Hisashiburi, 久しぶり means 'long time no see', which has been used a fair bit over the past month, I've had a fairly antisocial month, with the 5 tasks taking up all of my time.
However now all five tasks are lying conquered at my feet, and the past week has been used making up for my month of preparations.
The first of the speeches, to prospective AFS host families, went well, a 10 minute impromptu speech, I think I slayed that task fairly well.
The Second Task I had been preparing for since September, the school 'marathon', a 6km run at a local sports park, though I somewhat ruined my preparations by falling down the stairs in my house and spraining my ankle, which was a bit of a hinderance to my marathon effort, but one of my classmates who appears to be want to become a physiotherapist, and on the day of the event my foot was all bandaged up, I felt like a bit of an Egyptian Mummy.
The next two events were less physical, but required just as much preparation. Late October one of the English teachers dropped a bombshell on me, asking if I could do a 45 minute speech, entirely in Japanese, on New Zealand life and culture, plus life in Nelson, Nelson College, and my family. I managed a 10 minute speech without all that much preparation, but a 45 minute one would require quite bit more work. I spent close to 3 weeks writing drafts, translating them as best I could, submitting them to the teacher who would further check them, in the end I made 5 drafts, eventually making the 6th perfect copy.
With the speech written, I then had to make an accompanying powerpoint, and after several weeks of to and froing emails home for photos, translating Japanese into English and multiple rehearsals, I was ready to do it. So in front of 250ish students I gave my speech, the mistakes that I did make seemed to go unnoticed, so all was well there.
In doing a 45 minute speech at school, I had killed two birds with one stone. The next weekend I had to do a similar speech and presentation on the same topic, so whilst the other AFSers in my chapter had to write and translate their own speeches, I had a fluent English Japanese teacher helping me on it, plus having had done the speech in front of 250 people meant that doing it to 25 was easy peasy. Remembered my mistakes from the first one and thus produced a pretty decent second speech, and with that, tasks three and four were in the past.
This left one more task, the fifth and final, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. All of my study aside from the day when I decided to learn how to say zombie in Japanese went towards this test. (生ける屍 by the way) The date for the test was December 4, and one week out, instead of doing final week cramming, I went on the AFS day trip to Yokohama. Much fun was had by all, it meant that I got to go outside for once in a situation that wasn't school, plus I got to see lots of AFSers from different chapters who I hadn't seen since August when we all went to our separate prefectures.
This was the end of November and Christmas had already permeated Japan, going so far as to hit China town, two cultures that do not celebrate it. Ridiculous.
Wha'chuu lookin at?
In Yokohama we saw many traces of the first westerners to really set up in Japan, going to the former French Consulate (unfortunately it was first flattened by an earthquake and then the second one burnt down-the French don't build to last so it seems), a house that was built by an American family in 1800 and something, plus the extensive rose gardens they had made. On top of this we went to the tallest point in Yokohama, where we could see the harbour and the distant skyscrapers.
Part of the American Rose Garden
(Former) French Consulate
The Yokohama harbour and CBD in the mist across the bridge
Stop.
To finish up the Yokohama tour, we went to a harbourside park, where there was a bit of AFS history. The ship that took the first AFS students from Japan on their journey to America, is permanently moored in the harbour. What I found far more interesting however (no offence AFS but a ship's a ship to me) was this.
Bunnies. Wearing jackets. On leads. How many can you count?
Funny bunny business aside, it was one week before the test, and so I did three years worth of previous tests, scoring well in kanji and grammar, with slightly above half in vocabulary and listening. While not as good as I would have liked, it didn't leave much room for error in two critical areas, it was all I could do and so I went with Olivia and Fernanda to Yokohama to face the exam. In typical Japanese style we couldn't start the exam until the prescribed time, even though everyone was there and the distribution of papers took far less time than they had been given, so we sat waiting for up to twenty minutes for some of the test sections. But we emerged about 4 hours after starting, satisfied we had done our best.
That evening was spent at the Yokohama Station Department store (at 10 stories it's bigger than probably every building in my city, and it's just the station shop), having dinner and pretending to be interested in really expensive things we really had no desire to buy.
