just the weekly stuffs

so, in IJ--the book for morning class--the chapters alternate between Written and Conversation sections. which is really good cause it means you get practice in both more formal, written expressions/constructions, as well as more casual spoken styles. well, i guess that's the point.
so, we've been on the Convo section of chapter 2 this week, which means lots of focus on casual sentence patterns and getting proper intonation and stuff (ya~y! cause that's my strong point! can i just say how much i love it when we're not reading things? like when we get to do videos in afternoon class, instead of newspaper articles)
and i had kind of a nice boost on friday when Senda-sensei mentioned to me that compared with when she was my afternoon teacher 1st term, she thought that my speaking and intonation and stuff had really improved since then! XD so that totally made my day. i was sort of feeling like i'd been getting better, but it's nice to be told that by someone who can be an actual objective judge of your performance. and i firmly maintain that at least part of said improvement is thanks to my J-dorama habit. also, Senda-sensei found out that I'm going back to Raleigh for christmas, and has requested an ACC handbook as an omiyage. LoL ^.^

Friday after class was super busy but lots of fun. i took off right as soon as class got out at 3, to go over and meet Sato Masako (from my kyudo club at the budokan) at yokohama eki, because she's actually the kyudo sensei at a high school around there. the last tournament, i was talking to her about how i had done kyudo back in the states when i was in high school, and she asked if i would come over one day and talk to her students about my experiences. so i got to do that on friday! she actually wanted me to talk to them in english, since they're all learning it but never get a chance to practice speaking it. so, i did my little intro talk in english, then went back and sort of summarized it in japanese, cause i'm really not sure how much they understood. then Sato-san wanted them all to come over and introduce themselves, and talk to me a little in english. they were all sooooo embarrassed, it was actually rather cute. i tried to talk to them in english a bit, but nobody really seemed comfortable with it, and they all knew that i spoke japanese, so it mostly ended up being that. but it was still fun.
oh! and an even better thing--one of the other sensei at the high school is actually a hanshi (there's no "higher" after that) and so i got to have him correct my shooting a bit--joy! i learned a few things that i didn't even realize i'd been doing wrong, and i actually got the bow to do almost a full yugaeri! it went like halfway around, which i've *never* gotten it to do before. ちょう～嬉しい！ let's just hope i can keep it up from now on. oh, and it turns out that this hanshi sensei was actually in the States for the testing seminar in SC this past summer--so he met Dan-sensei! i swear, every time i meet a kyudo person in Japan, they know Dan-sensei, or know someone who does...it just makes me realize again how lucky I was to get to study there.

i left the high school at about 5:30 (actually had to cut out of their practice a little early) and hopped the Minato Mirai-sen right back to Queen's, because at 6 was Ari-sensei's (my advisor) "Happy Just-Married" party. she's married to a former IUC student...oooOOoohh. as is Aoki-sensei, incidentally--there was a card passed around for everyone to sign, and i saw that he had written "Welcome to AIMY--Association of International Marriages, Yokohama." LOL. oh the things we find to amuse ourselves...
anyway, there were lots of people there--Ari-sensei's family (her dad kept going around trying to shove drinks and food into people's hands--he wasn't satisfied unless everyone had a drink in each hand and, preferably, several plates on their laps), most of the IUC sensei/staff (Matsumoto-sensei was, as usual, popping out of corners, snapping awkward photos of people all evening), and all of Ari-sensei's current students and advisees. a good time was had by all.
oh, and Sano-sensei caught me at one point, to let me know she had gotten a コルティナさん、よろしく mail from Stever-sensei (my 3rd-year japanese teacher at Yale). it was kind of loud and i was totally not in the thinking-of-yale mindset, so at first i didn't realize who she was talking about. it was kind of embarrassing when i was finally like "oh, yes! Stever-sensei was my teacher at Yale!" and Sano-sensei's kind of got this "...and you forgot her already...?" expression. lol. oh, well.

oh, and saturday i went out to start my christmas shopping (managed to put a decent dent in it, i think. it's hard tho). then i met up with Matsuzawa-sensei to go to this place in Landmark that was having a kimono sale (even on sale they're expensive). and this was a for-real place, where they show you all the patterns individually, and drape things around you... i think Matsuzawa-sensei just wanted someone to go with. it was neat, but we didn't stay for long. Matsuzawa-sensei kept talking about how last time, they had other things too, like tabi for really cheap. so i think that's what she'd intended to go for.
oh, but they also had this very odd noodle promotion going on. by the desk, there were several jars of bowtie noodles, elbow macaroni, things like that--and for 20 yen you got a small bag to fill up with as many noodles as it would hold. it was great, and i'll definitely be eating them for supper sometime soon but...... I'm not really sure what noodles have to do with a kimono sale. oh well, i guess a bargain is a bargain.

and here i will end what has become rather a long post. also, it's sunday and i was therefore feeling rather lazy--so apologies for the relative lack of capitalization and appropriate punctuation in the above ramblings.

dropping like flies...

