And then I GEEKED OUT

Hey, look a class picture! (Which for some reason is uploading really tiny. I dunno why.)

This is what we look like for maybe five minutes a day (teachers are on both ends):

And this is what we look like the rest of the time:

Today has been a day full of me being a geek to the fullest extent. Be forewarned, lots of spazzing in the post ahead.

So we got up this morning, grabbed breakfast at the hotel, and then took the train to Tokyo. It turns out that our hotel is RIGHT in the heart of Akihabara.

Me: !!!!!

Classmate: What? What's wrong?

Me: This...this station. OH MY GOODNESS, THIS STATION.

Classmate: ?

Me: Okay, you see that walkway? At the beginning of Densha Otoko, THAT'S THE WALKWAY DENSHA_OTOKO WALKS DOWN.

Classmate: You are so weird.

Me: *does an Akihabara dance*

So we went to our hotel (WHICH IS RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE WALKWAY THAT DENSHA_OTOKO WALKS DOWN), but it was too early to check in, so we just dropped our bags behind the desk and headed out. It was mandatory for us to go to Asakusa for some reason, but after that we were free. We wandered around Asakusa for a little while, and then went back to Akihabara, where we tried to buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum only to discover that they were sold out for both today and tomorrow. There was much sadness, needless to say.

So then I went and exchanged some money, 'cause I only had about 8000 yen, and I wasn't sure that would be enough to get me through the next three days. And it took frickin' forever, and was like having a chunk of my soul carved out, 'cause the exchange rate was 83 yen to the dollar. 83!

Me: Uggggggh, that was not worth it.

Classmate: Hey, at least it's not really your money.

Me: But but but but 83! AUGH. I probably won't even use this money...

And then I walked into a bookstore and walked out 4500 yen poorer. Whoops. (But they're books! So they're education! Maybe. Marginally. Okay, so I bought things that probably can't be considered educational in the slightest. BUT IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.)

After that, it was finally late enough for us to check into our hotel room, so we went back and did that, and I being the spazz brain I am, LEFT MY CAMERA IN MY HOTEL ROOM UGH WHY AM I SO STUPID.

So then we got on the subway to Shibuya and I realized I'd forgotten my camera and it was too late to go back and I cried inside. (That was a very badly constructed sentence. But you know what? I DON'T CARE. I am too spastic right now to care about lyricism.)

So we got off at Shibuya.

Me: The buildings are very tall.

Classmate: Yup.

Me: There are lots of people here.

Classmate: Yup.

Me: ....why would you want to pay that much money for a haircut?

Classmate: ...because you're Japanese?

Me: ....is there anything here other than pachinko and shopping?

Classmate: Nope.

Me: Right, I'm ready to go.

Classmate: Okay.

So then we got on the subway again and went to Ikebukuro. And I GEEKED OUT. Because when I walked out of the station, I KNEW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS. Because there was the weird sculpture thing that Shinra's dad gets harassed in front of, and there was that place that they walked past in the first episode, AND, HEY, I KNOW THAT INTERSECTION!

Me: OhmygoodnessthisissuchanoutofbodyexperienceohmygoshCeltyridesRIGHTPASTTHEREinthatoneepisode.

Classmate: You are so weird.

So then my classmate headed back to Akihabara, and I attempted to find The Park. (Anyone who has watched the anime will know what I'm talking about.) I had the following to go on:

It has to be near a subway station ('cause in That One Episode Mikado and you-know-who take shelter in a subway station).

It has to be in Ikebukuro.

It has to big enough to hold approximately a hundred people.

I narrowed it down to three, and went to the first one. It wasn't it, and it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too small. So having figured out the scale on the map, I was able to cross another off the list. That left one possibility, which was close to the East Ikebukuro subway station (certainly within running distance).

So I started walking. (And had that weird jazz song that they always play in the random scenes running through my head.)

And I proceeded to get extremely, extremely lost. Or, technically, I went in the right direction, but was way, way too far north, and it was starting to get dark, and I had promised to meet a classmate for dinner, so I had to head back.

So I never actually got to the park, which makes me so sad there are no words for how sad I am.