The first half of the next week was spent at school, not studying, sleeping in class (not unusual, everyone does it in class), writing and posting a few letters, and generally not much. From Thursday I was lucky enough to have a 6 day weekend, as my classmates began their exams, and as I struggle to read the exam questions, let alone answer them, so, two weeks out from the winter holiday, I take a week off.
One point of interest at school, however, was that we have a new exchange student with us. Catherine is from Brisbane, Australia, and will be a Tsurumine student until the end of January, so she will replace Mari, the other exchange student, who has now about 1 and a half weeks left of school, plus the winter holidays, left in Japan.
Thursday was spent at Tsujido, a city about 15 minutes train ride away from Chigasaki, which is where I go to school. Two weeks ago a new mall opened there, and it is HUGE. Called the Terrace Mall, Mari and I went there to see if what our classmates had been saying about it was true. Our classmates called it fantastic, big, fun, and other such positive adjectives. I would say that it was big, absolutely, it personified big. But at the same time it was just another mall with the same shops you find anywhere, too hot or too cold, lots of people and a bit fake. But they did play My Life Would Suck Without You by Kelly Clarkson, so that did redeem it somewhat.
This can redeem most places
Friday morning I got up at the normal time, put on clothes and went to school for a two hour Japanese lesson with Catherine and Mari. Entering the International Room where it is held, I realised that, once again, I had forgotten that it was a uniform event. Ooops. But seeing as my own clothes are much warmer (and it really was quite cold), plus I look far more dashing in clothes of my own choosing than a gakuran. Apparently it is school policy that if you come to school for ANYTHING, you must be in uniform. So if I forget my textbook on a Friday, and want to use it over the weekend, I go there on Saturday (school is open Saturday with club activities, you can enter wherever you like), run up to my locker, get my book, run downstairs and then I'm out of school, I have to do this in uniform. This would take me an hour twenty to GET to school, during which time noone would know I'm a student, my face isn't Asiatic, and wearing my own clothes clearly marks me as not being a student. I am at school for 5 minutes, and then back home. Being a Saturday, the chances of anyone seeing me at school are fairly slim, so the whole policy is a bit of a farce when it gets this anal. With this attitude in mind, I forget uniform whenever I come to school in the morning just for a special Japanese class. It's on the bottom floor, 10 metres away from the shoe lockers, everytime I do it, I see noone but the two teachers and Mari (now also Catherine), and noone knows that I wear my own clothes to this class but them. Also, there was no way I was going to be wearing uniform at orientation, pssht that. Our Japanese teachers also were kind enough to take Mari and I out for lunch, though as Catherine had already left, she missed out on this. As we had unlimited drink bar access, I made sure to try EVERY drink that was in the machine, and rank them from most to least drinkable. Regretted that somewhat later, Calpis/Grape soda/Calpis soda/Chinese tea/Tropical tea/Hot chocolate/Iced chocolate/Orange juice/Iced water/Regular water/Breakfast tea/Melon soda/Ice tea/There were more but I forgot. On another note, for lunch I had dessert first, cos I felt that way inclined.
Eat dessert first. You never know what might happen.
Friday afternoon was spent for the most part assisting my AFS chapter in orientating the 'two weekers', a group of 11 students from Oceania and East Asia who recieved a scholarship from the Japanese Government run JENSYS scheme, the same one that has got me here in Japan at the moment, albeit theirs is an intense two weeks with a brief school/host family experience, plus touring around Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nara and Kyoto. I was helping out with their questions on host family life, translating Japanese, and offering things from an exchange students point of view. After the orientation they had a welcome party, where all their host families met them in a conference room/dining hall, plus the AFSers in my chapter, plenty of food and drink had by all, that was quite a nice evening.
Got home and Midori asked if I had come home and changed out of uniform into my own clothes (there had been a lot of calculations as to whether there was going to be enough time for me to do this and still be in time for the orientation), to which I answered merely with a wink, seemed to do the trick.
Saturday I went with Midori and Akira to a mandarin orchard, where my family own three trees. Saturday was harvest day I was told, but I didn't really know what they meant my that. Upon seeing the tree I was thinking 'that's a fairly small tree, we'll get a fair few mandarins, but nothing spectacular.'
