Monday, March 31
So it started like any other morning. I barely made the 7:57 train, but I jumped on at the last second (I had to squeeze myself in and the announcements were saying that the doors were closing, so wait to take the next train. I was all like hell no, I'm taking this train!), rode to school, met up with Esteban when I exited at Yagoto Nisseki and we walked to school together. Btw the station was packed!!
While I was waiting for the subway at Kanayama, I heard this cute Japanese guy behind me talking to his friend about Nanzan. Must be incoming freshman.
But then we got to Nanzan...
There were people handing out flyers in front of the gate, so we took them, thinking it must be some orientation thing.
And then we entered and holy crap. The main street was lined with football players in their football uniforms!! I have a weakness for football players, so it made it worse that all these cute Japanese guys were in football uniforms! And they were all saying "Ohayou gozaimasu" to everyone who walked by!! Ahhhh!
The sakura bloomed just in time for the new school year!
When we got up to R building, I turned around and saw Emma right behind us. I was all like "wasn't that amazing??" And she said it reminded her of a host club with all the guys lined up to welcome us in, haha. She was so right!
When I got inside, after I talked to everyone about how amazing the football players were, I went to answer the priest at Ichinomiya church's email. Since I couldn't make it to the picnic in Kyoto, he invited me to Mie-ken to go with him to visit another priest who's a friend of his. He told me we could go earlier to see a shrine too, if I wanted and I said I did! Then he asked me if I wanted to leave at 11 or 12, and even though leaving at 12 would give us an hour less at the shrine, I decided I didn't want to miss my quiz in class that morning, so I'd go to my first class Friday and then leave to chill with Father John all day.
In class today, Kondo sensei told us that since it's hanami season, we'll probably see a lot of drunk grandpas around town haha. Keep this in mind, for later on in my blog entry. ;)
At lunch time, I was walking to the cafeteria, when I saw the main street was packed with Japanese students! They were all giving out flyers, trying to recruit people to join their clubs! There were also some clubs doing performances on the green area, because I could hear singing!
All the little freshman were walking through and their senpai (upperclassmen) were handing flyers to them. I wanted flyers too, but no one was giving me any! I saw the swimming club, but I think only Japanese students can join the sports clubs because they require you to attend so many practices and we ryuugakusei are so busy!
But then these students from this martial arts club that was like kendo, but different handed me a flyer! The girl was really nice and spoke to me in Japanese about the club. They told me it was different from kendo. I said I'd never heard of it, but I'd like to watch it. We had some trouble communicating, but they were still really nice.
After that, I was bombarded with students handing me flyers! My favorite club was the Japanese Culture Club. The girls were really nice and talked to me in English! I really want to join it.
When I finally made it to the cafeteria, I had a buttload of flyers!
I got misokatsu and ate with Esteban and Ryan. Then Esteban and I decided to go back out and look at the clubs some more. I wanted to go buy ice cream first because I've been wanting to try the red bean ice cream and I wanted to do it before the tax went up.
When I went into Lawson though, the line was soooo long! It wrapped around in the store 5 times! I saw Mitch (Matsui san) waiting in line, so I had an idea!
I asked him if he would buy the ice cream for me, since he was pretty near the front. He was happy to do so!
He also told me tomorrow is the day classes start up again for the Japanese students. They have their opening ceremony tomorrow, the first of April. It's just like in manga, where the kids walk through the falling sakura petals to their opening ceremony!
So I got my ice cream and ate it while Esteban and I looked at all the clubs. It was less busy now and most of them had taken a break to eat lunch. Esteban found his badminton friends and went to go talk to them, so I wondered off by myself.
I ran into Josephine and Deanna. They had found an anime and game club. The guy running the booth was just sitting there, reading a book. Josephine was interested in the club, though, so she asked him for a flyer. I got one too. Then I asked the guy what the club does and he told me they watch anime and write their impression/opinion of the episode and also make comics. It sounded cool!
Their flyer was pretty cool too:
I decided to walk back through once more. This time when I passed that martial arts booth from before, this cute guy stopped me and asked me in English if I wanted to join. I asked what it was and he started telling me how it's more like zen than fighting. Then he got his friend to explain the history to me. His friend was kind of nerdy and spoke English really well! He told me all about the history of this martial arts form.
Then the cute guy told me I should come try out. I asked him when tryouts were and if I needed the uniform they were all wearing (which looked a lot like the kendo uniform), but he told me I could just wear workout-type clothes. He also said they're going to be doing a performance in the green area on Wednesday. I saw I could probably go before coffee hour. Maybe grab some food and eat it while I watch, so I told them I'd go. :)
And then because my life sucks, the wind blew my hair into my ice cream and it got caught in it. I didn't realize until the cute guy pointed it out to me. And then I basically ran away.
When I told Emma in calligraphy later, she said I'm like a walking shojo manga, hahaha.
After I finished talking to the cute guy, I figured I'd head over to Dagane to see if any of my friends were still over there. But then I looked at my phone and saw it was 1:32!! Holy shit! I had class at 1:30! Time flies when you're talking to good looking guys. I ran to my locker and grabbed my stuff and made it to class at 1:37! Yes, new record!
In calligraphy today, this dude came in to take pictures of us working. Not okay. I totally sucked today because we were doing some pretty hard kanji and we could pick which way we wanted to write them, but all the ways looked really weird. So I just chose what looked easy and pretty.
