk.

We played this game where we had to guess prices of things and I rocked at it. The first one was the cost of a large pizza in Japan, and I got it right because Yuko has told me this weekend haha!

3000 yen. So expensive, dudes. And their definition of large is like our small lol.

I also got the price of a movie ticket right because Taylor had been talking about movie tickets last week.

I said 1800 yen and it was 1800-2000 yen. Takai desu ne!

At lunchtime, we had the bank orientation where we got our inkan (the long white stamp thing)!

What my inkan stamps (wise road = Keito):

It was fun! They wanted us to put in a 1000 yen deposit, but I didn't want to lose all my pocket money so I just put in 100 yen lol.

Then I sat with Emma and ate my bread and onigiri from Lawson's. She was doing her kanji homework. I actually knew some of the kanji, so I'm going to see if I can get the worksheet to do on my own, since in my class we haven't even started on kanji yet!

Oh btw Nanzan has food trucks. They were back today because all the Japanese students had clas again.

('Murica, guys)

And this is one of my classroom buildings that basically opens out into a forest:

I'm seriously in love with Nanzan's campus.

I love, love, Tech's campus but I really like how small and intimate Nanzan is and argh the views of the city. I could literally sit and stare out my classroom windows all day!

Ahem, like this:

Ahhh I can see all the buildings I walked past in Sakae!

But there are some sucky things about Nanzan. 

Things Nanzan does not have that I wish it did:

- water fountains (I found one today after carrying an empty water bottle around for the past week)

- paper towels in the bathroom

- clocks in the classrooms

- central heating 

- wifi (seriously? C'mon guys, get with the 21st century)

And I miss being able to eat in classrooms. I always ate oatmeal in Japanese class at Tech. :(

Now I have to stand out in the freezing hallways between class and scarf down the snacks I've learned to pack lest I starve to death! Seriously guys, my metabolism is way too high for this.

Anyways, after lunch I had the two classes I've been waiting forever to start!! Calligraphy and tea ceremony!!!!

Shodo (calligraphy) was really fun, but kind of hard. :/

I pretty much sucked haha. But it was cool doing legit calligraphy and using legit  writing utensils! :)

Those are my paintbrushes at the top! And it's different from in Kumazawa sensei's class at Tech because we don't use the already made paint like she did. Btw that paint she said was so expensive can be bought at the 100 yen shop here according to our sensei!

No, we use these block things we had to buy. We scrape them over and over again on the black dish thing and mix it with water and the stuff that rubs off turns into the paint/ink. 

Wow that was a bad explanation, hopefully you guys can follow it.

Our blocks:

(Front)

(Back)

We just wrote the kanji: 生 (life) over and over and then turned in our best one. All mine sucked.

Then was sadou (tea ceremony)! I'm so excited for that class!! 

Today was boring, though. We just watched movies about tea ceremony and the sensei (who was dressed in a kimono!) lectured.

Both calligraphy and tea ceremony were taught all in Japanese.

Yeah, no.

I literally just sat there and stared, wishing I could understand. 

And I'm scared the tea ceremony sensei doesn't know English because most of the few English words she wrote were spelled wrong and she wants our final paper in Japanese.

After classes, I dropped some stuff off in my locker and caught the super rapid train home! :)

For the first time, I saw a train delayed! It was one on my route, too, but not one is been planning to take, thankfully.

At the bike parking, I asked the ojii san there if I could get a bike pass because I'm so over paying 100 yen a day!

He told me to go to the third bike area and talk to then, so I went over to this building thing and walked inside and talked to the three guys left inside there working, two of whom appeared my age. And yeah, in broken Japanese I conveyed what I wanted and they basically told me that wasn't a bike office.

Haha awks.

So I went back to the bike parking area where I'd been and talked to another ojii san and he told me to come back in the morning because right now they were cancelled or something and some other things I couldn't understand.

So hopefully I'll be able to get it tomorrow!

I did find out it's for a month and only 1800 yen, so I really need to get on that!

When Yuko called me in for dinner there were things wrapped in foil at each of our places and I got all excited, thinking it was a burrito! 

But no, just veggies :(

But it was all really good!

After dinner I did homework. Ugh.

Happy MLK day, everyone! Enjoy your break before school starts (at least my Tech friends).

And think of me eating Japanese bread and learning tea ceremony and exploring Japan while you struggle with schoolwork! ;)

No jk, I'm having a super rough time too what with the language barrier and everything, so don't worry, we're all in the same boat guys. Ganbatte!

Miss you all!!

(Me doing my hw with Miyabi)

And pix from Rana's: