The One Month Marker

Well, I have little less than a month left and finals are on the two week horizon. I've written up a bunch of blog entries in advance for this and have set the blog so it'll automatically post while I'm rushing around in a headless chicken frenzy. It's going to be a busy month!

This week is the infamous Golden Week--a set of national holidays in Japan that are close set to each other and often result in a lot of traveling for the Japanese. To celebrate this, I'm going camping with my host family! We're not really roughing it, there's a bungalow involved, but my host family has never heard of s'mores.

I'll pause to let you have your moment of horror.

So, they don't have graham crackers in Japan, so I went to a nearby (read: Kyoto, 1/2 hour away by train) foreign import store where I bought "Graham Cookies"--crushable wafers to make graham cracker crust for pies. Someo f them are badly crushed, but I'll make due. If all else fails, I'll try to finagle some sort of s'more pie over the coals or something. In case that fials, I also bought some flat, thin gingersnaps that could work in a pinch.

My Goals for May:

• Study to get the best grade possible on my finals
• Back all of the sumi-e that I want to keep
• Start a scrapbook with all the mementos I've been collection so I don't have to send a huge folder home
• Send stuff home
• Sort through stuff (before sending it home) and figure out what to keep and what to give/throw away
• Take more pictures! 
• Manage to get home safe and sound
• And through all of this, keep the blog going!

Two Months

Well, I've been in Japan for seven or so months now and I have around two months before my departure.

Wow.

I'm going to save reflections for a time when I'm not so busy (midterms have ended, but I still have a paper and presentation due soon!), but it's been amazing so far. Sure, I've had my ups and downs, but all in all, it's been pretty darn fun.

I apologize for the sparseness of the updates on Tokyo--I assure you, they are written and will be typed up soon--but, as I said before, school comes before pleasure and blogging. :)

So to tide you over until my next update, here's some pictures of Hina and I in kimono. We were talking tonight about the various kimono (I'm still looking for a furisode that fits!) and the family wanted to see what I bought at Toji. And so I showed them, clumsily attempted to get into one, and then Okaasan brought out her and Hina's kimono which Hina promptly demanded to be put in.

The All-Seeing Daruma

The daruma is finally accomplished—he has both eyes now (and by now this is so late, I probably should have gotten another daruma to finish up my posts! Thank goodness for this nifty feature in blogger that allows me to backdate stuff!)!

Tale of Tokyo Stats:

2,000 photos taken

6 gigabytes used in SD cards

1095 photos deemed “okay”

189 photos used in the blog

1 lens cap and 1 handkerchief lost in the bustle and tussle of crowds

Anyways, finals are upcoming and boy oh boy do I wish I had studied more!

Filling the Daruma's Eye

or "Why you won't be getting any more updates for the next two weeks or so."

When I first bought my daruma, it had blank eyes. When you have a goal, first you color in one of your daruma's eyes. When your goal is accomplished, you fill in the other eye.

This is my daruma.

When I was on Winter Break, I really wanted to go to Tokyo, but I didn't want to go alone. So I didn't go. However, I did go to a temple on New Years and buy a daruma. Filling in the daruma's eye, I decided that I was Going To Tokyo.

And now, during Spring Break, I and a bunch of my friends are headed off to Tokyo. Everything's been planned, we're going everywhere from the Ghibli Museum to the Imperial Palace. There will be lots of pictures AND lots of text. It will be six days of fun and joy.

However, I feel that my suitcase will be better off holding clothes and souvenirs than my laptop--so I will not have immediate internet access while in Tokyo. So, no blog posts.

The week after Spring Break is when all my midterms are. Since I am currently taking 5 classes, there will also be no posts that week as well (unless I miraculously decide that I do not need to study and don't need good grades ever again).

And then there will probably just be a week or half a week of recovery. And then there will be posts! Glorious, glorious posts!

So I ask patience from you (and those of you who know me in real life, please stop badgering Dad! He doesn't run my posting schedule!) with a rewarding six to eight posts in April.

Thanks to all!

First Week

The first week is always the hardest—not to mention disorganized and wearying as you try to adjust from your lavish winter break schedule to your new school schedule with 9am classes. I admit, right now it’s looking pretty nice. I’m in Advanced Sumi-e, Japanese classes that will actually challenge me, and a Survey of Japanese Art. I’m also considering taking a class on Pacific relations, but am still unsure.

I swear sometime this month or next month I will do another installment on the wonder of the Japanese bathroom. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more luxurious than the Japanese ofuro (bathtub) which is, as I have said before, designed for soaking. There is an added bonus of the fact that it heats you up when you’re living in a household with no central heating. Don’t worry—I’m not sleeping in the bathtub, though sometimes I feel like drifting off.