I did, however, get to see:*

Ikebukuro station (including a bunch of the places where the Yellow Scarves are harassing people later in the series)

The area where Russia Sushi is (obviously Russia Sushi doesn't actually exist, but the neighborhood does)

The overpass that Seiji sees "his love" on in one of the super early episodes (where he's all, "I HAVE FOUND YOU, MY LOVE" but you don't realize how creepy that is yet)

The overpass that Mikado, Kida, and Anri are standing on in the first opening

The intersection where Mikado, Kida, and Anri are standing in the second opening

The road that Celty gets chased by traffic cops on (plus she's always on that road)

An elementary school which looked creepily similar to Shinra/Shizuo/Izaya's high school (I would hazard a guess that they based the building off of it, 'cause that's what they do in anime studios when they don't want to come up with a background but don't want to use a real building.)

The overpass that the Yellow Scarves beat the music guy up on

Things I did not see:

Men in bartender outfits throwing vending machines

Anyone wearing a yellow scarf (that made me both happy and sad)

Dollars (but then again, how would I tell? MAYBE THEY WERE EVERYWHERE)**

People with knives

So then I hopped on the subway and rode back to Ocha No Mizu, and then walked to Akihabara (and stopped by my hotel room and picked up my camera). Then I went to the Tokyo Anime Center (I'll be going back there tomorrow to actually buy stuff, 'cause they have (a very limited selection of) Higashi no Eden merchandise) and then I met with a classmate, and we went out to dinner (which, by the way, Dad, cost 530 yen; toljaso).

Then we met with another classmate, who wanted to go to a maid cafe, so I walked them over to a maid cafe and then ran like the dickens, because I did not want to pay 3000 yen for a glass of water. So instead I wandered around a lot of stores, and realized that while you can find Neon Genesis Evangelion and One Piece stuff wherever you turn, there is NEXT TO NOTHING for Durarara!! or Higashi no Eden. Probably because they're not as popular because they're weird.

Oh, but then I wandered into this store which turned out to be selling dojinshi.*** And there was half a floor devoted to Durarara!!, which would have made me happy, except that 99.9% of it was IzayaxShizuo. UM, NO. Hate =/= love, last time I checked. (The remaining 0.1% seemed to have no pairing...or were KidaxIzaya, WHICH MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE!)

So then my knee was killing me (I think I've just been walking too much this week, and it hasn't had time to heal, like it normally does) so I headed back to my hotel room, and that's where I am now.

I dunno where I'm gonna go tomorrow, other than the Tokyo Anime Center. Might wander around Akihabara a bit more, might go down to the 160 used bookstores in Kanda.... Hmm, decisions, decisions. If I have a LOT of time, I might try to go back to Ikebukuro and find that park (but it's 結構遠い).

Anyway, sleep time for me! G'night!

*Because Durarara!! is set in a real place in Tokyo (and named), many of the settings are based on real places. This is both because it's awesome to set an anime in a real place, and because a lot of the time animators don't want to double as architects and build a whole place from scratch. This has actually become a fairly common practice recently.

**I am very sad, because there has been a rash of Dollars sites, and they are all LAME and full of people typing in chat speak. C'mon, people! DOLLARS! The pinnacle of awesome!

***Fan-made comics. Usually porn.

Books = swoon

So today I had my final meeting with my conversation partner. It was sad, BUT I have her email address, so I'll be able to keep in contact. (YAY~ Also, she wrote me a really nice postcard which she gave me and made me promise that I wouldn't look at until I got back to my host family's house.) But anyway, it was awesome, as it always is, although she didn't believe that mountain lions really exist.

Me: Yeah, in my town we have deer and raccoons and skunks and mountain lions and...

Conversation partner: Wait, wait, MOUNTAIN LIONS? What? What the heck are those?

Me: Um...lions that live in mountains? Although these are more like lions that live in hills.

CP: But they're different than African lions, right?

Me: Well, yes. But not that much.

CP: Isn't that dangerous????

Me: Well, every once and a while someone's dog gets eaten...

CP: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and then we wound up talking about weird meats. And Canadian accents. And where to go in Tokyo. And what to do if a monkey invades your school. It. Was. Awesome.

