*fangirl squeal*

Okay, this is going to be another extraordinarily long post, so you might want to go get a drink of water or something.

Anyway.

This morning I got up, did laundry, and then went out on an ADVENTURE. This particular adventure was supposed to take me to Kitanoutenmangu, but when I got there, the shrine was closed and there seemed to be some sort of demonstration/protest going on outside, so I figured that it was a good idea to skip it. So instead I wandered around the northern half of Kyoto for half the morning, and somehow wound up at another hole-in-the-wall shrine, this one promising success in sports! There were seriously basketballs left as offerings. Also, there were a variety of articles about various teams who had come to pray at the shrine and then won whatever it was that they were competing for plastered up on the side of the honden (see previous post for explanation). Oh, and I picked up a crazy interesting piece of political propaganda. It was, once again, a flyer for the recent election, but one of the slogans on the flyer was

神道の心は日本の心

The heart of Shinto is the heart of Japan

Apparently she (the candidate) was endorsed by some sort of Shinto political society. Not surprisingly, she's part of the 自由民主党 (LDP; the conservative party of Japan).

In any case, I wound up wandering out of northern Kyoto all the way to Nijo Castle, and then I hopped on bus and rode to Kyoto Station because there was a movie theatre near there showing the new Studio Ghibli movie. Fortunately, I was paranoid, and gave myself plenty of time to get to the movie theatre, 'cause I got seriously lost in spite of (or maybe because of) my map. After wandering around fruitlessly, wondering why none of the streets had the right names, I asked someone, who told me very politely that I was on the wrong side of the station. DUH. So then I had an adventure through the station (seriously, the thing is like a friggin' labyrinth) and managed to make it to the other side, and lo and behold, my map suddenly started working! So I went to the movie theatre, which happened to be on the fifth floor of a mall, and found out that they offer student discounts, but I had forgotten my student ID, so I had to pay 1800 yen to get in. (That's a little more than $18, for anyone wondering.) The crazy thing, though, was that when I went up to buy my ticket, the woman behind the counter asked me which seat I wanted. Apparently movie theatres in Japan are assigned seating. SWEET. Even better, I got a really good seat because I was by myself. (The other people in the program couldn't come today! Sadness.)

So I got to wait until 10 minutes before the movie started, which was when they opened the doors. And guess what! Movie theatre floors in Japan aren't sticky! What craziness is this?! Also, it was stadium seating (with really, really comfortable seats), so there seriously wasn't a bad seat in the house.

So at the beginning of the movie, they had a little "please turn off your cell phones and don't try videotaping this or else" announcement, and then there were trailers.

Trailer #1: Redline, which appears to be an anime movie from Madhouse about a man with a mullet that is larger than I am tall who is competing in some sort of intergalactic race. I may have been biting back giggles for the entire trailer.

Fast cars, big hair, kind of Gurren Lagann-esque animation. Yay?

Then there was a trailer for Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. It was only slightly better in Japanese. Only slightly. A lot of lines were changed. Everyone was just sort of staring at the screen and twitching slightly.

Then there was a trailer for How to Train Your Dragon...in Japanese. But it was called ヒックとドラゴン (Hikku and Dragon).

Then there were two trailers for Kamen Rider movies, which looked ridiculous and cheesy. WHOO.

Then there was a trailer for this Korean movie (Japanese title translates to "His and My Castaway Diary" but the English title is "Castaway on the Moon"), which actually looks pretty interesting. Here's an English trailer, for those of you who don't want to suffer through the Japanese one.

So then the movie started and MY GOODNESS. It was wonderful. And I could understand about 90% of what they were saying. (I was really worried, because I've never watched a full movie in Japanese without subtitles before. I've never even watched an episode of something without subtitles.) Ranting and raving about its epicness below. No spoilers, but skip if you don't want to be bored by my swooning.

Synopsis: I don't remember a whole lot about the original book this is based off of (The Borrowers), but it stuck to the parts I remember surprisingly well. (They even get in the tea kettle of The Borrowers Afloat at the end.)

