This post is actually a bunch of conversations strung together

So last night, when I went to take a shower, there was no hot water. Not a big deal, 'cause it was hot and I would have taken a cold shower anyway, but kind of strange, since the hot water's never run out before.

When I got home today after school...

Host mom: Oh, by the way, last night did only water come out of the shower?

Me: ....what?

HM: When you took a shower last night, did only water come out?

Me: ....yes...? Water came out...? Um...

HM: No, I mean only water came out, right?

Me: Yes....?

HM: But not お湯 (hot water)?

Me: OH WAIT, when you were saying "water" (水) you meant "cold water" (冷たい水）right?

HM: ...that's what "water" means.

Me: [headwall]

In any case it turned out that there's a special hot water button and I didn't press it so the problem won't occur again.

Why in three years of Japanese did no one ever tell me that 水 only refers to cold water? AUGH.

Also, today we had our meeting with our residential director so we had to speak English for about an hour (and we all failed spectacularly as usual).

Guy in my class: [to I-san (pronounced EE-san), whose name isn't really I-san but we call him that] You know, your voice is really different in English.

I-san: What? What do you mean? Isn't it the same?

Guy: No, you've got...you've got, like, an accent in English.

[I-san was born in Russia, for the record.]

I-san: Okay?

Me: And you sound a lot more sarcastic in English.

Guy: And your voice is lower.

Me: Everyone's voice is lower in English. Mine drops an octave and a half or something.

I-san: Yeah, I know. Every time you start speaking English, I think you're a man.

Me: [headdesk]

Good to know I only sound female in Japanese.

Also, today we were learning how to say "there is no___more___than__." And somehow it turned into a complimenting contest.

B-san: There is no person who is better at dancing than I-san.

I-san: There is no person who is better at flattery than B-san.

F-san: There is no person in this class who is sexier than S-san.

S-san: In this class? How about in the world?

Me: There is no person in this class who is better at conversing in Japanese than A-san.

A-san: There is no person who is better at finishing her homework than Cal.

Sensei: WHAT KIND OF COMPLIMENT IS THAT?

Also, had to cut up my reading 'cause my sensei decided it was too long. SADNESS. I cut the paragraph with Seiji soliloquizing about getting a part time job and the radio girl maybe being called a beautiful woman instead of a beautiful girl. Now I just need to write up 内容質問 and then I'm done!

Okay, I'm off to read more 「来訪者」 (still hoping for a kidnapping) and maybe some 「デュラララ!!」 if I'm lucky.

P.S. In response to the question about bandanas, nobody wears them. Seriously. Barely anyone even wears hats or hair bands. They all carry umbrellas instead. And since I ALWAYS wear something on my head, I stick out like a sore thumb. I guess this is the problem with having crazy hair in a society where pretty much everyone's hair is poker straight.

P.P.S. オパル、警笛警笛ピピピのピ。誠二は本当に狂っていると気付いたのは血の付いた服を着ながら、のんびりラーメンを食べている時だ。怖い!

P.P.P.S. Yummy things I ate today:

spicy potatoes (in the cafeteria; they are seriously amazing)

renkon (lotus root, according to my host mom) tempura

satsuma imo tempura

myouga (YUUUUUUUMMM)

all of dinner in fact

P.P.P.P.S. Apparently I make some very strange faces when I'm talking to people. One of my classmates told me that I make faces like an anime character. Another one of my classmates starts cracking up just sitting across the table from me. I don't know. Maybe it's 'cause my Japanese isn't as good as everyone else's, so I have to compensate somehow?

My thinking face looks something like this: >:I

(That's the face that gets laughed at the most.)

River stomping is probably the best thing ever

Okay, so the river. Yesterday when it was 90+ degrees and 4000% humidity I went back to my host family's house after school only to discover that everyone was out and the door was locked. So I went to the river and did homework instead. Or really, I took off my sandals, stuck my feet in the river, and then did grammar homework. I feel that it significantly improved my grammar experience. And then, when I was done with grammar, I went and waded in the river, which was awesome, 'cause the water was cold and there were a bunch of other people wading, so I didn't feel like a completely crazy person. WHOO.

