Pictures! Also, awkward screw ups!

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

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

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

And now for today's awkward story!

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

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

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

Tanuki! Lots of them!

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

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

ONLY IN JAPAN, FOLKS.

The train's here!

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

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

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

Tying my wish for Tanabata to bamboo.

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

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

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

Loooooong walk way!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bamboo forest!

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

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

蒸し暑すぎる

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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