Rice and Ramen

The above is a fairly excellent depiction of how I've been spending almost all of my time outside of work these past...50 days: studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). You can see I have my pens and paper all ready to go, as well as a fortifying cup of coffee. Now that I'm essentially publicly broadcasting the fact that I'm taking this test I basically have to pass now or else it'll be embarrassing to the extreme. The test itself is on December 3rd so I have about two and a half weeks yet to finish up and catch up on some sleep before the four hour (gulp) exam. The test is broken down into five sections--reading, kanji, grammar, vocab, and listening--and you have to pass each section individually to pass the test as a whole, which is BRUTAL. Oh man, I have so much more respect for people who are part-time students now because once you get done with work and get home and make dinner/eat/clean up the LAST thing you want to do is open a book and tr...

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...

PII certainly doesn't do things by halves, not by a long shot. Classes have officially started and if I thought that Yale's pace was quick, it's nothing compared to the pace PII is going at. Well. No going back now I suppose. Yesterday I was put in the class for level 2 students. The day was purposefully a review of transitive and intransitive verbs (for the most part). Not something English really has, so it's tricky to remember two verbs that (to us) mean the same thing. But me being the academic masochist that I am, I asked if I could move up into the 2.5 level (which was where the Yale teachers said we "should" be). They allowed me to try it out today, and it seems like today went alright so I guess that's what I'll be doing from now on. I think I'm going to work myself to death, that obviously seems to be my academic ambition. Anyways. We cover a chapter a day in the Nakama 2 textbook. There's another textbook, Tobira, that we'll s...

Down to 23 days now (yes, I am keeping a countdown). Winter break is over and it's back to school as usual. I thought my work would be over and I'd be enjoying my last weeks here with my friends. Apparently, I was severely kidding myself. I have been assigned three speeches to write and present in front of large groups of people, all within a week of each other. One of them you already know about, my speech about rock paper scissors that I was toying around with. I did decide to go with it, and over winter break I spent an obnoxious amount of time trying to translate the version I wrote in English. Here's what I wrote in English: あいこでしょ                 There is a saying that goes “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. It can be applied to books, of course, meaning that you shouldn’t judge the quality of a book based on the quality of its cover—or, things are not always what they seem—but it can also be applied ...

In January, I've been told I have to participate in the school's annual Speech Contest, and give a speech in Japanese in front of everyone, along with the other contestants. I have a maximum of seven minutes to talk about whatever the heck I want. Which brings up the very important question, since I have no restrictions, what the heck should I talk about? During a procrastination session late at night I was browsing Stumbleupon (and if you don't know what this is, and you have procrastination issues, I recommend you DON'T go check it out. But if you have good self-control, check it out HERE) and I came across this: And then I thought: BINGO. Why Rock-Paper-Scissors you ask? Well, in America it's not such an interestinging thing. I mean, who plays rock-paper-scissors anyways, unless you're a small kid? And even then. Over here, however, it's a little different. Called Jan-Ken-Pon, it's used by everyone to decide things. For instance, when we want to...

On one hand, normality=yay, me becoming a successful part of Japanese culture has been achieved! On the other...it leaves me with nothing to tell you guys about. So I figured, now that I'm more or less a part of this all, what have I achieved? So I went back two months to my Bucket List. Here's what was on it: 1. Learn how to make miso soup 2. Go to a Maid-cafe 3. Return to Chiiori ( What's that? Click HERE. No, seriously. CHECK IT OUT IT'S REALLY COOL. ) 4. Go to a movie in Japanese 5. See Kabuki theater 6. SUSHI and RAMEN Here's what I added to it: 1. Go to Tokyo Disney 2.Go see From Up on Poppy Hill, the new Ghibli movie And here's what I checked off: 1. Sushi and ramen (I've had each about five times. Yummy, every single time) 2. Go see From Up on Poppy Hill, which covers both that and "see a movie in Japanese" ...long way to go, folks. Language. Ah, language. How I miss effortlessly speaking! But on the plus side, I'...

For those of you who are familiar with Japanese and Korean music know that randomly in the middle of the song they are liable to throw in an English word. So you'll be listening to this song and you won't understand it so it's like this: laelriajwelifafie....BABY...aleifaelifj...I'M YOUR MAN...faliejflaiejf... You get the picture. Turns out, the same principle is applied to random items as well. And often this English makes me laugh, because it's either 1. Gramatically incorrect, and they have absolutely no idea when I ask them if they know what it means 2.Gramatically correct but doesn't really make sense when you read it. Or rather, it seems like it should make sense, but on some level it doesn't. Allow me to illustrate: That's the cover of my obento box. I mean just read it! I like this one too. The picture isn't very good, but it says, " Campus notebooks contain the best ruled foolscap suitable for writing." FOOLSCAP? I though...

I'm pretty sure some of you have been wondering how the heck I communicate (and if you haven't been wondering that, well, hopefully you are now). A typical conversation might go like this:Host Mom (HM): astlakawelnvalekjf....book...aodlfoeijwfd...understand? Me: Nnnn...nnnn....un! Wakarimashita! (FYI the "nnn" noises are understanding noises, like "yes, yes...yes" It's amazing what a deep conversation you can have with different inflections of the "Nnnnnn" noise! One of my friends put it quite nicely when he said you essentially become a child again, unable to communicate for yourself the majority of the time. My host sisters' electionic dictionary is greatly abused, and I'm marking my level of language success by the frequency I have to use it. I have been learning new words etc. (However, some of them are probably a little useless.) Still here is an example of some of my new vocabulary: せみ (semi) -cicada 蝶 (chou) -butterfly 湯便...