Also, I just finished reading the first part of a "novel" (only about 24 pages) we're supposed to be reading for class tomorrow. (Or reading the first part tomorrow and then finishing up on Friday.) Our teacher told us not to worry about trying to understand everything, because "even Japanese people would find it difficult to read." I think I understood about 60% of what was going on. From what I can make out, it's about a young mother from a rich family who has given birth to a baby girl and is now being semi-stalked by the woman who helped to take care of the baby while she was sick in the hospital (because apparently after giving birth she was ill for a while and unable to take care of her own child). I am pretty sure that the story is going to end with the nurse kidnapping/attempting to kidnap the baby. If that doesn't happen, I will be sad, because so far the story is pretty much mind-numbingly boring. It's a lot of, "And then the mother thought, '[kanji kanji kanji] that woman has such dirty hands [kanji kanji kanji] lower class [kanji kanji] disrespectful attitude teaching my child [kanji].'"

In other news, my conversation partner saw our midterm exam and said that it looked like the kind of exams she had to take in high school.

Does this mean I'm approximately as literate as a high schooler? It would be awesome if that were true, but somehow I think it isn't.

Lessee, anything else exciting? Oh yeah, I'm teaching my class next Wednesday. My reading got approved. Yay! (If you have a copy of the book, we're reading from the beginning of the prologue to Seiji going 「いいんだよ」over and over. So lots of Mika stalking and Seiji obsessing and being freaky and five or six mentions of HER, but no body bags or cleaning blood off the wall or brother complexes or tasteless ramen. BUMMER.) So now I have to create a vocabulary list (already did that) and a lesson plan (never done one of these before) and a review sheet to test reading comprehension and homework. HMM. Still not sure what I'll assign for homework. I don't think the usual "write what you think about this piece" assignment will work, but I don't want to assign something that will make everyone else hate me.

Other news...? I don't think there really is any. I'm really tired. And it's raining, which is nice. I think I'm gonna go to bed early, 'cause I haven't been getting enough sleep (it's hard to sleep when it's this hot).

Oh, totally random fact, but I've found myself rolling my R's a lot with katakana words recently. I DON'T EVEN KNOW. Been listening to too much anime with angry men set in Tokyo, I guess.

Alright, sleeping now! G'night!

Pictures! Also, awkward screw ups!

When I woke up this morning (at 7 a.m.) it was 83 degrees. Right now (at almost 11 p.m.) it's a balmy 88.7. UGH. And that's WITH the rain cooling things off.

In other news, I got my midterm exam back. Before handing them exams back, our sensei said, "Now, take a moment to calm down, because I bet some of you have never seen scores this low before." Well, I did better than I feared and worse than I hoped. 91.6%, which is a solid A-. OH WELL. (In the words of my host mom, "Oh poor you, you missed 8 whole points. HOW TERRIBLE." And then she proceeded to shove watermelon at me until I felt better. In the words of my host father, "What are you saying? An A- is an A. Sheesh.")

In other other news, I met with my sensei about my report, and he said that it was really well written and easy to understand, so yay for that? Also, we wound up nerding out about shrines for a little bit, which was awesome. I really need to get out and visit more of them.

And now for today's awkward story!

One of my classmates was talking to a (Japanese) friend and wanted to ask him if he'd seen Gintama (a very popular anime and manga). (Also, you should probably know that "gintama" literally means "silver ball," although in the case of the anime it's the main character's name.) Unfortunately, she's always had problems remember the difference between "gin" (silver) and "kin" (gold), and so instead of asking, "Gintama, mita koto ga arimasu ka?" (Have you seen Gintama?) she asked "Kintama, mita koto ga arimasu ka?" Kintama means "gold ball." Or in this case, "gold balls." Yes, keep your mind in the gutter. It means exactly what you think it does. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

Anyway, enough of that. I have pictures to show you from Saturday's trip!

Remember how I said we had to walk through rice fields? Well, I wasn't exaggerating.

Tanuki! Lots of them!

Squat toilets: there's a right way to use 'em and a wrong way to use 'em. Learn well from this illustration.

This guy was sort of a conductor. Sort of. Yes, he was wearing a demon mask. And he put a Hello Kitty mask over it whenever he had to talk to kids.

ONLY IN JAPAN, FOLKS.

The train's here!

We're on a train! A train to Arashiyama!

Pictures from the train ride. TELL ME IT IS NOT GORGEOUS.