So, it seems I'm not the only one who's been having a little trouble keeping up with everything lately, and this week it all really just came to a head. I think it must be some combo of exhaustion and the extreme winter-ness which has become apparent in recent weeks. But whatever the reason, about half of IUC was sick this week. In my class alone, there were 2 people out every day this week (and not always the same two people); on Thursday, in Connor's morning class, he was the only one there; and yesterday afternoon, poor Aoki-sensei looked like he really would rather have been at home, in bed. So far all is well for me, but I'm seriously feeling like it's only a matter of time--we've all kind of got that "Who's going to be next?" feeling.

Speaking of Friday, tho, we did have a bit of a break in the no afternoon class sense. Instead, we had one of our periodic special lecture things, which this time was a movie showing. The movie is a documentary called "Yokohama Mary," all about this woman known as Yokohama Mary, who was always hanging around in Isezaki Mall (cf post about where I live!). She'd been a prostitute during the postwar period--which should give some idea of her age now--and would be wandering around in Isezaki every day. Add that to the fact that she always wore this very distinctive white makeup and costume-style clothing. So she became this very famous figure and sort of a symbol for Yokohama (sort of reminds me of the Flower Lady in New Haven). Then one day, in 1995, she disappeared, and for a while it was apparently very odd for people not to see her anymore, and there were all these rumors about where she'd gone and stuff.
So, this documentary about her (less about her than about the lives around her) was made a few years ago, and on Friday the director came to the Center to talk to us about it. We screened the movie and then there was time for questions. It was really interesting, and I enjoyed the movie more than I had expected (especially given the extremely thick vocab list we were given in lieu of subtitles).
But of course the best part was that the entire movie was shot in and around the area where I live, which was really neat--and which also tells you something about the area where I live. LoL. Even funnier was the map we were given, that sort of highlighted places featured in the film. So, on the map was Kotobuki-cho, the section of town right next to Isezaki, which is where the largest number of IUC students are living. It's a...well, "unique area" is a nice way to put it, although according to the map, Mary had named it 地獄 "hell." Which of course, all the kids living in Kotobuki-cho found extremely amusing. ^_^

Kyudo! 大会, &c

So, on the Thanksgiving note, I had to leave the party early, at around 5pm, because Friday night my kyudo club, the 若葉会 had their 月例会 monthly practice tournament. It's the third one I'd gotten to go to, and this one was a lot of fun, too. Tho cold cause it's definitely become winter here. See, the way kyudo dojos are constructed, is entirely open-air. There's a covered area where you shoot from, and then opposite is the target mound which is also covered, but in between that is open--cause, if you think about it, there kind of can't be a wall in between you and the target. LoL. Which means that it's brutal in the summertime and brutal in the wintertime. Ah, the sacrifices we make.
To give an idea, I'm inserting a picture of Meishin, the dojo I used to practice at in North Carolina. (Giving credit where credit is due, I stole the photo from their website, www.meishin.kyudo.com)Anyway, I'd been having a few rough weeks in practice lately. Matsuzawa-sensei switched me to a heavier bow (12.5 kilos from 11 before), and there was definitely an adjustment period while I built up the strength to draw it correctly. I'm still not quite there yet, but it's a *lot* better than before. So I managed to do decently at the tournament (hit 1 out of my 10 arrows--so, "decently" for me). And I got a prize! :-D In addition to the 1st place, 2nd place, and all that, they also give out several 特別賞, which basically means "special prize" which, I guess they just give to whoever they think deserves it, for whatever reason--explaining why I got one.

Saturday morning I also had another tournament! And by "morning" I mean I got to the budokan at 9am, and didn't get home til around 5pm. Also a very cold day. It was a tournament I'd signed up for about a month before and totally forgotten, but it turned out to be kind of a big thing. There were about 78 people entered, from 3 different kyudo clubs. We shot 10 arrows again, and this time I hit 2! And several of my others, even though they missed, were pretty decent shots. So I was happy about that.

What I was not so happy about is the fact that I seem to be something of a failure lately. I think my batteries are just running out from the grind of the semester. I remember back during orientation when all the sensei kept going on and on--with great enjoyment, I might add--about how heavy the workload would be, and how utterly wretched we were all going to feel. I think I'm beginning to see what they meant. On the upside, though, I've heard through the past-student grapevine that 2nd term is definitely the hardest. So, there's hope I suppose. Although it's a little early for me to be running out of steam if I'm sposed to make it until Christmas. At any rate, what prompted this tangent was the fact that I slept through my alarm on Saturday morning and so was almost late for the tournament. Well, rather than "slept through," I should say I set my alarm but forgot to turn my cell phone off of manner mode, thus rendering the whole setting-of-the-alarm thing rather moot, since it "went off" in total silence. Fortunately I woke up in time (about 15 minutes before I needed to be out the door), and all my stuff was still together from the tournament the night before, so the only bad thing was that I had to sacrifice my morning shower and coffee.