Boy (named Shou) with undisclosed illness (it's explained later in the movie, but like I said, no spoilers) comes to live with his grandmother for a bit over the summer because his parents are divorced and too busy to take care of him. Grandmother is also too busy to take care of him, apparently, because she never seems to be around, and instead leaves most of the taking-care-of-ailing-grandsons to her almost entirely incompetent hired hand, Haru.* Shou is, needless to say, extremely lonely, but is delighted to find that there are 借りぐらし (borrowers, although the literal translation is "people who live by borrowing") living in his house. Unfortunately, the borrowers aren't so thrilled about being found out. DRAMA ENSUES.

Animation is, as always, excellent, as is the music. (The theme song is, surprisingly enough, sung by a French woman. She has a weird accent in Japanese, but it's still super pretty.) In addition, whoever did the sound effects needs a pay raise. Seriously. There's this incredible scene where Arrietty and her father are going out borrowing for the first time, and the sound effects make me swoon. Also, there's another scene where the perspective is shifting back and forth between Arrietty and Shou, and the sounds also shift and...well, it was also pretty swoon inducing.

Also, Arrietty's father is pretty much AWESOME. As is Supira (a character who I don't remember from the original Borrowers series, so I bet he's been added).

Also also, the borrowing scenes? SO EXCELLENT.

Also also also, that movie made me even more terrified of crows than I already am. Seriously.**

It's a surprisingly melancholy movie. If you've read The Borrowers, you basically know how it's going to end, and the other main character (Shou), as he says partway through the movie, is "in the middle of dying." That said, it doesn't get overbearingly sad, although there were certainly some parts where I was getting a little bit teary. (Teary from the awesomeness, of course!)

Overall, not one of Ghibli's absolute best movies, but as a non-Miyazaki, it's phenomenal. I would say it's about on the same par as Kiki's Delivery Service or Ponyo. It's really short (92 minutes) so it doesn't have quite the time to develop its characters the way Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away (the two best Ghibli movies, in my humble opinion) do.

[/swooning over 「借りぐらしのアリエッティ」***]

So after that I rode the subway home and swooned a little bit more.

And then I got to eat at my host dad's restaurant. (He was kind of like, "Well, you came all this way, and it's your last weekend, so you might as well, okay?" which meant "DO IT.") I went really early (5 o' clock) before the normal huge wave of customers comes (because it's a really tiny restaurant), and IT WAS DELICIOUS. I think he is some kind of cooking wizard. But it was also bizarre, 'cause he kept using all the really polite service terms, and then switching into slangy Kyoto dialect, which kind of threw me for a loop. (はい、めしあがりください。無理しないでね。）So anyway, yes. I have now eaten at one of the hundred best restaurants in Kyoto. AND IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Tomorrow we're taking the Shinkansen (bullet train, for all you Japan-traveling n00bs) to Miyajima, where we'll be spending the night in a ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel). I have no idea if I will have internet access or not, so if you don't hear anything from me, don't assume that I'm dead. I could just be stranded in the middle of nowhere. I will definitely have internet on Tuesday, though, so if I go silent, it'll only be for a day.

Also, it is really hot right now. Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. 9 o' clock at night and 90 degrees. This kind of heat should be illegal!

(Thank goodness for vending machines. Today I had C.C. Lemon, which one of the other program participants is probably going to wind up marrying, because he loves it that much. I must admit that it is pretty good. And apparently has the same amount of vitamin C as 70 lemons. SCARY.)

M'kay, well, I'm gonna go pretend that I'm not melting to death and answer some emails. (Okay, some email, no plural. But it's the thought that counts.) Write more later.

*Who I thought was a man for the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Then Haru used "kashira" (a super girly word for "I wonder") and I thought, "Oh my goodness, Haru is a gay man!" Then I realized Haru the gay man had breasts. HELLO, I AM A GENIUS.

Also, I spent most of the movie mentally calling her Hatsue and expecting her to start killing babies.

**Anime has made me scared of many, many things. Some things I have learned to be scared of because of anime:

Dolls

Blue butterflies

Johnnies

Yellow scarves

Knives of any kind

The internet

Freaky deer god things

Chat rooms

Black goo

DEAD LEAVES AUUUUGH

Ramen

Older sisters

Onsens

Bunny girls

...and more...