Lunch! It was tasty. But then again, is it ever not?

Tying my wish for Tanabata to bamboo.

Here's something that I thought Ann and Opal and Meab would appreciate. (It was in Tenryuuji, for the record.)

(P.S. He totally looks like Chatik. Just sayin'.)

The gardens at Tenryuji! Tell me they do not make you swoon.

Loooooong walk way!

Then we found this nice room to chill in, so we chilled. (And our residential director got fanned and I looked like a dork any time anyone took a picture of me.)

(Also, a Japanese woman stopped me because of my headscarf. She said, "I have never seen someone use a tenugui [hand towel, according to my dictionary, but more a general word for that kind of cloth] like that before! I am going to try it right now!" So much better than the, "You keep your hair covered so you must be a terrorist!" reaction I'm used to.)

But there was a sign saying NO NAPS, so we got disgusted and left.

Let's randomly go to a marriage and baby-making shrine!

Here're some of the omamori (charms) they were selling at the shrine.

(These aren't the marriage and baby-making charms. The ones in the upper right are actually for passing examinations.)

Bamboo forest!

Okay, I should probably sleep, even though it is TOO HOT FOR LIVING. AUGH. Excuse me while I melt into a puddle.

Edit: I knew I forgot to mention something! I finally gave in and hopped in the river this afternoon along with half the college age population of Kyoto. And it was awesome. But I'll write about that tomorrow, I guess.

蒸し暑すぎる

It's SO HOT RIGHT NOW. UGHHHHH. According to my alarm clock, it's currently 87 degrees Fahrenheit, which is TOO HOT FOR LIVING. Especially since it's so humid that my notebook has gotten all wet and sticky just from being out in the air. EW.

Good news is that I'm pretty much done with my homework even though it's not even 5 p.m. So I'm gonna try to start up some of my homework for later this week ('cause we have a boatload of reading to do).

Also, I wrote up my proposal for the class I'm going to teach. I'm picking a segment of Durarara!! to read (the prologue, which has Mika being a stalker and Seiji being Seiji and what's-her-face Yagiri-sister-lady being all brother-complexy), and we're going to talk about writing style and speech patterns. Everyone else in the class has far better Japanese than I do, so I feel that attempting to teach them regular Japanese (i.e. vocabulary and grammar) would be rather futile, so I'm going to play to my strengths instead. I know a lot more about light novels than they do, and I understand the writing style, and I

OH MAN, WAS THAT A BREEZE? SORRY, GOTTA GO REVEL IN THE MOVING AIR FOR A SECOND.

Sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, writing style. I know a lot about writing style and character speech patterns (what with editing and writing and all), so I figure that I'll actually have something to teach them there. Hopefully. We'll see if my proposal gets approved.

Other than that...not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on. Mostly been doing homework and feeling gross and sticky all day. AND TOMORROW IS SUPPOSED TO BE WORSE. UGH. WHERE IS MY RAIN?

I am seriously THIS CLOSE to just running down to the river and jumping in. But that would involve my moving. Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg.

Oh, yeah, and 'cause Ann asked for them, here're today's cultural differences:

There are almost always more bikes than cars on the road when I'm walking to school, which is awesome, except that they're allowed to ride on both the road and sidewalk. This usually isn't a problem, 'cause the bikers are really good at avoiding pedestrians, but barely anyone bothers to use their bike bells, which means that I'll be walking along and suddenly a biker will go whizzing right by a few centimeters from my shoulder, and I will freak out and try to suppress my urges to punch things. Yeah. A least I'm slowly getting used to it. SLOWLY.

Also, I don't think I've seen a single person wearing a helmet. What, do none of these people value their brain cells? Head trauma is not fun, guys. (Says the person who would know pretty well.)

Another thing I've noticed is that barely anyone wears bright colors. And I don't mean hot pink bright. I mean that my clothes seem ridiculously bright compared to most other people's. Pretty much everyone wears shades of grey, white, black, or pastels (light blue, yellow, and pink seem to be the most popular). The one guy I saw who had a bright orange shirt also had blue hair. I think there's some correlation here.

Also, I don't know about anywhere else, but I would say that 90% of the women on the Doshisha campus wear high heels. Yes, even the bikers. Personally, I can barely walk in high heels, let alone bike in them, but apparently these girls can pull it off just fine.

