brushes with fame

I. LOVE. YOKOHAMA.

hehe. sorry, just have to share my insane excitement right now!
They were shooting a tv commercial in Queen's Square this morning! Now, Queen's Square being what it is, this is nothing new. There have been several times coming to and from school where things like that have been going on.
What makes today special, is that a) they were shooting on the bridge to IUC so we walked right by, practically through the shoot
b) they were doing a take right as we walked by, so I got to see everything
c) it was Oguri Shun!!!!!!!!!

yes, I am a total J-dorama fangirl, so getting to see Hanazawa Rui live and in person, not 10 feet from me, is enough to keep me excited for WEEKS. it was really sad, tho, that no one else knew who he was, and so failed to understand the depths of my excitement.
my only regret is that i didn't think to grab my cell phone and try to snap a picture--for which lapse I am *kicking* myself. kicking myself.
guess i'm not as japan-socialized as i could be, yet.

also...

i am sick.

well, not so much anymore, i've been feeling a TON better today. but thursday was absolutely the *worst*
i had the most awful headache all day, i swear it felt like someone was banging a sledgehammer inside my head for 24 hours straight. and i'm pretty sure i had a fever, too. but like i said, today was much better, the headache went away so it's just a cold now.
here's hoping that i'm better for real, and this isn't just a temporary reprieve.

other than that, not a whole lot happened this week. obvi, i missed thurs and fri class. and before that was a fairly average week. i'm trying to remember....yeah, nothing much happened. sorry, i'm still a little out of it.

old-school fun

this week's video is:
磯貝サイモン　　初恋に捧ぐ歌
Isogai Simon, "Song Dedicated to First Love"

or something like that. my best translation at any rate.

it's not an old video, but for some reason it has a kind of old-school feel to me.
at any rate, i just think it's a fun video. and Simon's a cutie ^^

初夢: dreaming of... (日本語?!?!)

I think I dreamed in Japanese last night!
Well, I don't remember too much, only the bits that happened right before I woke up. But the dream was me traveling or something, like after IUC lets out. And I was in some kind of cafe, or maybe a ryokan where I was staying, or something like that--and I was talking to the people who owned it, and speaking Japanese to them, cause of course it being Japan, they were Japanese.
...so it wasn't like a random dream where I just happened to be speaking Japanese for no reason, I was speaking Japanese cause it was me, in Japan, talking to Japanese people.
Does that still count? I dunno. But at any rate, when I woke up, it was a really weird feeling--like "...hey wait a minute... that was japanese!"

so yay me!

b(^>^)d

reflections--first week back

soooooo tired!
so, it wasn't even a real week (had monday off) but i'm still pretty tired. it's tough getting back into the swing of classes and things after being on break for so long (i say "so long," but it flew by)
like i said in the last post, it seems like this term is going to be a pretty heavy workload, but i am also really excited about all my classes. i have to get back into the whole college-like "not having the same classes every day" mindset, tho. lol. it's actually kind of hard, after having the same schedule every day, for so long. and since we didn't have a full week, i still haven't quite got a handle on the scheduling, and how i should pace myself. which probably explains part of why i'm so tired. anyway, here's for some particulars on the classes!

IJ
the standard grammar class like we were having every morning before. we're even using a continuation of the textbook from before, so there's not much to report there. though it's nice to be back in Ari-sensei's class again. i keep getting flashbacks to first term, which is kind of nice b/c then it reminds me how far i've come since then.

