When I came into the kitchen this morning, Yuko asked if I'd been able to sleep last night and I said I could. Then she didn't say anything else, but I'm pretty positive she was referring to Miyabi getting sick.
I ate my cereal while she went to tend to Miya. When she came back, she said something again, making sure of slept well and I told her I heard, but I was stil able to fall asleep because I was really tired.
Then Miya came in to eat too, so it looked like she was feeling better. Yuko said they were going to go to the doctor later today.
After breakfast, I got ready for school and then headed out. I had to stand on the JR from Ichinomiya to Nagoya, but at Nagoya, it emptied out so I went to get a seat. I don't like sitting in seats with both of the seats open because then I have to slide in to the inside and that's pointless when the ride from Nagoya to Kanayama is so short and I'd have to climb over people to get out. I saw a single aisle seat open a few rows back, so I went to that one.
But people were starting to come in the doors on this side, and a man was heading to this seat too. I got to it literally a millisecond before he did and slid in. I felt bad about it, but I mean I'd been standing for twenty minutes and kind of wanted to sit now. But yeah, it was kind of awkward. Especially because this guy couldn't get the seats behind me because they were nabbed by people entering from the other door, so I think he had to stand.
Ah well, in Japan it's like a life or death race to get a seat on a crowded train. No giving up your seat to a lady or any kind gentlemanly things like that.
The subways were super crowded like always. It's so fun to listen in on people's conversations when you're on crowded trains or walking through crowds because literally everyone says "yabai" after every other word (that means dangerous), so you just hear "yabai", "yabai", "yabai" from all around you!
I decided to walk out the entrance of Yagoto Nisseki that's the longer way, but you only have to cross one street. And it's a good thing I did because there were people passing out super cute packs of tissues!!
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| See?? |
I caught up with Esteban at the light, so we walked to school together. And then we hung out with the rest of our friends in the office before class. I told Emma how this Japanese guy who lives in the dorms and is friends with a bunch of the ryuugakusei who live in the dorms had friended me on Facebook last night even though I'd never talked to him before. But I'd added him back anyway because he was cute, haha.
In class, we had our last ever vocab quiz!! Woohoo! It was super easy. I'm going to miss those easy 100s though.
Then we had to practice noun modification, so Mutsukawa sensei was all like "you all want boyfriends or girlfriends, right?" and I was like "ohh yeah" and he thought that was hilarious.
So he made us describe our perfect boyfriend/girlfriend. I said cute and likes to talk to me. And he asked what I want to talk to him about and I said my life, haha. But then I realized I should have said smart too, because everyone else was saying smart. Dangit. But every time they did, Mutsukawa sensei would ask if that person wanted their significant other to be smarter or dumber. Chris said dumber, but then the girls said smarter. Heather kept going on about how sexist that was, that the guys want to be smarter than their girlfriends.
At the end of class, Natalia brought up Japanese tongue twisters and asked Mutsukawa sensei to teach us some. I was like "omg I already know a bunch!" So Mutsukawa sensei had me say the ones I knew. I said "basu gasu bakuhatsu", which is Miyabi's favorite, and then I was like "my favorite is the momomomo one," so Mutsukawa sensei wrote that one on the board too.
"Sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi."
Hahahahaha!
Then he taught us the most famous one in Japan, that everyone knows. And I asked if he remembered the frog one, because I couldn't and he knew that one too!
I headed over to Dagane with Heather for lunch.
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| My balanced lunchi with misokatsu as a side, yay! |
When we got there, Emma was already there eating, so we joined her. We started talking about Avril Lavigne's video for her new song "Hello Kitty" and I brought it up on my phone and played it. It was strange... Haha. It's been getting a lot of hate on the Internet now because she's trying to be all cutesy and Japanese, but her accent when speaking Japanese really sucks! Like she says "air-ee-gatou." I think she's not so popular in the US and Canada anymore (since she's been around since the early 2000s), so she's catering to her fans in Japan, because everyone loves her here! She's always doing concerts over here.
But yeah, the first thing she says in the movie is "Mina saiko arigatou." Heather, Emma, and I couldn't for the life of us figure out what "saiko" meant! We asked Esteban, Rafa, and Rashaa, who were sitting at the next table over, but they didn't know either!