Okay, I'm gonna to study kanji now. BYE BYE.

P.S. I apologize to anyone who I offend by using INORDINATE AMOUNTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS, but it's either that or italicizing huge chunks of text. And really you don't want that.

P.P.S. Mika freaks me out. But not as much as Seiji. Was it just me or did he not come across this psychotic in the anime? Probably he was the same amount of psychotic, but it's magnified 'cause now I get to read him narrating psychotically. Seriously, his inner alarm bell sound effects would be hilarious if they weren't so freaky.

P.P.P.S. Why do I even bother to end posts any more if I'm going to keep tacking on post-scripts?

P.P.P.P.S. ある友達によると、私の日本語で書いた文章をGoogleで翻訳すれば、すごく面白い。まあ、面白いかどうか分からないけど、彼女を笑わせれば、いいんじゃないか。

Arashiyama Adventures

So today we went to Arashiyama, but I don't have pictures to show you, so you'll just have to make do with my lousy narrating abilities. Sorry.

Anyway, we hopped on a train early in the morning and rode to Arashiyama, which, if you don't speak Japanese, means "Storm Mountain," and it really is a mountain. Or a bunch of mountains, really. Anyway, first we rode the train through the mountains, and then we got off and walked through rice fields for about ten minutes to a second train called the torakko (which, for some reason I don't quite understand, was also called "The Romantic Train"), which went on a scenic route through the mountains to the actual town. And WOW. There is no possible way that words or even photographs could capture how gorgeous it was. It was kind of misty and drizzily out, and the train ran along side this massive ravine with a river at the bottom and mountains all around and...yeah, I'm not even going to try, 'cause I hate describing landscapes. Suffice to say that I swooned. A LOT. Pretty much the whole trip, in fact.

So then we arrived in the actual town and went to eat lunch, 'cause we were all starving. I went off with one of the other students and went to get katsudon, because I love katsudon so much it's probably illegal. Anyway, we went into this little hole in the wall restaurant, and the waitress showed us to our table and then said, "Ryouu reddy to odaa, yes?" And I said, "あのう、日本語が話せますが。。。" And for some reason she was really shocked. But anyway, we got katsudon, and it was delicious and cheap, which is why hole in the wall restaurants in Japan are excellent.*

Anyway, then the waitress brought over some little slips of paper because it'll be Tanabata on the 7th, and said that if we wanted we could write our wishes on them and then tie them to the bamboo outside.** So we did. We both wrote super geeky things. OH WELL.

Anyway, after some omiyage (souvenir) shopping (including some giggling/face-palming over naked woman ear-cleaning sticks and golden poop cellphone straps) we met up with the rest of the group and headed over to Tenryuji, which is a Buddhist temple with a gorgeous garden. We walked around there for a while, and then we went to one of the buildings which is famous for having a 9-meter dragon painted on the ceiling (I'm pretty sure this is the temple you were thinking of, Meab). And that was pretty darn awesome.

So then one of the guys said that he knew of a really good ice cream place, so we all went over there and got weirdly flavored ice cream. There were four flavors, and you could get from one to four of them (same price, same amount of ice cream), so I tried all four. So I had vanilla (okay), matcha (super good), houjicha (super good), sakura mochi (kinda weird) ice cream.

And then we went to the bamboo forest nearby and walked around in there for a good long time. But by then it was getting to be late afternoon, so we decided to head back to civilization, and managed to get spectacularly lost in the process. But we finally managed to make it to the train station and got back to Kyoto.

For dinner I went out with my host mom and my little host brother to an okonomiyaki restaurant in the area. It was very yummy. Also, did you know that there's such a thing as corn tempura? It's pretty awesome.

On a completely random note, Durarara!! ended. And it was beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. There will be much forced, erm, PERSUADED watching of it when it comes out on DVD.

In any case, I'm going to go to bed now, because I have forty thousand pounds of homework to do tomorrow and I'm too tired to wi-

*is attacked by pun ninjas before she can make references that no one will understand*

*However, hole in the wall restaurants also tend to allow smoking, which makes me sad and asthmatic. Why is it that about 50% of my katsudon eating experiences have involved my being on the verge of an asthma attack?