And then I worked on my presentation, which I'm pretty sure is TOO LONG. UGH. Well, I'll find out at the rehearsal tomorrow. (It also turns out that I'm presenting first! EEK!)

And then I went with my host mom and my host brothers to a used bookstore and MY GOODNESS I SWOONED. Seriously, greatest thing ever. EVER. EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Although it made me sad, 'cause not only will I never have time to read all the books I want to, I will probably not have the reading comprehension skills to read all the books I want to. It's supposed to take ten years to be fluent in Japanese, so I guess I have another 6 1/2 years to go! In the meantime, I've got some stuff to translate. Oh yeah. (I should probably finish translating Immortal Rain volume 9, 'cause my mom's been waiting, oh, a year. My guess is that with my trusty denshi jisho, it shouldn't take too terribly long to finish. It's just a question of sitting down and doing it. And tearing myself away from Durarara!!)

I was wandering around the bookstore (probably looking really dazed) with my little host brother trailing after me, but then I went into the shoujo manga (girls' manga, so mostly sappy romance/romantic comedy) section and suddenly he went to go look at the MAN MANGA section. (Seriously, there was a section called MAN MANGA (男性漫画). PFFT. It was mostly made up of covers with people who had pointy noses and pointier hair.) And then after I left the girly manga section, he started trailing me again.

Oh, and then my not-so-little host brother was looking for books to read, and he likes foreign fantasy (he loves Harry Potter) and somehow I managed to convince him to read The Bartimaeus Trilogy. In Japanese. I am not a walking advertisement for Bartimaeus, I swear! (If there had been a translated M.T. Anderson book, I would have been advertising that, but there wasn't, so I couldn't. Oh well. Plus, his books are probably a little bit mature for a twelve year old. They're amazing, though. Go read them. Go read The Bartimaeus Trilogy too.)

So anyway, much swooning all over the place! Most of it book-induced swooning. And I picked up yet another copy of Durarara!! (for a certain afro-ed gentleman). I seriously have three copies of the first volume in my possession. WHOO. It is so good though. Seriously. Every time I start reading it, I start grinning like a dork. (Not that I don't grin like a dork the rest of the time too.)

Oh, and then I read the entire prologue to the third volume of Kino No Tabi without a dictionary, and it was swoon-inducing, and I was reminded how much I love that series and that I need to start reading that again too.

Long story short: Books are awesome. I need to read more.

Okay, I should go actually study for my final exam now, even though I really don't want to. At all. 'cause I have been studying FOREVER. Oh well.

BYE!

P.S. Opal and anyone else who cares at all about Durarara!!, which is pretty much only Opal, 'cause the rest of you are probably sick of hearing me talk about it:

I 確認'd exactly how much the anime covers. Yes, I just used a Japanese verb in the middle of an English sentence. In any case, the books go like this:

Volume 1 - the Dollars/Celty's head/Yagiri Pharmaceuticals arc (episodes 1-12)

Volume 2 - Saika arc (episodes 13-20? Or was it 19? Can't remember.)

Volume 3 - Dollars/Saika/Yellow Scarves arc (21-24)

Volume 4 - Some new arc

Volumes 2 and 3 are OBESE, though, so my bet is that the anime cut A LOT of stuff. Must read faster!

Excuse me while I do a VICTORY DANCE

*victory dance*

So today I taught my class, and it was EPIC. Have I mentioned before that I love teaching? I love teaching. So much. Today reminded me how much I miss TA-ing Japanese. If nothing else, I'm looking forward to TA-ing in grad school.

For the sake of anyone who hasn't read/seen Durarara!!, I've turned some of the text the same color as the background to hide spoilers. If you don't want spoilers, don't highlight the text. (This means you, family. And you, friends who I am going to tie to a sofa and make you watch Durarara!! You know who you are. Opal, you can look at all of this, obviously.)

I was kind of worried this morning, 'cause I came into class and one of the other students immediately came up to me to complain.

Student: Hey, I read your reading, and I didn't understand it at all.

Me: What? Um, what do you mean by "at all"?

Student: I was so lost. I had no idea what was going on.

Me: I...I didn't think it was that hard to understand, but maybe I just have a lot of practice reading light novels...?