I had to meet Kanno (the lady who's always helping me out in the office - I finally remembered her name!) to talk with her and Chris about the bike at 12:35, so we headed over to the CJS office. Outside the office, we saw Mikki, who's in 800, so we asked her what "saiko" means and she said "the best," so Avril Lavigne was saying "thank you everyone for being the best." Ohhhh!
The song's catchy, I'll give her that. But I liked her way better back when she was doing "Sk8r Boi."
So when Chris showed up, he, Kanno, and I all sat at a table to discuss the bike. The current problem was that Chris couldn't find the little proof of registration paper he got when he bought the bike. And in Japan, everyone has to have their bike registered with the police so that if it gets stolen, it will be returned to whoever's name it's registered in. But the problem is there are super retarded laws like if you don't have the original registration paper, then you can't cancel your registration.
So now that Chris has lost his paper, the bike will forever be registered in his name. So if one of Yuko's future host students loses the bike, it won't be returned to Yuko once it's found.
Kanno called up some places though and apparently Chris can write a letter saying he turns the bike over to Yuko and then sign the letter and that should work the same as canceling his registration.
But they said Yuko might not like that idea, and want a new bike instead. Arghhh, this is so taihen!
And theeeen, Chris explained to me that there had been some confusion between me, my host family, and Kanno. He said apparently it was rude that I went and got the bike fixed on my own and then said it worked and was fixed.
I told Chris, I thought I'd been helping out, getting it done on my own and I hadn't meant to be rude. He said he knew that, but apparently it sounded like it came off as rude to Yuko.
Then Kanno was all like, "the Japanese way is to put yourself in other people's shoes and look at things from their point of view. So put yourself in your host parent's shoes, their bike is broken, so you see what they want?"
And I was like "yeah, I know, they want a new bike." But really, if that's the Japanese way, how come they didn't put themselves in my shoes? I'm completely new to this country, can't speak the language, and I just got hit by a car. Like, I wished they had tried to help me more and talked with me instead of talking through the school.
Afterwards, Emma, who had come about halfway through our talk, told me she would have started crying with the fact that they kept telling me I'd been rude and everything. But I told her I'd been too angry to cry.
After Kanno left, Emma, Chris, Tom, and I just sat there for a while fuming about stupid Japanese laws. Chris was super pissed off about not being able to go up, show his ID as proof he owned the bike and renounce his ownership. But instead, he needed a little paper that he'd deemed unimportant and probably threw out.
Then it was time for the "going home orientation" that everyone in CJS leaving next month had to attend. So we headed upstairs to this huge room where almost all of our fellow ryuugakusei (those not staying past May) were sitting. When we walked in, we got a packet of paperwork as well as a big leather folder thing that we can use to hold the diploma we're getting at our closing ceremony. I was disappointed that it didn't have Japanese on it. It just said "Nanzan" and had some Latin with the Nanzan crest. But it did open backwards like Japanese books do!
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| Diploma thing |
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| Heather described this perfectly: "A packet full of sadness" |
We also got questionnaires about our host family. Ooh, that will be fun to fill out!
Although I didn't have too great of an experience with my host family, I really loved Nanzan!! It's such a great school and I had fun everyday. I actually looked forward to going to school. I wish I hadn't underestimated myself, thinking I wasn't outgoing enough to be able to make Japanese friends, because I have! I have so many Japanese friends at Nanzan now that the Japanese students are back and I definitely speak more Japanese at school than I do at home. In a perfect world, I would go back to America to work this summer and then come back to Japan to spend the fall semester at Nanzan, when the Japanese students are there all semester and live in the dorms and continue my Japanese studies...
Anyway, during the orientation, Mitch talked about what kinds of things we'll feel when we get home like sadness, like we're misunderstood, whatever. And then he told us about the stages you go through when you study abroad. I thought they were interesting because they were actually true for me, and from the sound of it, most of my fellow ryuugakusei as well.
1st-3rd month in a foreign country is the Honeymoon stage, where everything's new and exciting and you're having a blast, etc.
4th-6th month is the Hostile stage, where you're all like what the heck? Why do they think like that? Why is that their culture, that's stupid! I miss my country, where everything makes sense.
Wow. Those are exactly the sorts of things that Chris, Emma, Tom, and I had just been saying downstairs...
6th-12th month is the Sympathetic stage. I didn't really hear what he said for this one because I was still reeling from what he had just said about the Hostile stage. I'm guessing it's where you start to see what the country's values are all about and try to follow them to the best of your ability.
