Thursday, January 29, 2004
Back to classes
1/5/04 - Monday
This was my last day at Masato's house, since classes for me started the next morning. Normal classes at Tohoku don't start for another week. In the morning I slept in. When I woke up I packed, and then took quite a few pictures of the house.
After breakfast, Aki was working on a homework assignment that was basically the Japanese version of calligraphy. Using black ink and a big brush, she had to write a word which consisted of 2 characters. Since I'd never done it before, they got some paper and a brush for me to use as well. Aki wrote the character for Love and the character for Dream as an example, and I tried writing those several times each. It's quite a bit harder than it looks. We probably spent about 2 hours working on this, me writing those 2 characters and her writing her 2 character word. She kept making small mistakes and kept having to start over. I'm glad that I didn't have to turn what I was writing in, because none of it was even close to being fit to turn in.
I think Masato was teaching at his cram school during this time. Aki, the mom, and I ended up going to see "Finding Nemo." I'd seen it the last day it was in the theaters in Madison. I liked it, but I wasn't all that excited about seeing it again, since all of the previews on TV had been in English with Japanese subtitles. Thus I was quite pleasantly surprised when we got into the theater and discovered that though the previews had all been in English, the movie itself was dubbed in Japanese. This meant that I got to hear the Japanese version and see how much of it I could understand, which was fun. I actually understood most of it, but that's probably in large part due to the fact that I'd already seen it in English so I had a good idea of what they were supposed to be saying.
The interesting thing about the theater was that it was all assigned seats. At the ticket counter you chose which seat you wanted to sit in, and you got a ticket for that seat. I think they charged the same price for all the seats, but I'm not sure. Anyway, we got there at just about the time the movie was starting, and this may have been the opening day, so there were only a few seats left. We got a double seat in a row near the middle, and a single seat a few rows away, which was the closest we could come to all sitting together. Aki and I sat in the double, while the mom sat in the single. I wonder what the Japanese there thought about a foreigner and a Japanese girl sitting together in a double seat at a movie.
There were quite a few small kids at the movie, and they seemed to enjoy it. I heard one kid ask his parents when he could come back and watch it again. When we were walking out I heard another kid saying "chodai" (it means roughly "gimme") over and over again, which is the way they translated the seagulls when they said "mine" over and over again. It was quite cute.
On TV they were talking about the people who went to the temples on New Year's Day, and evidently of the temples in the Sendai area, Shiogama (the one we went to) had the largest number of people. I think they said that about 540,000 people visited the temple that day.
That evening we had dinner at the same ramen place we'd eaten at earlier, and I got the same dish I'd liked so much last time. This time I wasn't able to finish it all, but it was still quite good.
When they dropped me back off at my room in the evening, they came in and got to see my room. They were sort of surprised that they were allowed into the building, which surprised me because in the US I don't know of any place that doesn't allow it's residents to invite their friends to come visit their rooms.
After saying goodbye to them, I went down the hall to Mitsu's room because I heard a bunch of talking coming from there, and discovered that I was just in time to see him give a presentation of the photos he and Haesung took on their trip to Osaka. After that I procrastinated for a while (talking with people and whatnot), and then unpacked everything. Eventually, I got to doing my math homework, which was due the next morning.
1/6/04 - Tuesday
On Tuesday my math class began again, but none of the Japanese classes I usually have on Tuesdays had started yet, so it was my only class that day. It also happened to be an 8:50 AM class, which made me really want to skip it and take the whole day off, but I ended up going. There were only 3 other students there for most of the class, and one more showed up about half way through. The professor said that it was the only thing he had to do that week, so if he'd had a choice he wouldn't have held class then. This class is taught by 3 different professors who trade off every few lectures, and it was a different professor who decided the schedule.
Not ready to be back in school mode yet, I decided to return to the kaikan after class instead of going up to lab. When I got back, I mounted my DDR pads on 2 mats that Masato's mom had gotten for me one day when we were shopping. I taped the two mats together, and then taped the DDR pads on top, and the size fits really well. The feel much exceeds my expectations, so if it's not too expensive I think I'll try to do the same thing to my pads when I get back to the states.
After mounting the pads I played DDR for quite a while, and then talked with the guys in my hall for a while. Later that day I watched both sets of Hunter X Hunter OVAs (8 episodes each), and then went to bed.
1/7/04 - Wednesday
Wednesday I had class, and then went up to lab, where I spent all day catching up on email, reading websites that I hadn't read since before break, and just generally catching up on not having spent much time on the net during vacation.
1/8/04 - Thursday
Today during lunch it came up that two people have birthdays at the end of February, and ANA (the Japanese airline) has a deal where you can get a 10,000¥ ($100) one way ticket to anywhere in Japan as long as you fly within a week of your birthday and purchase the ticket at least a month in advance. In addition, up to 3 people can come with you and get their tickets at the same price. So we were thinking that with 2 birthday boys we'd be able to get 8 people to Okinawa for only $100 each. If we had a few more people, we'd split the extra cost of a normal ticket among everyone, so that it would cost maybe $150 per person if we had 10 people.
1/9/04 - Friday
Not much to report, other than that in Japanese Business the professor was talking about the Japanese buyer's mentality. According to him the Japanese don't buy things in bulk, especially groceries, because they like to buy their stuff on a daily basis and not a weekly basis like most Americans. Also, he said that Wal-Mart probably wouldn't survive in Japan because the stuff they sell is too simple and their prices are too low.
1/10/04 - Saturday
Played DDR and watched more anime. Probably cooked something to eat, did dishes, and stuff like that as well.
