random update

so i know i said i would try and update again before i left for kyoto...i lied. anyway, i went and came back and it was awesome. got back a couple days ago, and tomorrow morning at 5am (in approx. 3 hours) i'm getting up to embark on another trip. albeit only an overnight trip, but an important one nonetheless because it's my first one by myself (since coming to japan)! i'm going to yokohama, the second largest city in japan, about two to three hours away by train, and home to the biggest china town in the country, and one of the biggest in the world. wish me luck! when i get back, i'll post pics of kyoto, yokohama, and whatever else i've promised to do :).

quick post cuz i don't want to do work

so tomorrow is ikebana (that's japanese flower arrangement to you philistines)! after class we get about a 45 minute break, and then it's back to school for a lesson in another of japan's traditional arts (calligraphy was the first we dabbled in). some time later in the semester we'll be learning the japanese tea ceremony and then maybe a seminar on japanese cuisine (but i might've made that last one up).

after ikebana i'll be taking a train out to fujiyoshida because my host family is having this big reunion party. kinda of scary, kind of exciting. especially since fujiyoshidans speak a dialect of japanese (as i've discovered many of the different prefectures do) which i haven't quite learned the nuances of. fortunately "dialects" here aren't nearly as distinct as the "dialects" in china, which, let's be honest, are entirely different languages. anyway, my host mom said she might not be able to pick me up from the station, so it's likely that my host dad will come instead. considering i've only met him once before for about ten minutes, kinda nervous about that, too. it should be fun! 

ahh! my final's coming up! it's kind of exciting to be done with this portion of my program, though, and to be on my way to taking bona fide academic courses here at the university. but first, next week is kyoto! i'll try and squeeze in one more post between now and then and get some pictures of ikebana and other miscellaneous events.  

Okay, I can't lie, I have some free time right now.

I'm a little behind, so I'll sum up the past two weeks rather quickly:

-Had my midterm on Wednesday the 27th. Did pretty well, I have an A in the class so far. 

That night we had a potluck at our building. I made chicken picatta. It was delicious. We then went to a bar right across the street from us that was kind of pricey, but it was for the experience. Got to drink my beverage out of a wooden box, because apparently this is how it was traditionally served.

After that we went to a karaoke bar. So much fun! We were there from about midnight until about 3 in the morning :). People took some videos of me singing but I can't share them; for those of you who are interested in having a good laugh (and don't have full access to facebook), I'll show them to you when I return. 

-Next day we went to Fujikyuu Highland, the amusement park in Fujiyoshida, my host mom's town. I road the scariest rollercoaster. Yes, that's right, me. I absolutely hate rollercoasters so ordinarily I wouldn't have gone, but I was in Japan and I figured their contraptions were somehow more structurally sound? I dunno. Anyway, supposedly it's one of like two four-dimensional rollercoasters in the world. Needless to say, my eyes were shut for the entire thing.   

-Saturday the 1st I went to my host mom's again. We pretty much spent the day cooking delicious things (apple pie and pizza). That night, my host dad came back home (he had been out at sea teaching students how to work the engine, at least that's what I think my host mom said)! I was pretty nervous because I spent the day with my host mom waiting for him to get back that night, and since he was pretty tired, we didn't get much of a chance to talk. He ate dinner and then went to go watch tv, but he seemed nice enough.

-Next day a group of us went to tokyo again for another trip. Got on our first train at 7:22 that morning and went to multiple different districts. Arguably the coolest among them was Asakusa, a veritable Japan town in Japan. It's a big touristy shopping area with stores that sell all the little chachkas you'd find in Little Tokyo, but with a really big temple. 

From there we went to the Ueno Zoo, which...well, it was a zoo. It was fun. Learned some animal names in Japanese. After that we went to Roppongi, which many say is the tourist capital of Japan. Incidentally, it's also one of the few places in Japan where you're encouraged to be wary of your belongings. I suspect the two go hand in hand. Saw some tall buildings, a cool media-arts museum, and ate ice cream at a Cold Stones (which was more of a novelty for the Japanese friends that were accompanying us on this trip).

After we left Roppongi, we hopped on another train and stopped somewhere else in Tokyo on the way home for dinner (I don't remember what it was called). Had my first sushi experience in Japan and...it was okay. This was an affordably priced kaiten sushi (the conveyor belt sushi places) restaurant, and so I suspect I can find better sushi elsewhere in Japan. The pictures for everything that I wrote up until here are linked on the previous post, March 10.