Anyways, my family is pretty cool—more on them later. I’d write more, but I have yet another test on Monday (and on my worst subject—kanji), and so I’m off to sleep and study~!

Orientation Week Starts Again!

So today was the first day of Orientation week and I got everything I needed to done. I’ve filled out my forms, signed my papers, and paid my fees—I’m ready for the semester to start! After this was done, I took a bus down to downtown Hirakata and met up with Okaasan for some sushi. Okaasan has just come back from Thailand, and we had all of our “girl-time chat” like we usually did. It was really nice to see Okaasan again, and I hope we can keep in touch better than I did during winter break—but it’s been kinda a busy winter for me, so I’m sure I’ll have more time now! So, we went out for sushi, I gave Okaasan a sumi-e that I had done for her, she gave me some omiyage from Thailand, we gossiped, and then I headed back to the dorms where I celebrated getting everything done in one day.

After that, I went out to dinner with LA (one of my friends from Beloit who’s here for the spring semester) and one of my new friends from the dorm, Beth. We went to a nearby restaurant with lots of delicious, cheap food.

I don’t learn who my new host family is until Thursday (>.<), but I’m really excited. While I had a great time with Okaasan, it was a little lonely being the only other person in the house. I’ve requested kids this time and I’m really looking forward to this!

Finals

So, I'm done with my schooling for this semester. The grades are mostly in, though I'm still waiting to hear about Speaking Japanese and Sumi-e (though I'm sure I did fine...)

I passed both my anthropology class and Reading/Writing Japanese class with flying colors, I'm proud to say. Of course, I had my doubts about my anthro class due my lack of interest in the class that slowly started after the drop point passed, but oh well. I guess that looking for academics in a college basically designed for sightseeing is setting the bar a little high, but hey, whatever. It's all over now.

Soon I'll be posting about sumi-e and some of my better looking pictures (the first couple of weeks made it look like a raccoon had made off with an ink brush!) along with an explanation of the processes used. I'm really looking forward to it.

I move into the dorms for winter vacation this Saturday, and I'm really excited! Despite having a small case of the sniffles, I'm doing fine and packing piece by piece into my large (but apparently not large enough >.< oh no!) suitcases and I'm planning my vacation. A trip to Tokyo with friends is a must!!

The First Stain of Sumi-e...

…was today. But despite the permanence of sumi stains (they’re almost impossible to get out), there’s an old housewives’ tale about how to remove that. So I will try that because I really like these pants!

So today I also applied for the Japanese National Health Insurance plan because the hospitals in Japan will take no foreign insurance (though you can be reimbursed afterwards). And I definitely do not want to pay out of my pocket! Also there’s the matter of my international insurance not being willing to pay for me if I get hit by a car. That was a real downer to learn. 

In sumi-e, we’re learning how to paint take, or bamboo. I’ve got the basics of it down, but I still think that some of my paintings look pretty poor. I believe that I can do bone-stalks (stalks done using the “bone” stroke) pretty well, but my leaves still look pretty poor. Also there’s the point of me not really knowing what the proper composition should be. Ah, well. Practice, practice, practice! Scott-sensei is pretty awesome. I have a great time talking with her during the two-hour sessions we have to take three times a week. She’s a big fan of Kyoto and classical culture (much like me), and today she mentioned that she was impressed by my background in Classical Heian literature and poetry (actually she was more like, “Where are you getting classical Heian poetry from in Beloit?” but I’ll take what I can! [Actually, most of my Heian background comes from my classes with the wonderful Charo D’Ecteverry at UW-Madison during my senior year of high school. You always read about influential people who shape your life, and Charo-sensei is mine. She’s the one who really got me interested in Japan {beyond the superficiality of liking anime and manga} and she’s the one who inspired me to become a professor of Japanese literature]).

Finally, today I gave Okaasan one of my better bamboo paintings and a gift to bring up to Tokyo for her son, grandson and daughter-in-law. She was overcome and thanked me a lot. I don’t quite understand why—the present is not for her—but I’m guessing it’s that I am being “Japanese polite” and sending a gift to people I don’t even know. Alternatively it could just be because it’s to her son’s family. XD

Dinner was fresh tempura (fried foods), and boy was that delicious. There was fish, potatoes, shaped fish paste (called takewa), and onions. It was delicious. Pics will be up on Monday, so check back!

There’s a kanji test that I have tomorrow, so I’m actually going to go study now!