This was my last day at Masato's house, since classes for me started the next morning. Normal classes at Tohoku don't start for another week. In the morning I slept in. When I woke up I packed, and then took quite a few pictures of the house.
After breakfast, Aki was working on a homework assignment that was basically the Japanese version of calligraphy. Using black ink and a big brush, she had to write a word which consisted of 2 characters. Since I'd never done it before, they got some paper and a brush for me to use as well. Aki wrote the character for Love and the character for Dream as an example, and I tried writing those several times each. It's quite a bit harder than it looks. We probably spent about 2 hours working on this, me writing those 2 characters and her writing her 2 character word. She kept making small mistakes and kept having to start over. I'm glad that I didn't have to turn what I was writing in, because none of it was even close to being fit to turn in.
I think Masato was teaching at his cram school during this time. Aki, the mom, and I ended up going to see "Finding Nemo." I'd seen it the last day it was in the theaters in Madison. I liked it, but I wasn't all that excited about seeing it again, since all of the previews on TV had been in English with Japanese subtitles. Thus I was quite pleasantly surprised when we got into the theater and discovered that though the previews had all been in English, the movie itself was dubbed in Japanese. This meant that I got to hear the Japanese version and see how much of it I could understand, which was fun. I actually understood most of it, but that's probably in large part due to the fact that I'd already seen it in English so I had a good idea of what they were supposed to be saying.
The interesting thing about the theater was that it was all assigned seats. At the ticket counter you chose which seat you wanted to sit in, and you got a ticket for that seat. I think they charged the same price for all the seats, but I'm not sure. Anyway, we got there at just about the time the movie was starting, and this may have been the opening day, so there were only a few seats left. We got a double seat in a row near the middle, and a single seat a few rows away, which was the closest we could come to all sitting together. Aki and I sat in the double, while the mom sat in the single. I wonder what the Japanese there thought about a foreigner and a Japanese girl sitting together in a double seat at a movie.
There were quite a few small kids at the movie, and they seemed to enjoy it. I heard one kid ask his parents when he could come back and watch it again. When we were walking out I heard another kid saying "chodai" (it means roughly "gimme") over and over again, which is the way they translated the seagulls when they said "mine" over and over again. It was quite cute.
On TV they were talking about the people who went to the temples on New Year's Day, and evidently of the temples in the Sendai area, Shiogama (the one we went to) had the largest number of people. I think they said that about 540,000 people visited the temple that day.
That evening we had dinner at the same ramen place we'd eaten at earlier, and I got the same dish I'd liked so much last time. This time I wasn't able to finish it all, but it was still quite good.
When they dropped me back off at my room in the evening, they came in and got to see my room. They were sort of surprised that they were allowed into the building, which surprised me because in the US I don't know of any place that doesn't allow it's residents to invite their friends to come visit their rooms.
After saying goodbye to them, I went down the hall to Mitsu's room because I heard a bunch of talking coming from there, and discovered that I was just in time to see him give a presentation of the photos he and Haesung took on their trip to Osaka. After that I procrastinated for a while (talking with people and whatnot), and then unpacked everything. Eventually, I got to doing my math homework, which was due the next morning.
1/6/04 - Tuesday
On Tuesday my math class began again, but none of the Japanese classes I usually have on Tuesdays had started yet, so it was my only class that day. It also happened to be an 8:50 AM class, which made me really want to skip it and take the whole day off, but I ended up going. There were only 3 other students there for most of the class, and one more showed up about half way through. The professor said that it was the only thing he had to do that week, so if he'd had a choice he wouldn't have held class then. This class is taught by 3 different professors who trade off every few lectures, and it was a different professor who decided the schedule.
Not ready to be back in school mode yet, I decided to return to the kaikan after class instead of going up to lab. When I got back, I mounted my DDR pads on 2 mats that Masato's mom had gotten for me one day when we were shopping. I taped the two mats together, and then taped the DDR pads on top, and the size fits really well. The feel much exceeds my expectations, so if it's not too expensive I think I'll try to do the same thing to my pads when I get back to the states.
After mounting the pads I played DDR for quite a while, and then talked with the guys in my hall for a while. Later that day I watched both sets of Hunter X Hunter OVAs (8 episodes each), and then went to bed.
1/7/04 - Wednesday
Wednesday I had class, and then went up to lab, where I spent all day catching up on email, reading websites that I hadn't read since before break, and just generally catching up on not having spent much time on the net during vacation.
1/8/04 - Thursday
Today during lunch it came up that two people have birthdays at the end of February, and ANA (the Japanese airline) has a deal where you can get a 10,000¥ ($100) one way ticket to anywhere in Japan as long as you fly within a week of your birthday and purchase the ticket at least a month in advance. In addition, up to 3 people can come with you and get their tickets at the same price. So we were thinking that with 2 birthday boys we'd be able to get 8 people to Okinawa for only $100 each. If we had a few more people, we'd split the extra cost of a normal ticket among everyone, so that it would cost maybe $150 per person if we had 10 people.
1/9/04 - Friday
Not much to report, other than that in Japanese Business the professor was talking about the Japanese buyer's mentality. According to him the Japanese don't buy things in bulk, especially groceries, because they like to buy their stuff on a daily basis and not a weekly basis like most Americans. Also, he said that Wal-Mart probably wouldn't survive in Japan because the stuff they sell is too simple and their prices are too low.
1/10/04 - Saturday
Played DDR and watched more anime. Probably cooked something to eat, did dishes, and stuff like that as well.
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