Today was a very busy day. After our normal morning of classes we were all hustled onto a charter bus (without much time for lunch) and driven to Izumigaoka High School (coincidentally it's the high school that's a ten minute walk from my house so the bus ride there was immensely familiar to me).
It was pretty much your standard Japanese high school building, but apparently it's one of the largest and also smartest high schools in the city?
Anyways, we were escorted into a room where desks had been pushed together to form groups of tables. There were students sitting at each table, and we were assigned specific table numbers to sit at. No one was able to tell us what we were actually going to DO there, but it definitely looked like some sort of conversation seminar thing. To me they all looked very young...they were only 16! Was I ever 16?
The first half of the session was in English, and we had a short discussion (which was fairly difficult to conduct since the topic was on technology, and that's not an easy topic to discuss in one's native tongue) with the people at our table. The second half was in Japanese, and while the topic was supposed to be Japanese entrance exams and school culture, the conversation quickly turned to food and the merits of Western cuisine verses Japanese cuisine. Much more interesting and easier to sustain a conversation in.
We returned to Rifare where I halfheartedly did some homework until six, when all the Yale students at PII met up with Nishimura-sensei, one of our professors from Yale, for dinner. We went to an ALL YOU CAN EAT shabu-shabu restaurant in Kanazawa Station. Essentially, you get a pot filled with broth set in front of you and then piles of meat and veggies and tofu and essentially whatever you want that you then make yourself.
Poor photo quality, but essentially we just kept getting food until none of us could eat any more.
And then of course we made room for dessert.
I am very, very full...
It was pretty much your standard Japanese high school building, but apparently it's one of the largest and also smartest high schools in the city?
Anyways, we were escorted into a room where desks had been pushed together to form groups of tables. There were students sitting at each table, and we were assigned specific table numbers to sit at. No one was able to tell us what we were actually going to DO there, but it definitely looked like some sort of conversation seminar thing. To me they all looked very young...they were only 16! Was I ever 16?
The first half of the session was in English, and we had a short discussion (which was fairly difficult to conduct since the topic was on technology, and that's not an easy topic to discuss in one's native tongue) with the people at our table. The second half was in Japanese, and while the topic was supposed to be Japanese entrance exams and school culture, the conversation quickly turned to food and the merits of Western cuisine verses Japanese cuisine. Much more interesting and easier to sustain a conversation in.
We returned to Rifare where I halfheartedly did some homework until six, when all the Yale students at PII met up with Nishimura-sensei, one of our professors from Yale, for dinner. We went to an ALL YOU CAN EAT shabu-shabu restaurant in Kanazawa Station. Essentially, you get a pot filled with broth set in front of you and then piles of meat and veggies and tofu and essentially whatever you want that you then make yourself.
Poor photo quality, but essentially we just kept getting food until none of us could eat any more.
And then of course we made room for dessert.
I am very, very full...
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