Another student: Yeah, the first read through I had no idea what was going on, but the second time around I think I sort of got it.

And yet another student: Yeah, the same thing happened to me.

Me: D':

(I probably made exactly that face too.)

In any case, fearing that I was going to have a class full of people who wouldn't understand anything I was saying, I started off the class by explaining what a light novel is (essentially a slightly-shorter-than-usual novel targeting middle and high school students (although it can be enjoyed by people of all ages) usually with illustrations) and then explaining a little bit about Durarara!! (it's a story concerning a bunch of different people who live in Ikebukuro, and at all the end of the story all the storylines converge). And then we dove straight into the 内容質問 (content questions).*

And it turned out that people actually did pretty much understand everything that had happened, so that was good. Some people were a little bit unclear on what had happened when Seiji went down to the convenience store (someone thought that the stalker was standing in front of his door, and couldn't understand how he could walk right past her without noticing), but other than that, it seemed like pretty much everyone understood the general storyline.

So then I asked about the characters' speaking patterns, and how they differed, and how those speaking patterns showed the characters' personalities. Basically, what everyone came up with was that Seiji is rude, curt, and manly and the stalker girl is polite and overzealous.

Guy: Basically, she's a manga girl.

Me: A manga girl? Can you explain what you mean by that?

Guy: You know, the ideal girl in manga. She's cute and with a high voice...

Me: And a stalker?

Guy: .......well, okay, maybe she's like a manga girl. But not.

An important part of the section we were reading involves Seiji (the narrator) mentioning something that his stalker isn't allowed to see, so I asked everyone what they thought it was. The list went something like this:

Illegal drugs

Women's clothing (he likes crossdressing!)

A Superman costume

Some sort of weird clothing

A corpse

Really bad porn

Me: Really bad porn?

Girl: Yeah, I mean, maybe? Maybe he has really bad porn?

Guy: But isn't that what pretty much all high schoolers have? Why would that be particularly bad to see?

Girl: Maybe it's really weird porn. Like...REALLY WEIRD.

Other girl: OH HO HO! *wiggly eyebrows*

And then

Guy: I don't get it. I mean, it's obvious that this story is going to end with the guy finally falling in love with his stalker.

Me: UM, I HAVE TO CORRECT YOU ON THAT. Lemme show you the illustration of what occurs directly after this.

So then I passed around the illustration of Seiji calmly eating ramen while spattered in blood with his sister's subordinates carrying a body bag out of the apartment.

Suddenly, the list of possible "things she's not allowed to see" turned into this:

A corpse

A lot of corpses (he's secretly a serial killer)

A cut up corpse (he works for the yakuza, disposing of bodies by cutting them up and throwing them in dumpsters)

His girlfriend's corpse (he's a necrophiliac; I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE THIS CAME FROM)

Anyway, the discussion was getting increasingly heated. One of the girls pointed out that Seiji uses words that start with the kanji 警 throughout the chapter (警告、警笛、警報) in bad situations, and maybe since 警察 (police) starts with the same kanji, it means that he's scared of the police, so it means that whatever he's hiding is something he's scared of the police seeing. (She also pointed out that early in the prologue he threatens to call the police on the stalker...but never does. It was a really good point. I applaud her for her reading comprehension.) And then my sensei (who was supposed to just be observing) joined in the discussion, and everyone was trying to figure out what it was that he was hiding.

Guy: So what is it? What is it that he's hiding?

Me: Well, actually, I have the clip of the anime that shows this little bit, and the "thing that she's not supposed to see" shows up in it, so I thought that I would show it at the end of class.

Everyone: SHOW IT NOW.

Me: But we still have some time left...

Everyone: NOW. STOP BULLYING US.

So while everyone else was running around turning off lights and closing curtains, I pulled up the clip (turned out to be in episode 12, Opal, not 9) and set it up. And everyone (including my sensei) crowded together to watch. (And it was really dark, and people were going, "I'm scared! This is a really scary atmosphere!) And when "the thing that she isn't allowed to see" showed up, someone in the class actually screamed. (Spoilers: "IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE HER! AUGH, IT REALLY IS A CORPSE!") And then Seiji smushed his stalker's head into the wall and the clip ended.