Bungaku (Literature)
a lot of work! and it's headed up by Otake-sensei (my first time having her) who has the reputation for being one of the strictest sensei at IUC, so that had me a little worried. but she seems nice, at least. we're going to be reading a variety of short stories by different japanese authors, along with some kind of criticism/scholarly article about each story/author we cover. this week was Endo Shusaku's "Kageboshi." i liked the story and Shusaku's writing style a lot, and language-wise, i had a much easier time with it than i was afraid i would. but i'm still a pretty slow reader when it comes to Japanese, and at 30+ pp, this one took a *long* time. i started it over break, then on Wed afternoon went over to tully's to read the second half or so. ......3 hours later i finally finished it. when i was done, i still had taishyu bunka reading to do for the next day, and i tried to start that, but it was just absolutely useless. after 3 hours of nonstop shusaku, my brain had turned into complete mush. i started at the page for a while, trying to decide if those little symbols swimming around were actually words or not, then packed it in and went home, where i proceeded to be utterly useless for the rest of the day. so i think the moral there is that i'm gonna have to pace myself a little better.

Taishyu Bunka (Pop Culture)
FUN!! i'm super excited about this class. right now we're doing a unit on CM (that's japanese for "commercials." i'm serious) and that's really neat. we get to watch videos like "2007 CM, Best 10" and then talk about what they were CM for, what we thought was interesting about the way each product was portrayed, things like that. the next unit is manga, and then there'll be a unit on movies--we get to watch Spirited Away, Shall We Dance, Battle Royale...i'm really excited about that. and the readings should be really interesting too. though, as in bungaku, it definitely seems like this term they're upping the level of the articles and things we're given to read. it's much more the kind of journal articles and things like what i would use for a Yale paper, but in japanese.

Business Nihongo
Ari-sensei again! only have this class once a week, on friday mornings. they split us up into 2 sections--i'm in the "not particularly interested in business/econ" group.^^ which means that the class will mostly focus on keigo (polite japanese) and the kinds of conversations you'd encounter working in a japanese company. like, this morning we went over the 自己紹介, the self-introduction that you have to do on your first day, as well as the 1-minute 自己PR spiel, which is something that gets asked a lot in job interviews in japan--basically "tell us in 1 minute why we should hire you" kind of thing. so that's really great, especially since i plan to start looking for jobs in japan for after IUC (something else i need to do...)

i guess that's it for now. i'm going to go bum around for a bit and then head to bed i think.

new video! (sorry, didn't realize the other one had gone away. like i said, sometimes they get taken off of youtube)

Alice Nine, "Ruri no Ame" (Sapphire Rain)
i'm only halfway into this group, musically-speaking. the lead singer has a really distinct voice, which...i have to decide if i really love or not. but i think this is an absolutely *gorgeous* video, which is why i'm posting it ^_^

i've been had!

so, i know it's only just been the first day of classes, but i'm beginning to suspect that whole spiel they fed us about "2nd term is the hardest, 3rd term will be much easier" was nothing more than a clever ruse to fool us into がんばって-ing and making it through those last few weeks before break.

Lies!

...I better go finish my homework now.

以上！

Back in Japan

ただいま～！
OK, so I am officially back in Yokohama. Got in yesterday, at about 3pm. Of course, that's when I landed. By the time I got back to my apartment, it was more like 7. But, what can you do. I was super tired when I got in, and the thought of having to drag my enormous suitcases through Yokohama station--again--was really just too horrible to contemplate (Japanese train stations all have way more stairs than they have any right to--and almost no escalators, forget about elevators--and Yokohama station is so enormous, no matter how many times I go there, I always get lost. it's like a rule). So, given all of that, I decided to suck up the $30 and send my bags by takyubin--which is the most amazing delivery service, and pretty cheap too--considering I was sending 2 huge suitcases, and I got them less than 24 hours later.
Oh! and I randomly ran into Marshall in the airport, so that was fun. he was just getting in, too. we chatted a bit and were on the same Narita express to Yokohama.

Not much else to report, besides jetlag, so this won't be a really interesting entry.

also, changing the video, finally--due to my lack of updates while i was home, the An Cafe video got left up for 2 weeks. oh well. besides, any video with bunny ears and whipped-cream fights is *worth* an extra week. in my opinion.

new video is:
Yui, "My Generation."

in honor of my mom, who asked me if there were any female singers in Japan, "because your music is all guys."
(>_<)