Bazaar, Birthday, and other Business

Oh goodness it has been almost a month since my last post and so this is going to take a while :P My fault I guess.

Random things: Ok first this has nothing to do with Japan but I still think it's really interesting. Gabbi, Hannah, and I were talking and found that the word "quite" has a very different meaning in American English vs British and Australian English. In America, it means "very," so "it is quite sunny" means "it is very sunny." In Australia and England, however, it is more like "fairly," so it is only "fairly sunny." It doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but If you think about it this is actually a huge difference. If you say someone is "quite pretty," you could be saying they are just so-so. All three of our minds were blown, trying to figure out how to use it the opposite way.

When young people go out, they often do purikura, which are advanced photo booth sessions. They enhance your features and afterward in a limited time you can decorate them with writing and clip art and pick the backgrounds. Note, this takes skill. Hannah and I tried it on our own once and completely failed. But my classmates are really adept by now at fully decorating all the pictures before the time is up. Anyway, this is of course a popular thing for couples, and after going out with their boyfriends the girls bring in sheets of the resulting purikura to cut out and share with friends. They stick these on their rulers, so almost all the girls have rulers with pictures of all the current couples. Kind of strange but cute.

Sort of relating, the girls really pay attention to each other's relationships, and have all their friends' monthly anniversaries written in their schedule books.

November eleventh, 11/11, is Pocky Day because all the 1's look like Pocky! So lots of people brought Pocky sticks to school :) Also there is a Pocky game, where two people start at different ends of the same Pocky and race to eat the most. It's also a game of chicken, testing how close people will get to each other. My classmates had much fun taking pictures of each other almost kissing.

Gabbi told me this earlier, and I've come across it myself. There are clothes you wear at different times of the year based on the calendar, not the actual weather. Like at some point most people switched to their uniform sweaters instead of vests, even though it was still warm, and they were surprised that I continued to wear a vest because it was hot. Gabbi said the same happened with the switch to warmer weather, and that there is different clothing you wear not only based on season, but based on the beginning, middle, and end of seasons. It's been chilly recently, especially when biking, so I've started wearing gloves to school and some people wear scarves. I was talking with my friend who also bikes to school (all in Japanese ^_^) and she was complaining about how cold it is and how she wants to wear gloves and a scarf. So I told her, "then wear gloves and a scarf," but she's like, "no I can't do that, it's still November! I can't wear those until at least December." And I'm like, "well that's stupid I use gloves and I'm warm." She looked at me longingly and I'm like, "you can too..." but she insisted that she couldn't. To each their own I suppose.

Also I think I forgot to mention earlier in my description of Kenmei that everyday after the last class the students all clean the school. I sweep in the classroom, where we have a whole system to move the desks around, and other people run across the floor with wet rags, clean the windows, take out the trash, and clean the chalkboard. Outside the class I don't know what happens as well, but I've seen people sweeping the halls and stairs and cleaning the rooms that aren't regular classrooms. I'm not sure about the bathrooms... Cuts down the need for janitor service.

Ok, I left off just before my school's bazaar. This was on a Sunday, and we had to come in half an hour earlier than usual. So seven days of school in a row! First all the students filed through the gym, which was filled with things people brought in, like a garage sale. This was run by parents. Actually, I think a lot of the bazaar was. There were many many towels, cleaning products, and other random things, but the most popular items were bags of snacks at a cheap price. Then everyone went back to class to study for an hour, which I thought was cruel after already bringing them in half an hour early on a Sunday. Then the festival part started. There were booths lining the soccer field with games and more random things to buy, drink tents and the coffee/tea tent my class was in charge of. In the middle of the field there was a mini train track for the elementary school children (so cute!). In a different field area there were food tents, a big eating tent, and a small stage with dance performances. Everyone wandered around, and this lasted the rest of the day. Like the shureisai, it was a prime time for couples, who walked around together. Later that evening, most of my class met for dinner, which was really nice. We went to a place with buffet-style raw food on skewers that we brought to our tables to deep fry in our own personal deep fryers. Lovely.

They were at least nice enough to give us Monday off, so I decided to make a pumpkin pie with the pumpkin can Suma had kindly brought me. Easier said than done. First there were no pie pans to be found anywhere, because they don't really make American-style pies, so I had to improvise with a cake pan that was about the right diameter, if the wrong shape. There was some trouble getting ingredients, but it wasn't too bad. The hardest part was measuring out the ingredients, because here everything is done in grams. But the scale didn't show decimals, and there's a big difference between one and two grams of salt, so I had to guess at all the teaspoon measurements. NOTE to future exchange students: if you plan on baking, it would be very useful to bring a set of teaspoons/tablespoon, and wouldn't take up much space. Hannah did, and I think I'll borrow it next time. Despite this, the pie tasted WONDERFUL, although the crust was kind of strange. I love pumpkin pie.

