Pictures (part four): Tanabata, countryside adventures, and Arashiyama

To make up for my getting sidetracked and not posting anything yesterday, here's a whole boatload of pictures. YAY.

Also, I managed to fix it so that they're not super tiny any more.

At least some of them aren't. Whoops.

For anyone who cares, this post corresponds to this post and this post for Arashiyama, this post for the Tanabata festival, and this post for my voyage into the depths of my host family's extended family.

First, Tanabata festival. For some reason, some of these pictures turned out ridiculously blurry for no particular reason. I think maybe my camera was drunk.

My first attempt at goldfish scooping. (Little host brother was hovering right over my shoulder, trying to give direction.) I failed so badly.

Little host brother demonstrating how to do it correctly.

This was some kind of bouncy ball scooping.

DRUNK CAMERA, WHOOOO.

Are you feeling seriously tripped out now?

This was some kind of...toy scooping? I didn't really understand the rules.

Oh, thank goodness, my camera decided to be sober for a moment.

The street! It was very crowded.

Turtle scooping.

I don't know what they were eating. The sign said it was "Italian spaghetti," but I'm pretty sure that someone was seriously confused.

More street!

Yo-yo fishing. I failed at this one too, 'cause the little paper attaching the hook to the string got wet.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No explanation necessary for those who know anything about anime.

For those who don't, this is Suzumiya Haruhi. She is God. Literally. Yeah.

The final fish count. See that blackish one all the way on the left? The kind of big and derpy looking one? Yeah, I caught that one.

Okay, flash forward a day to COUNTRYSIDE ADVENTURES!

Spontaneous tea ceremony!

(From left to right: the back of my host mom's cousin's head, me, my host brother's cousin, my little host brother.)

(My host mom took all these pictures for me.)

The tea master hard at work.

And my little host brother being the cameraman.

Tea drinking! (That's an anko manju on the floor next to me. It was the tea sweet.)

Outside! And the back of my host mom's head.

More outside!

See why I was getting Summer Wars Vibes?

The river! Because all awesome places need a river.

My host mom said that when she was a little girl she would go diving off the bridge into the river. Then she told me not to try it because it was too dangerous. GEEZ, spoiling all my fun.

More outside! But the street this time, instead of river.

Crawfish fishing!

(From left to right: little host brother, host mom's brother, host mom's brother's son)

It's probably really hard to see in these pictures, but here's the water snake we saw. It's right between the two rocks. Can you see it? I'm not sure if you'll be able to if you don't know what you're looking for.

A bucket of CRAWFISH WHO ARE ANGRY AT THE WORLD.

I AM A CRAWFISH. HEAR ME ROAR. NOW LET ME KILL YOU, PLEASE.

(I think they wound up letting all the crawfish go at the end, 'cause then my host mom's cousin scolded them for not bringing them back so they could eat them.)

Okay, travel waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay backward in time to Arashiyama.

Rice fields! Rice fields we had to walk through!

Oh, yeah. Remember this trip now? It's the one that should make you INSANELY JEALOUS OF THE SCENERY.

It's an army! An army of tanuki! And they're going to smash you with their--

Actually, maybe it's best not to finish that sentence.

Wait, did you think I was done making you jealous over scenery?

Think again.

MWAHAHAHAHA.

My Tanabata wish. Points to people who can read it. More points to people who can read it without laughing.

These flowers will come back.

Just a couple weeks later.

Wait for it.

A bird living in a temple. Awesome, yes/yes?

Pretty gardens!

(Are you sensing a pattern here? This is actually the "let's make you look at pretty Japanese gardens" blog.)

The torii at the marriage/fertility/success in examinations shrine. It was kind of funky looking, so I took a picture.

Tiny Inari (god of rice) shrine!

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually a tiny temple. It's hard to tell from this angle, though, and it could be one of those Buddhism-Shinto-mix ones.

But it has an umbrella roof!

And now random pictures from school.