Everyone: WHAT? NO, WE HAVE TO WATCH THE REST.

Me: Guys, we don't have time to watch the rest.

Everyone: WHAT? NO, YOU SUCK. C'MON.

Me: Seriously, you guys, we don't have time. But your perception of the characters changed, right? Did you think the same thing about them at the beginning of the story as at the end? What about after you saw the anime?

And then everyone pretty much agreed that they hadn't understood the atmosphere at all just by reading it, and that once they saw the anime they all had to agree that Seiji was a freaky boy. (Spoilers: And then people started theorizing that Seiji was actually a serial killer who dated girls and then chopped off their heads. PFFT.)

And people kept discussing it through break. (It made me proud.) And then during our grammar class, whenever the teacher asked for an example sentence, people were making example sentences about Durarara!!

Sensei: Okay, guys, I get that grammar isn't as interesting as the previous class. BUT SERIOUSLY. FOCUS.

MY WORK HERE IS DONE.

After the class, one of my classmates asked if I was planning on becoming a professor. I said that there was a possibility that I would become a professor. He said, "Good. You'd make a good professor."

(Also, my sensei said I did a really good job and it was a really interesting class. YES. WHOO.)

And then I got to grade six papers. It was pretty awesome. It was interesting to see the different levels of reading comprehension in the class, 'cause it was obvious that some people understood what was going on, and some people really didn't. It's weird, but I guess I have pretty good reading comprehension compared to most people, despite my stuttering and difficulty forming coherent sentences.

Anyway, after that we had our meeting with our residential director and everyone failed at speaking English, and then I went home.

And I had a really interesting conversation over dinner with my host mom and my little host brother about the subjects that are taught in elementary school.

Host mom: Oh, yeah, and they also have a class on 保健 (hoken).

Me: 保険 (hoken)? Like...健康保険 (kenkou hoken; life insurance)?

HM: No, no, like...where do babies come from? And if you're a girl, you learn about girl things.

Me: What? Seriously? In elementary school?

So then my little host brother ran to get his textbook, and sure enough, there were illustrations explaining how sex worked and how babies grow in the uterus and also what will happen to you if you don't get enough sleep.

HM: You don't have this kind of class in the U.S.?

Me: No, we have them, but I think they're usually in middle school or high school.

HM: What? That's so late!

Me: Yeah, it probably is a little bit late.

HM: What, don't people want to talk about sex?

Me: Um, no, it's just not...um...polite? To talk about it? And it makes some people embarrassed, so they don't want to talk to their kids about it.

HM: That seems like a really bad idea.

Me: Um, yes. That's probably true.

And that was how I wound up talking about sex with my host mom. Excuse me while I pound my head on my desk.

Oh, but before that, I asked why soumen is a traditional dish for Tanabata**, and she gave me the handout that my host brother's school sent all the parents, and aside from five or six words that I could pretty much guess the meaning from by looking at the kanji, I was able to read and understand all of it! Can I be proud for a moment?

Okay, moment's over. Back to business as usual.

In any case, I have to give a news presentation tomorrow and also turn in the second draft of my essay on top of regular classes, so I'm going to stop typing here and bid all of you a good night!

G'night! おやすみなさい！

いか先生

*Summary of the section we read in class for anyone who isn't a Durarara!! fangirl like me:

Seiji is in his house while a stalker girl is banging on the door and trying to break in. Seiji threatens to call the police and the stalker girl finally leaves. While Seiji goes down to the convenience story to buy toothpaste and a magazine, the stalker girl breaks in. Seiji walks in on her and quickly realizes, because of her state of complete shock, that she's seen "the thing she's not allowed to see." Instead of reacting like most people would and freaking out, he starts repeating "it's fine" over and over and over.

**See previous blog post for explanation. I am too tired and lazy to retype it. Also, it was Tanabata today.

By the way, I think I deserve a medal, 'cause I just taught myself basic html, 'cause there's no way to select a font color that perfectly matches the background of this blog. So instead of being sensible and giving up, I went into the website coding and stared at it until I understood what was going on and made the text invisible.