On the note of making it through the rest of the semester, I tried a new thing today. Brace yourself...
Instead of going straight home after class (where I would promptly begin a vicious cycle of goofing off lasting until around dinner) I went to a coffee shop for a few hours. And--shock of shocks--I was actually productive!! Crazy, I know. By the time I left around 7pm, I'd gotten about 75% of my work done, including the afternoon class homework, which lately I've been leaving until lunch break the day of.
I'm thinking I might need to make this a habit.

A Japanese Thanksgiving

A little oxymoronic, I know (oxymoronic. Is that even a word? Damn, my English is starting to go...)
Anyway, since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving as such in Japan, a bunch of the IUC students decided to do a big Thanksgiving potluck. It was held over in the house that Bridget, Travis, Connor, and Ben R. are sharing--because that's the only place big enough to hold all of us--and was a phenomenal success. I'd say 30-some people showed, which is crazy, especially considering the whole program's only like 45 or so students.
We had a huge array of food, too. I'd been wracking my brain for something I could bring that was sufficiently Thanksgiving-y, but also something I could make in my (pathetic excuse for a) kitchen. Originally I'd been thinking black bean salad, but I had to give that up upon discovering that finding black beans in Japan is like...well, I can't really think of a good analogy, but it's *hard.* At last I hit upon the brilliant idea of deviled eggs, for which all the ingredients are readily available (the Japanese L-O-V-E mayonnaise, they put it on everything--even pizza, ick). They took a while to make, cause I have one small pot and can therefore only boil about 5 eggs at a time. But eventually I got it all done, so that was good.
Amy M--bless her!--brought mashed potatoes, and there was also cranberry sauce (the good homemade kind), green bean casserole, rolls, salad... It was a success.
We had all the Thanksgiving essentials except...a turkey. We heard about a place where one could buy frozen turkeys, but the problem was that nobody has an oven, or one large enough to cook a whole turkey. So the next thought was to grab some kind of roast duck from Chinatown (fowl is fowl), but when Felicia and Aaron showed up at the house, it was with the disheartening message that roast ducks in Chinatown are quite expensive, so they brought several cartons of shumai and dumplings instead. Lol. The closest we got to a bird all day was when Marshall showed up with an 8-piece bucket from KFC.
But it was still a pretty darn good Thanksgiving. People hung around at the house for several hours, and afterwards came over to Odori Koen by my apartment--Jason having enlightened them on the joys of drinking cheap beer out in the park with all the homeless おじいさん. So there were literally about 15 gaijin drinking out in the park until about 11pm, being sufficiently rowdy and getting many stares from some very confused Japanese people.

Sankeien

Wednesday we had a field trip!
I didn't really have a good idea what it was all about going in--the excuse to have a day off of class was enough for me--but it turned out to be pretty interesting (if kind of cold--which is a problem only in that cold makes me sleeeeeeepy...)
So, the Yokohama Rotary Club (I know, right) was hosted this, I guess you'd call it a cultural day, down at Sankeien Garden. Sankeien is basically this large (for Japan) cultural garden with flowers and all these old, famous buildings that some rich dude basically bought and transported here from Kyoto.
LoL.
So we all met at Negishi station at 9am (that's earlier than class usually starts! some day off...) and took taxis over to Sankeien. Some of the Rotary Club members met us there and led us over to one of the buildings (semi open-air; hence the cold) where they took turns making various 日本語らしい greetings.
The first event of the day was some gagaku, or Japanese "classical music." It was neat, lots of flutes and drums and stuff, but kind of long. The best part came after, when 3 student volunteers got to try on these craaaaazy traditional costumes that (I guess?) were worn when playing the music. Not really sure on that score, but. Anyway, here's Nick--not that you can see him, really--dressed in what was by far the coolest costume. Next on the agenda was ikebana, or flower arranging--which I'd actually done once before, at HIF (cf. the "Culture Classes" post, I think). Here's my finished product! (^-^) Then we went into another room and got to watch a sort of traditional Japanese dance. The guy explained after, that it was meant to sort of tell a story, all about these various gods and things. Once he showed what each part of the dance meant, I understood much better.
Anyway, here's a video I took of part of his dance. It got really good right after I stopped, but sadly Bazes's head kept getting in the way, so I really had to.

