In case you haven't noticed, the day count on my posts have changed. Apparently I messed up some numbers a while back and needed to get things accurate, so I went and counted out exactly what number day today is. I'm such a pro at blog writing!
So we began with week 2 here at Meigaku. The decision has been made and I'm sticking with the harder level of Japanese. I'd rather dive right in and learn than go back and relearn basics. I can have as solid a foundation as possible, but it means nothing if I can't understand the majority of language spoken, both written and spoken. Thankfully, I have a new buddy, Jason, to join in the class and keep things at a tolerable level. Him and Max have both sworn to aid in my journey to Japanese fluency (for this quarter, at least). Now as awesome as this is, we have a bit of a problem.
I've missed essentially half of the entire class so far. I had skipped last Friday because I wasn't feeling too well and I still had homework yet to complete for the class. That's an understandable reason to skip, I feel, so okay. The problem was earlier today. Last night, I was up until 4AM working on homework and studying for the first of our daily vocabulary quizzes we will be doing in this class. The problem? I slept through my alarm. It was a double-class today, the first two periods, and I just snoozed on through until halfway through the second period. I could have literally run to class and been there only a half an hour. No point in that. Thusly, I utilized my time to do other schoolwork and work out my budget a little more. I know it's a bad thing, and it felt awful, but I'll just have to work harder and make up for it. No other way. Can't change the past, after all.
The weather here is ridiculous. Four days ago, we had our first typhoon of the season. Three days ago, it was chilly. A nice low 70s with breeze, and just enough sun to make sure you aren't cold. Two days ago, it's back to being 80s and sun beating down, plus some humidity, so constant sweat. Yesterday, exactly the same. Today? Rain. No sun except for short snippets in the afternoon. I just don't even know anymore, man.
The house we're living in is kinda starting to be a little... well, lame. The first problems were when our fourth floor (all 8 men live here) shower and washer broke on Sunday or so. I don't know if they are in the process of being fixed, but they're still marked as being broken, so we're to share the showers and washers on the 2nd and 3rd floors. Girls-only bathrooms. This could make for some awkward-ness. Second, the water heaters here are pretty bad. You may have it set to heat, but they run out of hot water like nothing, and take forever to warm back up. Not exactly a palace we're in here. But by far, the most off-putting issue thus far was the incident last night. We were sitting in the common room and were greeted by not one, but TWO gigantic cockroaches. Now the girls all flipped their shiz over these things while us men were relatively calm and cool in trying to capture and throw out said visitors. It took a while, but eventually we were rid of the things and it was done. But hearing those screams and such was quite trying, for certain. I just hope the buggers don't invade our food supplies. That would be a health hazard, methinks.
I went to the arcade again recently to get my practice in on my video game, Pop'N Music, as well as test out the UFO catchers. For one, I am getting much better at my game. On a difficulty scale of 43, I can now beat up to 33, which is pretty friggin tough. And that's a song I've never even heard before. For those who don't know, Pop'N is a music game kind of like DDR (made by the same people), but you play with 9 colored buttons, each the size of your palm. You hit them in time with music, and they're key-sounded so that if you're doing crappy, your song sounds awful too. So it's important to try your best and do well. Secondly, I found out that they change the prizes in the UFO catchers at the beginning of every month. So now there are new prizes in many of the machines. So what else could I do but drop a couple bucks on a machine and win an awesome statuette from Evangelion (Mari), as well as a One Piece (Luffy) coin purse! Whooo got them mad skillz.
In related news, we've discovered that someone from prior study abroad quarters bought and left a Gamecube in the house, so now we have nightly Gamecube bouts on Soul Calibur 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Mario Kart: Double Dash! Always fun, though we need to snag two extra controllers so we can do four-player games. I loves me the party games!
We're going to try and go to Kamakura this weekend and see the giant Amida Buddha statue, as well as enjoy the beautiful temple surrounding it (Hamedara shrine). It's nice getting to hang out with some of the Japanese buddies at MISH and play games, cards, and just talk. Even if I don't speak much, it's great to listen and learn more about them! Of course hanging out at our official dive bar nearby, The Little Bike, is also amazing. The names and descriptions of these drinks are just... To give you an example, I had two drinks. The first of which was called "That's" and it's made with some kind of alcohol and lemon juice+lemon. The second was called "It's" and it's the exact same thing, but with lime. Yeah. Pretty fancy, I know. The bar itself is totally styled after a Western bar, so it's funny and surreal to step into a tiny little place with all this American-ish decoration going on. Good buddy times!
And I think that just about wraps up this post. More in the near future! I don't know if I have quite enough yet, but I've been thinking about doing a weekly or semi-weekly "Random Interesting Japanese Observation". I've seen some really neat things that just make me immediately think, "Wow, we sure do have different cultures" or "People sure are crazy". Give me your opinions on this and maybe I'll start including that in it's own separate post.
See ya! じゃね！
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