**Tanabata is a festival that takes place on the 7th of July. It celebrates the one day a year that the cowherd (Hikoboshi) and the weaver (Orihime) (represented by Altair and Vega,*** respectively) are allowed to meet. (Normally they're separated by the Milky Way. The reasons for their separation are a long and complicated story, so if you're interested, I suggest looking it up.) One of the main activities surrounding the festival is writing your wishes**** on slips of paper and then tying the paper to bamboo (usually put up in front of shops) so that they'll come true.

***If you've ever seen Bakemonogatari, the ending song mentions the myth.

****My favorite wish that I've seen was written on a paper slip hanging on the street right next to my host family's house. It said, "I want to become a kamen rider." (If you don't know what a kamen rider is, imagine a power ranger on a motorcycle, and you'll be in approximately the right general area.)

Edit: Oh yeah! I forgot to mention our residential director getting weirdly hit on when we went to visit a marriage/fertility/success in entrance examinations shrine.

Our residential director got weirdly hit on when we went to visit a marriage/fertility/success in entrance examinations shrine.

It was weird.

Well, I'm not dead

YET.

I survived the midterm exam, although I think I probably created a metric ton of those little pencil eraser shreds. At least I was able to answer all the questions, which is better, it seems, than most of my classmates were able to do.

Well, we'll see when I get the test back. Hopefully it won't be a 0/100, 'cause that would be embarrassing.

So after our midterm examination, we met up with some students from the other KCJS class (not the CLS class) and headed out to a kimono shop, because someone decided that it would be an awesome idea to make all of us go on a kimono field trip. And it probably would have been awesome, if it had been, oh, you know, WINTER when wearing kimono won't make you die of heat stroke.

OH WELL.

And guess what! For the first time ever, I have pictures to show you along with telling my story! SWEET!

So we made it to the shop and split up into a boys' group and a girls' group and headed inside to pick out our kimono.

Hey, guys! We're gonna put on kimono now! It's gonna be so exciting! We're definitely not gonna die of heat stroke!

First they gave us a demonstration of proper kimono-putting on...uh...I'm forgetting English. The right way to put it on? Yes, that was what I was looking for. 着方。

So we all got tabi (these nifty white socks) and managed to put them on with no problem. One step down, forty thousand to go!

So then we put on our kimono. AND TOOK FRIGGIN' FOREVER. Even longer than yukata, 'cause there were multiple layers. It took so long that the guys gave up waiting outside in the heat and waited in the (air conditioned) entrance way to the shop.

So after an age of tying and retying and trying to figure out a way to get a kimono to look relatively decent on someone with massive hips, this was the result. (As long as I keep my arms in front of my hips, it doesn't look that weird...)

HE HAS A SWORD. (Actually, it's an umbrella. It'll come back later, just you watch.)

So then we walked over to Nijo Castle, where the temperature was approximately VERY WARM. People kept taking pictures of us, which was a little bit weird. And then this super enthusiastic Chinese woman wanted to take pictures with us. That was also a little bit weird. OH WELL. I guess that's the kind of reaction gaijin in kimono get.

Here's the whole group looking all snazzy in front of Nijo Castle.

We're wearing kimono guys! And, yeah, it's getting a little bit warm, but I'm sure we'll be okay. Right?

And here are all the boys (minus one)...

...and all the girls.

Notice how people have already started to wilt.

Here, have some pictures of the gardens at Nijo Castle!

He will stab you with his umbrella (でござる). (Told you the umbrella would come back.) There's actually a story behind this picture, but I'm sure that whatever you can come up with will be more amusing.

It's pretty ridiculously hard to climb stairs in kimono! It's ridiculously hard to the point that as I was walking down the stairs, I overheard two older Japanese women commenting on how good I was at walking in kimono. SERIOUSLY.

Also, by this point, everyone was complaining that they were dying and thirsty and hot and auuuuuuugh how much longer did they need to wear these things anyway?

The castle was closing at four, so we all headed back to the kimono shop to disrobe. And, man, we could not get them off fast enough. Seriously, those things are SO HOT, I don't know who it was who decided that we would wear kimono instead of yukata in summer.

Everyone was really happy to be back in their normal clothes.

Tomorrow we're going to Arashiyama, so (if Hu-san posts pictures early) I might have more pictures to show you then.

Until then, g'night! (Or good morning, I guess, 'cause most of you will be reading this in the morning. I don't know.)