Next was the most fun part--for me, at least. Back when we first heard about the field trip, pretty much all they said about it was that there was going to be a part where you could try on kimonos, so of course I signed up! I figured it was going to be pretty much the same as my yukata, but it turns out this one was an actual kimono, which I'd never gotten to wear before. The process is much more involved--it took 2 people to dress me! And here's a picture of the whole group: After that, we changed back into our street clothes, bundled up, and went outside for a tour of the park. It was a nice walk, but we didn't have a whole lot of time to see things, and by that time, I think people were pretty ready to go home, so the tour part did feel a bit of a chore. But the garden was pretty: I just wish I'd been able to appreciate it more.
Oh, and as always, there are *tons* more pics from all parts of the day up at my kodakgallery.

It's Friday? Seriously??

Wow, this was a long week. I mean, nothing in particular happened, I was just *super* tired. Too much messing around and staying up later than I should (lol). And amazingly, that tends to catch up with you. (I know, you're shocked)
We finished up the 接続詞 conjunctions section in AM class this week. It was seriously detailed and stuff--lots of going into all these expressions that mean *almost* *exactly* the same thing, but there's one case where you can't use it. Stuff like that--the difference between それで、そこで、それから、それなら、&c. Not the most interesting, but it's definitely something that I'm grateful we went through in detail, because while I mostly knew what those expressions meant, they can be kind of confusing and I wasn't totally 詳しい on them.
Next up is "Integrated Japanese Advanced Course" (ISJ for short)--sort of the sequel textbook to ASJ that we used in the first semester. It also looks fairly scary, in terms of that it goes into serious detail about everything. But then, that's why I'm here, right. It's also going to be a little heavier in the hw department I think--like with the 接続詞 hw, there's a bunch of "complete the sentence" problems in the textbook that we have to write out separately and turn in every day, in addition to the regular readings and stuff. Hmm...

PM class is also starting a new section as of next week--seems like we're going to be doing that for the rest of the term, i.e. each week's readings will have a different theme. Which I kind of like. This past week was 文化の発信 (umm... "Transmission of Culture," I guess you could call it) and next week will be 地球温暖化 "Global Warming" (ugh--at least it's a short week).

On the fun side, tomorrow is going to be super! Jason, Misa, Molly, and I are meeting up with some of the HamaDai kids that we met over break at the festival, and we're all gonna go bowling and then to dinner or something after. :-D Should be lots of fun, so I'm definitely looking forward to that.
Also, next week we will be super-cool cause 1) we're doing a special field trip thingy Wed and therefore have no class at all; and 2) Friday is a national holiday!! (I never know what it's for, I just appreciate the break--makes a nice change from Yale....)

Oh yeah, and this week in calligraphy (Tues) we got to start making seals (stamps) with our name-kanji, so we can sign our work. It's crazy complicated--it's a stone, so you have to actually carve the kanji onto it... But more on that later.

P.S. (and I promise this is it) note the new video above! See, I'm really doing the weekly thing! It's another (fairly) new single, and I just think the video is cute, tho kind of sad.

First week thoughts

So the first week of 二学期 2nd term is over, and on the whole it went better than I thought. Having experienced the same people in my new morning class, I think that やっぱり the main cause of my old afternoon class's supreme draggy-ness was definitely the post-lunch coma. (And perhaps also the fact that I am not remotely politically inclined, and so found the subject matter completely uninteresting)

We've been doing 接続詞, i.e. conjunctions the past week (and all next week as well) in the morning, which wasn't as boring as you might think. So, plus on that score. In the afternoon class, we're currently reading news articles to do with Japanese culture, industry, and I think we even get to read about foreigners' problems in Japan. So, while there' still the whole "I'm tired and I want to go home" aspect going on, the energy level has definitely been bumped up a notch.

I also like my new teachers a lot, too--even though I definitely miss having class with my advisor, Satou Ari-sense. New faces are Akizawa-sensei (uses his laptop hooked to the TV to write notes instead of the blackboard; also seems to have a rather serious cat-fixation); and in the afternoon Satou Tsukasa-sensei (not to be confused with my advisor and 一学期 1st term teacher Satou Ari; she seems very nice and good at keeping class discussions going), and Goto-sensei (seems nice, but I've only had her one day so far, so haven't got a good read on her teaching style yet). The one returning face is [morning] Senda-sensei, who I had last term in the afternoon--I was really glad to see her back. We bonded 1st term over the revelation that Senda-sensei actually lived in Raleigh for several years, teaching! She was totally excited to hear that I was from Raleigh too (Raleigh-ite? Raleigh-an?) and so we occasionally reminisce over street names or restaurants. ;-P

It seems like the homework level has also been upped a bit this term. Or rather, just that it's more written homework rather than "make sure you've read and understood the grammar points" type homework (i.e. work you actually have to turn in, and therefore must do all of). So it seems like more. Whatever. I'm dealing.