Living on a Prayer

Viva Bon Jovi! I feel it for sure, now that I’m about halfway through with my time here! I am super busy right now. Club activities are continuing on, class is still barreling along, the usual. But now I have midterms to study for (I have 5, although I’m only in 3 classes… go figure), and my weekend is going to be spent traveling to Hiroshima! We’re going as a group to see a bunch of things, from lectures to monuments to apparently amazing restaurants. A lot of people are worried it will be really depressing. While I could see how that could happen, I don’t think it will be. Probably really thought-provoking, definitely tragic, but I think that this trip will be a microcosm of my Japan experience in general: there will be too much going on to have time to feel that bad.

I’ve had a great couple of weeks, actually. I’ve been out to karaoke a few times, made some new Japanese friends, and started making plans with to show our moms around Tokyo when they visit in June. I got to try on this sweet yukata here at a CIEE picnic. I’ve found a great little standing-room-only noodle shop in the train station I use everyday, and found a few great new little restaurants and bars. I’m managing to keep my head above water in Japanese class, and my other classes are a breeze.

Probably the coolest thing I’ve seen recently was a sumo match. I went to the final day of the big May Tokyo tournament last weekend! It was pretty amazing, I have to say. I was there from around 7 am (to buy last-minute tickets) to 7 pm after the matches were through, and I saw matches at every level, from the fairly amateur to the best in the nation. I was shocked by how muscular all these guys were! Well, most of them. I shouldn’t have been, I think, but still… they have a lot of fat, but there’s some pretty intense muscle on some of these guys. Anyway, a Bulgarian and a Mongolian are the two best wrestlers right now. A little evidence of the growing internationalism of sumo!

みんな、久しぶりです！　日本語が読める友達のために日本語でちょっとタイプします。

やっぱり授業は続いていて、それに来週には中間試験があります。　三つコースを取っているが、日本語で文法、会話、漢字は別な先生がいるから、中間試験が五つあります。　少し心配だけど、いつものように心配だったのに、結局よく出来るかもしれません。

日本人の友達が出来たのはすごいです！　いつも新しくて面白い日本語のことを教えられるから。　例えば、先日日本人の友達と擬音語のことを話しました。　彼女によると、点々を使ったら、意味はもう少し強くなります。　例えばとんとんという擬音語よりどんどんの方が強い意味があります。　そのような面白いことをよく学んで、習えば習うほど、面白くなって、分かるようになります。

明日から交換プログラムの人と広島に旅行することになっています。　楽しみにしています。　さびしい歴史があるから大変そうだけど、何と言っても役立つでいい経験のじゃないかと思います。　しかも、もう一度東京のような忙しい町を出るのはtごくいいと思います。

~ by pksquared on May 29, 2008.