Probably not impressive at all if you know anything about computers, but I don't really, so HEY. GO ME.

本当に日本人っぽいよね

Today after my class was finished, my conversation partner, three classmates, one girl from the KCJS program, one of my classmates' language partners, and I walked over to the local Urasenke* Chado** Research Center and had matcha.*** It was free for all KCJS and Kyoto University students, so all of us got in without paying. SWEETNESS.

Anyway, we all got tea sweets and the woman there taught us the correct tea ceremony etiquette (and I was proud because I actually remembered all of it from studying it before) and then we got to make our own tea and drink it. It was pretty awesome. And then they had a big exhibit of tea utensils which we wandered through for a little bit, and I got to explain what everything was, because no one else knew anything about tea ceremony (including the Japanese people). MY KNOWLEDGE OF RANDOM FACETS OF JAPANESE CULTURE HAS FINALLY PAID OFF!

Anyway, I was explaining to my conversation partner about moon bowls (essentially tea bowls made out of a black, glossy material, so if you're drinking water outside, you can see the moon's reflection in the bowl).

Conversation partner: Wow, you know a lot about this!

Me: それほどでもないけど。。。**** (Not that much...)

And then she started laughing at me.

Me: [flustered] Um, sorry, um, um... Did I pronounce something wrong?

CP: [still laughing] No, no, that was just really Japanese.

Me: Um, sorry?

CP: No, no, don't apologize. You're just really good at being modest.

Me: Um.....no, not at all?

CP: Exactly.

And then one of the guys told a "that's what she said" joke in Japanese, and the Japanese students stared at him and wanted to know what he meant. And then the rest of us suddenly changed the subject.

And then I went home where it was 90 friggin' degrees. Oh well.

Something kind of amusing that I keep forgetting to mention:

About two weeks ago, I was eating soba for lunch with my host mom and my little host brother. (It was a Sunday, so we were all at home for lunch.)

Host mom: You eat really quietly, don't you?

Me: Um, yes? Sorry?

HM: It's okay to make noise.

Little host brother: [slurps noodles loudly to demonstrate]

HM: It's probably rude in America, right? You can't slurp spaghetti, can you?

Me: No, not really. It's better not to.

LHB: [continues slurping noodles loudly]

HM: Well, it's okay to make noise when you're eating Japanese noodles, okay? So don't worry about it.

Me: O-okay.

LHB: [NOODLE SLURP]

Something else kind of funky:

I've found that Japanese people will avoid making physical contact whenever possible...except when it comes to my hair. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I've turned around to find some random person petting my hair. It's actually kind of creepy. At least in the U.S. people (usually) ask before they touch.

Lessee, what other exciting things have been happening? I'll be teaching my class tomorrow. I'm probably going to spend the rest of this evening preparing for it. It shall be a class so epic that it will live on in infamy as the most epic class EVER.

Oh, and I got back my content question homework sheet I submitted for the student-taught class yesterday. It had "FANTASTIC! [picture of a happy bunny] You understood all the sentences, didn't you?" written in Japanese across the top. (The only time my regular sensei has drawn anything on my homework was one time when I submitted a sentence for grammar practice that was something like, "While Aya is a quiet, shy person, her sister sings loudly on the subway." My sensei drew a terrified bird face. It was kind of brilliant.)

In any case, I'm going to go prepare for my class tomorrow. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to this~~~ It's been so long since I got to teach anything. It will be nice to have new victi-, erm, students.

じゃ、また明日ね！

*Urasenke is one of the two big tea ceremony branches in Japan. I forget the name of the other one, but it's nowhere near as famous, so that's probably okay.

**Chado = tea ceremony. Cha no yu is the same thing. SO MANY NAMES.

***A type of powdered green tea that's used in tea ceremonies.

****YES, OPAL, IT IS A QUOTE FROM DURARARA!! THANK YOU, IZAYA, FOR TEACHING ME USEFUL PHRASES. Now go away before I throw a vending machine at you.

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.)

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.

And then she did a strip tease

So today we had our debate in class. It was about an article called 「日本人とアイデンティティ」(Japanese people and identity) written by some famous clinical psychologist who used to teach at Kyoto University and who apparently knows nothing about Western fairy tales 'cause he says that all of them are about male main characters vanquishing beasts and then marrying captured damsels.