12th month on is the Understanding stage, were you finally understand the culture of the country for the most part and are able to fit in and live life like the natives of that country.
So I guess I actually did go through the two stages I was supposed to for doing a five month study abroad. Huh, funny.
Anyway, then the orientation was finally over. And I guess as thanks for sitting through the entire thing, we got T-shirts!!
I already knew we were going to get them because I'd gotten all jealous when Emma got a shirt for being picked to write about 400 in the Nanzan brochure, but Mitch had told me we'd get better shirts tomorrow.
And these were better!! Because guess what? They had Japanese on them!!! Whoo!!!! I wanted a Japanese Nanzan shirt! The bookstore ony sells English ones.
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| It has the Nanzan crest in the frocket area |
Heather and I were trying to figure out earlier who got picked to write about the 300 class, because neither of us did and Natalia hadn't said she'd been picked. Then I saw Mitch give Ryan a shirt. Had he been picked?? He always sleeps through class and never has any idea what's going on when he gets called on!
Anyway, when the orientation was over, it was time for the Farewell coffee hour! I convinced Emma to go. When I got there, I saw Kazuki and then Sara, Yukari, and Hotaru. There were the usual drinks and then both sweet and savory breads as well as a bunch of packages snacks.Emma left right after she ate because she's lame. So she missed out on the event.
The coffee hour leaders had a basket with slips of paper. Each slip had a question in Japanese on it about what we liked best about Japan, what was convenient, a cool experience we had, etc. And them ryuugakusei could go up and take one and answer it (in Japanese) in front of everyone. Some people had trouble reading the kanji, but the girls who were leading the coffee hour would read out the kanji and the ryuugakusei always understood then. I didn't know a lot of the words though. But then again I was the only one in there in 300. Everyone else was above 400. :/ So when Kazuki, Sara, and Hotaru tried to get me to go up, I wouldn't do it because I was too afraid I wouldn't be able to read it or if by some miracle, I could understand it, I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted to say. If they had pushed me a little more, I probably would have gone up, but they didn't. And then the leaders said only two more, and two people volunteered, so it was over after that.
Although later, with just Sara, I went up and pulled one out. I forgot the kanji for "benri," so she told me it and I realized it was asking what the most convenient thing was, so I said the trains and she liked that. Maybe I could have done it. Oh well...
Then we all took a bunch of silly pictures!
After that, Sara left, so she missed the big group picture they took. I left right after it and did some homework. Then I went out to the green area to lie down because it was that nice time of afternoon/evening (prevening for you Big Bang Theory fans), where everything looks golden because the sun's really low in the sky and everything is casting super long shadows.
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| The green area is like a baby Drillfield. But Japanese people don't sunbathe or sleep on it like we do on the Drillfield at VT :( |
All the bushes around Nanzan and the dorms around Nanzan are blooming with beautiful white, pink, and purplish-pink flowers! Here are the purplish-pink ones in front of the Nanzan sign.
Then I made my way home. Here's a pretty totally filtered picture I took by the bike parking area at Ichinomiya station.
Yuko came in and saw me sitting cross legged and told me not to sit like that when I'm wearing a skirt. So I showed her that it was actually a skort. But she was like, you still shouldn't sit like that. And then she made some comment about my tight tears too. At least these tears weren't as bad as the last ones she saw!
Ken came home for dinner, so we all ate together. Yuko asked if I'd decided where I wanted to go with my mom and sister yet and I told them I had and then listed the places I wanted to go. Yuko then told me it would probably be better to get a hotel the night before our flight home (instead of staying with them) so we'll be closer to the airport since our flight is so early. I agreed, so Yuko sat on her iPad and wrote down some hotels for me while I drank my tea.
The hotels were all super expensive. Also, she wrote everything in kanji, I guess forgetting that I'm not Japanese, haha. So I asked her what some of it meant, thinking she'd get the hint and write the rest with furigana. She didn't.
I went back to my room after that to start my homework for Friday. I was doing it when Miya came in to tell me it was dessert time! There was a box of a bunch of individually wrapped long oval-shaped hazelnut cookies with a thin layer of chocolate on top. They were delicious! I had three of them.
Then I went back to my room to eat more chocolate and watch Free! like I've been doing every night. I need to stooopppp. Every morning I come to school and am like, "Emma, I ate too much chocolate last night," haha. She said I'm starting to sound like a broken record.
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