This was one of our weekly meetings with the residential director. Note the number of C.C. Lemons on the table. (The proportion of C.C. Lemons to students steadily increased as the program progressed. I think at the end it was all C.C. Lemons with two milk teas, one straight tea, and one water. I had the straight tea. Because it was delicious.)

I don't know what was happening here, but it was in the student lounge (where you were only supposed to be speaking Japanese, but inevitably there was some other group there speaking Korean/Chinese/English which made everyone else disgruntled).

In our classroom. Note the electronic dictionaries.

WHOO, made it to the end. More pictures at some point later in the week. Next is...Gion Matsuri, I guess. And tiny shrine adventures!

Street festivals! Also, naps!

Hello, everyone. I think I figured out what was making me feel like crud yesterday, 'cause today the exact same thing happened around noon. Unfortunately, I had to sit through an hour and a half lecture by a Japanese lawyer (who was actually pretty interesting, and made me never want to get arrested in Japan, not that I wanted to before) in the afternoon, so by the time I got home I felt like death warmed over. So I collapsed into bed and slept for almost three hours, and now I feel fine. So most likely I was suffering from sleep deprivation. YAY.

Anyway, yesterday's weird kanji story:

So for my individual project, I've been studying bushu, or the radicals that make up kanji. For example, the kanji 明 (bright) is made up of the components 日 (sun) and 月 (moon). Anyway, one of the bushu I learned this week is the right hand side of 誰 and 難. Apparently it means "bird." However, 難 means difficult. So asked my sensei what made birds difficult. He didn't know, so he went to get his huuuuge kanji dictionary (I swear, it's bigger than Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) and looked it up. And it turns out that the meaning of 難 is actually "the feeling a bird has while it's being roasted over a fire." Which I assume would be a difficult feeling.

Oh, kanji. You amuse me so much.

[/nerd out about kanji]

In other news, after dinner this evening, my host mom and my little host brother and I went over to the festival that they're having on the street right next to ours. It's a festival to celebrate Tanabata (even though that was Wednesday), and it was SO COOL. There was a group of volunteers from the local library telling the Tanabata story to a bunch of little kids (a lot like the story times we have at our local library), except they had an awesome scroll which they used to illustrate the story! And I got to try goldfish scooping! My first time I failed so badly that it wasn't even funny, but then my little host brother taught me a trick to getting them, and the second time I tried, I managed to scoop four fish (four really big fish) before my scooper broke.* (I probably wouldn't have got that many if my little host brother wasn't standing over my shoulder, making sure that I didn't tip the fish I had already caught back into the water. He kept grabbing the bowl when I stopped concentrating on it and going, "Careful, careful!") In any case, for some reason that was really impressive (I'm not sure if catching four was really that impressive or if it was just impressive because I'm a foreigner, but I suspect it was a little bit of both), 'cause the woman at the stand kept saying, "Wow! You're really good at this!"

My bigger host brother (who was apparently too cool to come with us, so he went by himself) was not quite so lucky, and so my host mom started teasing him, saying that he should get me to teach him how to do it properly. He got embarrassed and ran away.

In any case, my little host brother caught a bunch too, and all the fish are currently swimming around in a basin sitting at the top of our steps. (You can tell which fish are mine, 'cause they are the ones that are kind of ugly in a cute way, with huge, bugged out eyes.)

Anyway, my host mom ran into a neighbor and so she was talking to her. And it was kind of weird, because when the neighbor wanted to ask me a question, she'd ask my host mom. And I wasn't sure whether to be amused or slightly offended, because, really, I DO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. You'd think that people would realize that since I'm able to respond to their questions, I really do understand Japanese, but I guess not. Oh well.

In other news, my little host brother's ear has been pronounced cured. YAY!

Alright, sleeping time for me. G'night!

*The scoops are essentially hoops with paper in the center. So if you scoop too quickly, the paper will break, and after a while, it breaks anyway.

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.

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.