For future reference, this;
Equals
That's 70kg of mandarins. Quite a lot for a little piddly looking tree.
Moral of the story, don't underestimate mandarin tree fruit yields.
Sunday was spent at home, quite nice after 3 days of being out and about, I sorted through the papers in my room, gathered my summer clothes to send back to NZ, had a sloth day, 'twas very nice. On another sloth day, not this one, but several weeks ago, I did however have a moment of 'excitement/humor'. My wardrobe/drawers top sliding door was a little bit open, and while I was sitting at the computer I heard a few rustles and the sound of it being slid open. I immediately thought of this, which is a taboo word while I'm over here by the way.
Basically a demon that is in Japan, called an onryo, they created in a moment of extreme violence, anyone that steps into its residence/haunt will be hunted down and killed wherever they run, even if it is outside of Japan. The one thing I'm afraid of over here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onry%C5%8D
Turning around slowly, expecting to see, and be destroyed by a pale white woman with long straight black hair, I instead saw this.
Hijiki jumped into my wardrobe, and pushed the door open some more. Clever cat. Gave me the jitters to no end though.
And that takes us to today, Monday the 12th of December, 2011. 13 days until Christmas, not a very big day here in Japan, but nonetheless, it will be my first northern hemisphere Christmas, and while it will not snow, myabe we'll get frost like we did on Saturday.
Today I was helping out with the two weekers as they visited a local primary school, right across the road from Tsurumine. So I was up at the normal time of 6.30 (decidedly un-holiday like behaviour I think), and spent day 5 of 6 of my mid term holiday at school, albeit with 6 year olds. Japanese 6 year olds are very loud, I've deduced that. And one in particular seemed to like hitting my ass, so I took him by the shoulder and asked 'anata wa hitsuyouni douseiaisha desu ka? otokonoko suki no?' (Are you a rampant homosexual? Do you like males?), for nothing else could explain this behaviour. Nothing against homosexuality of course, but a 6 year old hitting on me (double meaning there 'wink wink') is a bit much.
Aside from that, I did paper folding (origami) with the kids, helped in an English class, played dodgeball with them, had lunch in the class with them (at a table that came up to my knees, I felt, and was, a giant in there) and then watched them perform a soran bushi dance (a dance popular with school children)
So a very busy day of walking round with half a dozen 6 year olds clinging to me, eating lunch at a far too small table, fending off a rampantly homosexual 6 year old with a fetish for blazers so it seemed, and dodging balls. I think I might have some ear damage following the high pitched screams of 30 school children (Japanese children don't talk, they squeal/scream, in fact several of my classmates at Tsurumine are yet to grow out of this), I could have sworn there was blood in them after we left.
With one more day to go, I am meeting up with some of my classmates after their final exam finishes tomorrow, and we're going to have lunch together, maybe some shopping, looking forward to that.
And now for some things that didn't really fit into anything but are still pretty cool.
The tree on our property is mundane during the day, just another tree...
But
At night it is lit up like, well, a Christmas tree!
This is also a Christmas tree, ate it on Saturday, close to 15 centimetres of chocolatey creamy bready covered in sprinklesy goodness
We also had a lunar eclipse on Saturday, as I guess did everyone if I'm correct. (eclipses happen everywhere don't they?)
White moon
Mars? No, it's the moon silly. If you were on the moon at this time, would everything look rusty?
And then before it became all red, I saw that if I changed the exposure and moved the camera in a spiral, I could make pretty moon pictures. Like this.
And last of all, look at this photo. Why would I have taken this picture whilst chuckling?
See if you can find out what makes these dog magnets so funny.
This weekend I'm going to the JENESYS festival in Tokyo, will be meeting all the JENESYS students from all over Japan, plus lots of AFSers I haven't seen in a long time, and then going to a classical music concert in Tokyo with Midori and Akira, looking forward to that!
But that adventure, plus the following ones which are being planned right now will be saved for the next blog, which I aim to do a few days before Christmas.
So hoping all is well with you in your part of the world, and Sayonara from Under the Kanagawan Sun!
Toroi :)
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