Anyway, I was on the side against him, and we would certainly have won...if the teacher hadn't been more worried about giving everyone a chance a speak. Is it my fault that I have a lot to say?

In any case, I started off the debate by saying that Mr. Fancy Pants Psychologist was wrong and knew nothing because the number of fairy tales that follow that pattern are really small, and anyway the most popular fairy tales nowadays are about girls saving themselves or saving men ("Rapunzel," "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White and Rose Red," etc., etc.) SO THERE. (Except I was about forty times more polite when I was actually saying it.)

Then someone on the pro-Mr. Fancy Pants Psychologist said that maybe that was true but it was less important what the currently popular fairy tales were and more important to look at the versions of fairy tales from the past.

And then someone else on the pro-Mr. Fancy Pants Psychologist side said that anyway there were lots of stories in which girls had to be saved by guys, like "Snow White" and "Little Red Riding Hood."

And I was so waiting for someone to mention Little Red Riding Hood, but I had to wait for FOREVER to say anything because the teacher was giving everyone a chance to speak and kept saying, "Hold on, we need to let other people talk." But THEN after everyone chimed in, I got to counter the argument and said that if, like the pro-Mr. Fancy Pants Side said, traditional versions of stories were more important than current ones, their argument broke down. Because in the traditional version of Little Red Riding Hood, she saves herself.

Pro-Fancy Pants Side girl: No, the hunter saves her.

Me: Nope. In the original version, when Red gets to the house, she finds that the wolf has eaten her grandmother so she...gets naked.

Sensei: You mean she's made to get naked?

Me: No, she takes off her clothes by herself. To...make the wolf...not...notice? Um, confused?

Pro-Fancy Pants Side guy: Like a strip tease? [attempts to pantomime a strip tease]

Me: YES! EXACTLY! (Also, why do you know that word?) Anyway, she does...that word he just said and then says she has to use the bathroom and runs away. SO SHE SAVES HERSELF, SEE?

Pro-Fancy Pants Side guy: But isn't it more important which version is more commonly known now?

Me: That's not what your side said earlier.

Sensei: OKAY, LET'S MOVE ON TO A DIFFERENT TOPIC NOW.

By the end of the debate, everyone was ending all their arguments with, "WE'VE WON." (そうなんじゃないでしょうか。勝った！)

(But, really, my side won. Totally.)

Lessee, what other exciting things happened today?

Actually, not a whole lot.

Hmm, well, what can I talk about then?

It's been pretty hot lately, although it rained this morning, so that helped cool everything down. But now it's gone back to being hot again. UGGGGH, JAPANNNNNNN, WHY CAN'T YOUR WEATHER BE NICERRRRR?

In other news, I was really proud today because someone mentioned 裏切り, and I immediately remembered what it meant! Why? Because it's part of the title of the first theme song for Durarara!! (裏切りの夕焼け). Yeah, okay, so I'm a fangirl. But it helps my Japanese improve, right? (You'd be surprised how many random words I pick up from songs. I learned a surprising amount of vocabulary I use on a relatively frequently basis from Bump of Chicken songs.)

Also, I just finished writing a three-page paper (due tomorrow, and actually it wound up a little bit longer than three pages) entitled 若者における神道の文化 (Youth Shinto Culture). It is approximately as exciting as it sounds, which is to say VERY EXCITING. It's also probably the longest paper I've ever written in Japanese.

And now I am super tired and would like to get to sleep at a somewhat reasonable hour tonight, so I bid you all good night!

P.S. If you're one of the people who has emailed me in the past few days and hasn't gotten a response yet, it's not 'cause I hate you. It's just that I don't have tiiiiiiiiiiiiiime right now. So don't worry. You will get a response. It just might be....very....slow... Sorry, guys!

P.P.S. Opal, from most polite to least polite forms of "but," it's が、けれど、けど. So you had it backwards.