Points if you can actually identify what each of those comes from.

**Potential translations:

The Borrower's Arrietty

Arrietty of the Borrowers

Arrietty the Borrower

The Borrower Arrietty

Knowing the weird naming scheme they use, though, it'll wind up with a completely different title.

There's boring...and then there's Noh

Well, apparently my reading comprehension fails late at night, 'cause there was no gender change in the crazed-kidnapping-murdering-nurse story. Still, she switched babies and then murdered one of them. WHOO.

In other news, today we went to see a Noh play. Or, really, we went to a Noh theatre, got talked at for two hours (during which time I was trying very, very hard to look interested while falling asleep) and then watched ten minutes of Noh. The Noh itself wasn't boring. Although I couldn't understand a single word they were saying. Then again, according to the Noh guy, even the Noh actors can't understand what they're saying sometimes. What is the deal with reciting things which you don't know the meaning of? But anyway, we only watched ten minutes of Noh, and I've heard that most performances last 3-4 hours, so I think that it would get very, very boring very, very quickly. Especially if you didn't get an explanation of the story beforehand. So, yeah. That was my incredibly exciting Noh experience.

In other other news, I have been putting together material for the class I'm teaching next week. And you know what I have discovered? I don't like following instructions. Well, I guess we already knew that, but really. If I'm going to teach a class, I don't want to have someone else tell me how to do it, and I don't want to put together a minute-by-minute plan. I'm good at improvising and playing it by ear and figuring out what people are struggling with, but having to create a minute-by-minute lesson plan with set discussion questions doesn't allow me to do that. PFEH. We'll see how it goes. I have a feeling that I will not stick to my lesson plan and get a failing grade, but at least that way people will actually learn something.

[/frustration with incompatible teaching styles]

What other exciting things have been going on? Lessee...tomorrow we're going to an onsen. Yeah. Well, we'll see how that goes.

Also, little host brother's hearing has not improved at all despite being on antibiotics. Not good.

Also also, I should pretty much stop asking my host mom what I'm eating, 'cause if I don't recognize it, it's probably some kind of seaweed. Seriously, every time I think I've eaten all the kinds of seaweed there are to eat, more of them show up. And they are all delicious.

I have seventy thousand pounds of homework this week, so I think I'm going to start on that tonight. WHEE.

Oh, yeah, and remember how I said no one wears a helmet? She wasn't in our program, but one of the girls in another KCJS program got into a bike accident (I haven't heard all the details but I believe there was a car involved?) and broke her arm. She wasn't wearing a helmet. Correlation? Clearly lack of helmet ----> accidents.

Okay, going to run away now! Bye bye!

I am about to fall asleep on my keyboard but I figured I'd let my parents know that I haven't died in some ditch somewhere

I just finished writing the most jaded essay ever about how ANA is stealing money from people who don't feel like drinking things on airplanes. I don't even know.

Also, remember that story that I said I thought would end with a kidnapping? Well, I was sort of right. It actually turned out that the stalker-nurse had switched rich-lady's baby boy with her granddaughter at birth (and for some reason no one noticed, you know, the child's sudden gender change) and then killed the baby and buried his bones in a bag in her garden. Suddenly, Seiji seems to be really mentally stable. (Wait, no, I lied. He's never mentally stable. Especially not around pens.)

Other than that, not a whole lot going on over here. Tomorrow afternoon we're going to see a Noh play, which everyone (including my language partner and my host mom and people who have seen Noh plays before) tells me will be excruciatingly boring. Well, with a resounding recommendation like that, I bet you can guess that I'm bubbling over with excitement.

And then Saturday we're going to an onsen. For the entire day. Yay? I don't really understand how you can spend an ENTIRE DAY at an onsen, but I guess I'll find out on Saturday.

In any case, I'm going to go cut this short and go to bed 'cause I am so tired it's not even funny. G'niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

P.S. Oh, wait, but today I fangirled about M.T. Anderson...IN JAPANESE. I think this just upped my nerdiness a level.

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!