And thennn was Halloween/my birthday!! In the morning my friends gave me presents and it was very sweet :) Being Halloween, many people brought in sweets and snacks to share with everyone, creating a festive atmosphere. Unfortunately, for all the build-up to Halloween, with decorations everywhere and pumpkin-themed food, this was their only actual Halloween celebrating. I think Christmas will sadly be the same, on a bigger scale. There are already Christmas trees out, and I think they go crazy with decorations and music and other Christmas-themed things, but don't actually do much on the day itself. It's apparently more of a date day than a family day, and all my single classmates are desperate to get a significant other by Christmas. For my birthday lunch, I went very American, with a pb&j, yogurt, string cheese, and apple that wasn't peeled or cut or anything, to the astonishment of my classmates. It was pretty cool. Hannah and I also decorated the English Lounge with some decorations I had brought from home, determined to make it Halloween-y. In the evening, my host family surprised me with a very nice cake and presents, which I didn't expect until later. It was overall a good day :)

The next big thing was a day-trip to Kyoto. I took a day off of school to go along with a friend of my host family and some other friends of his who were visiting him. As soon as we got there in the morning, we rented kimonos to wear around for the day, which was really fun. By the end of the day though, I was ready to get out of mine. It limited my movements to short fast steps, which used different muscles than normal, so my legs were worn out by the end. Also the obi, the big bow that ties around the waste, was surprisingly heavy after a while, and all our backs were sore. Still an awesome experience though! We shuffled around, going into the little shops, and had a traditional lunch of rice, tea, miso soup, and tsukemono, which are various pickled vegetables. Then we went to Kiyomizu-dera, the most famous temple. It's perched on an impressively old 13 meter high foundation of logs to support it on the mountainside, built without nails. Under the main building is a totally dark passage, where you feel your way along a rope of wooden beads, supposedly to recreate being in the womb as a ritual of rebirth. It was amazingly dark, but the whole rebirth part was ruined by people talking loudly the whole time. Still cool though. Nearby there was a love shrine, with two stones set 20 feet apart. If you can walk between these with your eyes closed, you will find love soon. After Kiyomizu-dera, we visited another smaller temple before returning our kimonos and going back to Osaka.

Last week I went to a "song and dance show," which was literally a bunch of dance numbers with singing. I think all the dancers were ballet trained, so it was really cool. It was interesting because they did songs from popular musicals like Cats, Sound of Music, JC Superstar, Wicked, A Chorus Line, and some others, and of course lots of Disney, but it was all in Japanese. That was strange but amusing.

Today I met with my district's inbounds again for a Japanese culture day, which was a lot of fun! We wore kimonos, then did part of the tea ceremony and flower arranging. We weren't really instructed in the flower arranging part, just kind of given flowers, but it was fun. It would be awesome to learn more at some point though. I feel so lucky, because I have already done most of this with my host family. I had my second tea ceremony lesson yesterday, and finally learned the last part of my odori dance routine, where I get to wear a yukata almost every week.

Emotionally, I have been ok, but was often moody last month. Lately it's been getting better though, especially when I get sleep. Sleep is such an important thing! I have a cold now though, which is not fun :P I really miss the water bottle culture of home. I remember in Uni looking around a class and sometimes seeing water bottles on half the desks. Here there are no water fountains and you can't drink during class, and everyone thinks it's really weird and impressive if I drink two bottles in a day.

It's gotten colder lately! But I guess it's allowed because we had almost two months of perfect weather. I'm a little concerned though, because heating is terrible. One night, I looked at the thermometer in my room at around 8:30pm, not even the middle of the night and not winter yet, the days are still in the 60s, and my room was 58 degrees!! Eek. Since then I have discovered that my carpet is heated, which helps, but I am still thankful for the fuzzy belly warmer a friend gave me for my birthday, which I thought was funny at the time but now really appreciate. At least the toilet seats are heated, always a pleasant surprise.

My Japanese is improving, which is really exciting! I love hearing and understanding things I have just learned. It was really cool, the other day I was watching a Japanese drama about this girl who wants to be a pilot, and the episode was set at an aviation school in North Dakota. They had a lot of communication problems, and it was awesome being able to mostly understand both sides.

Closing random amusing story: One day in school I was walking down the hall and passing a guy from some other class that I don't really know but is one of the bolder ones that says hi to the American. He raised his hand in what I thought was a high five, so I went to high-five him. Turns out it was actually a wave, and he moved his head so that I full out high-fived his face. I immediately laughed, and it would have been fine if he did too, but instead he looked at me like, "what is wrong with you?" and left. I was confused by that at the time, but now I realize that maybe he didn't understand what happened and thought I randomly smacked him in the face. Kind of embarrassing now.