P.P.S. Now I'm listening to 「裏切りの夕焼け」 kind of obsessively. （ああ、朝日は昇る！ビルの谷間！今信じれば変わるのさ、無意味じゃない、あの夢を)

P.P.P.S. (Yes, that is totally the part of the OP where Shizuo shows up. PFFT.)

P.P.P.P.S. Oh, yeah! Aniplex picked up Durarara!! I am super happy.

Osaka and why I never want to work for the government

I'm exhausted to the point that I'm having trouble staying conscious, so this might be a bit shorter than usual. Still, I'm writing something, and that's good, right?

So we had class in the morning today, and then we all took the train to Osaka (which was about an hour ride). Once we got to Osaka (which, by the way, all the rumors are true about: people really do cross against the light), we headed over to the American Consulate, where they proceeded to take away all our electronics. Yes, all of them. Including our electronic dictionaries. I'm okay with giving up my camera. I'm okay with giving up my cell phone. But you do not take away my denshi jisho. It is my love and my life, okay? How would you feel if they said to you, "Sorry, but we're gonna have to take away your wife and lock her in this closet over here for a little while"? Well, anyway, I had to give it up, and that did not make me happy in the slightest. Then we went upstairs and waited in this big room while a certain member of the consulate staff made sweeping generalizations about Americans, Japanese people, Osakans, Tokyo-ites, Virgianians, and pretty much anyone else he could. This did not particularly endear him to me, because anytime anyone starts a sentence with "all [type of people]" and doesn't end it with "need to eat" or "like to breathe," a small part of my soul dies.

So then we had our "security briefing," which was basically the exact same one we had in Washington, D.C. (don't stab anyone, don't do drugs, don't start riots) and then listened as the members of the consulate staff waxed poetic about the foreign service. And while I'm sure that the foreign service is a wonderful experience for some people, every time I hear about it, I want to do it less. Part of the reason for my total aversion to the foreign service is that every time we get the The Foreign Service Is Awesome Sauce Spiel (tm), the driving argument behind joining the foreign service is not "it's a wonderful job" or "I feel like my work is really benefiting my country" or "everyday I am excited to go into work" (all of which, I feel, would be entirely reasonable reasons to join the foreign service), but "it's really easy to get in and they pay you a lot." And while money is pretty important, I think that doing a job I, yanno, care about that doesn't involve my moving every three years on the whim of someone in some office somewhere is also pretty important. (Yes, I just used a Hanna-ism. Sorry about that.)

But I digress.

Anyway, after the security briefing, some people went to karaoke, and the rest of us decided to go "shopping." Now if you know anything about me, you know that I hate shopping with a burning, fiery passion, so I, of course, made a beeline to the nearest bookstore (as did two other people). And at the bookstore I found a copy of Durarara!! (the light novel). Guess who owns a copy of Durarara!! now. (And, yes, Opal, I picked you up a copy. Think of it as an early birthday present. Also, I flipped the book open to a random page and the first thing I saw was 「いーざーやーくーん。」I may or may not have started giggling like the fangirl I am.)

Anyway, the three of us wandered around the bookstore for a good long time and were intensely amused by the Japanese translations of English book titles. (My absolute favorite has to be No Country for Old Men becoming 「血と暴力の国」(Blood and Violence Country).) And then we met up with one of the dudes' friends (who was really nice and is studying lolita fashion and working at Baby the Stars Shine Bright, which if you've ever watched Kamikaze Girls you know is a big, honking deal in the lolita world), and we went over to Shinsaibashi, which is a popular district of Osaka among young people. We wandered around there for a little bit, somehow wound up going into a punk-visual-kei-lolita fashion store (long story), and then went to get okonomiyaki for dinner, which was pretty much delicious. (Although by that point I was so hungry that I probably would have eaten the ridiculously buckle-heavy shoes in the punk-visual-kei-lolita fashion store.) And then we hopped on a train and came back to Kyoto. And now I am typing this.

I have probably forgotten all sorts of important things, but it is late and I am tired and I need to get up early tomorrow morning so I can go to Nara.

(Oh, one more thing! There was a little sign up advertising the Durarara!! light novels with each of the main characters saying something about the story, and Izaya's said, 「私は人間が好きだよ。この本を買ってくれる君もよ。」さいかだよ！彼はさいか！)