-Oddly enough, I don't really remember what happened for much of last week (I'll consult the others and get back to you if it's anything interesting), so I'm going to skip to Friday the 7th: had our second chinese calligraphy class. For this class, we were instructed to pick any two characters of our liking to draw calligraphy style. I chose the word dojo, not because it was especially pertinent to anything at all, but because I found the characters aesthetically pleasing. That night we had a small get together at the apartments again.

-The following day I went to my host mom's again (I've been going pretty much every Saturday). My host dad went skiing in Nagano, a prefecture a little north of Yamanashi (where i am), so we didn't get another opportunity to interact unfortunately. However, we spent the day with a different girl my host mom used to baby sit (as you might recall, when I met my host mom she had brought one such girl with her), and I met some of her family as well. Briefly went to go see my host brother's new apartment, which my host mom hadn't seen yet either. Made dinner with Shoko-chan (the girl) and my host mom that night. Delicios. 

-Sunday was pretty uneventful, but that night we set off some fireworks, (they're legal here!) that Ui (the other male tutor) had received as a gift last year, on a field on campus.

-Monday we went to this restaurant by school called Gyuu-Kaku (they have some Gyuu-Kakus in the states too, but I don't know if it's the same chain) that we'd wanted to go to for quite some time. Kind of pricey, but soo good. For 26 bucks you get to keep ordering as much meat as you want...for like an hour. We realized this after ordering another plate of meat that we didn't really have space for in our stomachs, so we raced against the clock to finish an entire cow's worth (hyperbole) of beef in record time. It was awesome. Pictures from calligraphy to gyuu kaku can be found here.

-This past tuesday (the 11th--remember I'm a day ahead), we went on an official tour of Tsuru coordinated by our teachers but led by our peer tutors. First we went to the Tsuru museum, where we learned about the history of the town, and it's role in the Yamanashi prefecture. 

Then we went to see the "Linear Motor Car," Tsuru's more contemporary claim to fame: a high speed train that moves even faster than the renowned "bullet train." So fast, in fact, that it is currently not in service due to noise and other technical issues. So instead they made it into a museum. The train is being developed, so hopefully some day, when they've gotten all the kinks worked out, it'll be in service. 

From there we went to another historical site, an old elementary school built in the Meiji era. We saw a video in japanese, which I understood very little of, and then took a toor of the school. The coolest part was the upstairs, a play room (meant for recess time, I guess), with a variety of traditional japanese toys, instruments and games. What had everyone entertained for a good 20 minutes were these bamboo stilts that were damn near impossible to walk on, but great fun to try anyway. I kind of got the hang of it towards the end. Pictures from this outing will be posted in the next entry, as they're still on my camera. :)

-Today (wed. the 12th) we gave our second set of speeches in front of our tutors and some of the administration. This time the prompt required us to teach our audience something simple rather than just the basic "show and tell" kind of speech we had to do last time. I showed them how to draw a dog I learned to draw in the 3rd grade. Don't laugh, it's cute. Plus, it was in japanese, so it was twice as awesome.  

Tomorrow I'm going to my host mom's after school to hang out with the two girls she used to baby sit. Graduation season just passed, so we're celebrating the younger one's entrance into high school and the older one's entrance into college after some rigorous test-taking. Hopefully I'll make it back in time to go to the gym with everyone, which we're going to for the first time tomorrow (you have to schedule a time slot to use the facilities: badminton, b-ball courts, etc.) 

What else? Next friday is my final alreay! This means I'm finishing the language intensive, and then I'll be starting my academic classes (with other japanese students!) around the second week of april. In between the language intensive and the start of the real semester, though, we get a week off for break, so some of us are taking a trip out to Kyoto on the 23rd! Really excited...although not so much for the all night bus we'll have to take there and back.  K, I lied again and this is really long. By for now!

Um..Blogging is a lot of work/I'm kind of lazy

Here are some pictures of the past couple weeks. I posted some captions under them, but if the pictures aren't self-explanatory, I'll expand on the highlights here when I get the chance. 

Enjoy!

The fireworks I talked about in the last post

End of midterm celebration

Theme park, at my host mom's, some of tokyo trip #2

Zoo and the rest of tokyo trip #2