After calligraphy, I walked past all the beautiful sakura to tea ceremony.
In tea ceremony, Pearl decided to wear the kimono again. I'd been wanting to wear it again, so when I saw her go over, I jumped up too. I wanted to wear the black one, since that one looks prettier and I haven't worn that one yet. But Pearl chose the black one, even though she's worn that one already. >:(
Ah well. When sensei was dressing me, she told me the red one suited me well. :)
We did flower arranging today! There was a huge pile of flowers and we got to choose a vase and flowers and make an arrangement! I got to go first. Of course I chose pink flowers. I picked the ume (plum) blossom branch and then was going to put another color with it, but sensei suggested I put these light pink ones in. Awesome! The more pink the better! :) And I picked this cool vase as well.
Then I waited as everyone else had their turn.
When we finished our arrangements and listened to sensei's lecture, we moved on to the tea ceremony part of class.
The okashi was yellow springtime butterfly okashi! It was soooo good! I think it was made of the same kind of stuff as our first okashi, the pink flowers. And it had red bean paste inside!
And we had matcha too!
Only a few people got to make tea today, but I made sure I was one of them so I could get a picture of me doing it in a kimono.
First you fill the ladle with water. You hold the ladle as you would a pencil.
Then you pour half of the water from the ladle into the tea cup that already has matcha powder in it.
And dump the rest of the ladleful of water back into the pot.
Next, you use the brush/whisk thing to stir the tea and then whisk it so the mixture becomes thick and green.
And finally, the tea is ready. Examine the tea cup and then place it in front of the black line for the guest to take!
Ahh making tea is so fun!
When class was over, we took pictures in front of the flowers. :)
Sensei let us use the sandal-like shoes to walk outside!
So we took pictures by the sakura trees in the green area!
I ran back across the green area after taking these pictures and these Japanese ladies were watching me and chuckling, lol. After we changed out of our kimonos (my toes hurt from the sandals), I headed to my locker to put my brushes back in and then walked to the station.
On the way, I stopped at Lawson's to buy bread. I got the bag of three apple danishes again. I went over to the counter to pay. Only one cashier was open with no one behind the counter. But an old man was standing there, so I stood behind him. Then he turned around and got really close to me, all up in my face and started counting to 10 in Spanish. I wondered if he thought I was Spansih because I was blonde. But then I smelled the osake on his breath. He was drunk. So what sensei said was actually true! They were ojii-sans drunk from hanami wondering around!
When I didn't say anything, he asked me in English if I was from America, and I said "hai." Then, thankfully, one of the Lawson's employees came over and saw the guy harassing me and opened up another cash register and told me I could go pay over there.
When I got to Kanayama, I was craving green tea chocolate, so I bought the chocolate all we ryuugakusei love. It's chocolate with cookies underneath and comes in milk, dark, white, and green tea. I've never gotten it before because it's a bit expensive but it was only 100 yen here! At least, until tomorrow. Tomorrow it'll be 108 yen. Lame :/
And then I headed home. I rode my bike home at sunset and it was so beautiful! The sakura were really blooming in the park along the river, so I stopped to take some pictures.
At home, I played with Miyabi and did my homework. Miyabi and I watched a gameshow on tv. I understood some of the questions and made guesses, but I was wrong, haha.
Miya I also showed me this new notebook she had gotten. In the inside cover it had a quiz to show you what type of person you like. She had me take the quiz first and I got "omoshiroi hito" funny person lol. It was funny because the first question was whether you had a "suki na hito" (person you like) and when Miya took the quiz next, she answered "yes" for that one.
I was all like "ehhhh?? Dare?" (Who?)
But she wouldn't tell me haha. I was like "aw, how come?"
So she asked me "dare?" (Who was my suki na hito) and I said I wasn't telling either, and she was all like "see?"
Haha she's funny.
Then I did my homework until Ken came home and we had dinner. I walked in to the kitchen and there was an entire (head, tail, everything), large fish cut in half chilling on each of our plates...
And the fish was filled with bones! Like it had a giant spine-like bone you had to carefully extract using just your chopsticks, but once that was out and you though you were done, the rest of the fish was filled with itty bitty hair thin bones! Argh!
It took me forever to remove the bones and a couple of times I cheated and used my fingers. When I was done though, Ken told me I was really, really good at removing the bones! :D
Yuko said I probably ate the little bones, but I told her I didn't!
We also had rice, soup, fried tofu, and little fish cake things that were in star-like shapes and came in pink and light green! They were cool and tasted good too!
Also, Yuko asked me if I knew Brendan. I told her I knew a Brendan who's from Texas. She asked if he'd just switched to a host family from a dorm, because her friend now has a new host student named Brendan, but she says he never speaks lol. The Brendan I know is pretty quiet too. Yuko asked if maybe his Japanese is bad, but I said he's in a higher level than I am! Then Yuko said he's big and his friends call him Kuma chan (bear), and I was like yup, same Brendan, haha.
(He's in the above picture of us in our kimonos in front of the flower arrangements)
After dinner, I finished my homework.
Tomorrow Emma and I are going to do a photo shoot with the sakura, so I looked up the best places in Nagoya to see the sakura for free. It turns out there's a river near Mizuho Undojo-Higashi that is one of the best places to see sakura in Japan! So I texted Emma about it and she said it sounds good! Yay, I'm so excited!!
Lollll I cracked up at all of your adventures with the cute boys!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm so jealous you get to see the sakura bloom!!!