Monday, April 12, 2004
咲いた！咲いた！桜が咲いた！(Saita! Saita! Sakura ga saita!)
4/12/04 Monday
Well, I haven't succeeded in getting any more entries written up yet. It seems the only time I think about my blog is when I'm in my lab, and then I'm usually busy with other stuff. In other news, it was recently pointed out to me that I've written very little about what it's like here (weather, etc.), so I'd like to take some time right now to start remedying that situation. If anyone else has feedback about what you'd like to see me write about, please let me know.
The weather this past week has been fairly nice. On Saturday I did my laundry, and for the first time I hung it up outside (on the roof) instead of running it through the dryers and then hanging it up in my room, as I usually do. During most of the day on Saturday I had my window open as well, since it was pleasantly warm and there was a nice breeze. In the evenings it's still been getting cold enough that I close the window, and often after the sun is down I've been wearing a coat, but for the most part sweat shirts are all you need during the day.
Along with the weather getting nice, it has also gotten very nice outside visually. There are many cherry and plumb trees all over in Japan, and the often bloom around this time of year. I've been meaning to take some pictures, but haven't gotten around to that yet. They are very pretty, and seem somewhat surreal. In anime I'd always seen tons of cherry blossoms in school graduation ceremony scenes and things like that, and I'd always thought that it was an exaggeration over what it was really like in Japan, but it seems I was wrong. What I'm seeing matches fairly well with what I've seen in anime (this also goes for most of the rest of the backgrounds I've seen in anime). Now when I watch anime I'm often surprised to see backgrounds and think, "Hey! I know of a place in Sendai (or other part of Japan) that looks just like that!" whereas before I hadn't really noticed the backgrounds at all.
One thing that goes with the cherry blooms is allergies, which have been bothering me a little bit. Hopefully they won't get worse.
The other thing that goes with cherry blooms is something called "Hanami," which is Japanese for "flower viewing," and which means "let's go out and sit under the blooming cherry trees and drink copious amounts of alcohol" to the Japanese. Yesterday (Easter Sunday) a bunch of people from the kaikan made a bunch of food and went to a park downtown to do this very thing (I don't know how much alcohol they had though). I was unable to join them since I'd decided to go to the Japanese service at the Sendai Baptist Church since it was Easter Sunday.
Anyway, my lab has scheduled a hanami party for this friday which I'm planning to attend. In anime hanami has also usually involved singing (karaoke), but I don't know if that will be the case with my lab. We'll have to wait and see.
Oh, by the way, the title of this entry means roughly, "Bloomed! Bloomed! The cherry trees have bloomed!" which is (I'm told) the first sentence everyone studying Japanese used to learn. During the Okinawa trip I saw evidence of this, but I can't remember what that evidence was anymore.
Well, I haven't succeeded in getting any more entries written up yet. It seems the only time I think about my blog is when I'm in my lab, and then I'm usually busy with other stuff. In other news, it was recently pointed out to me that I've written very little about what it's like here (weather, etc.), so I'd like to take some time right now to start remedying that situation. If anyone else has feedback about what you'd like to see me write about, please let me know.
The weather this past week has been fairly nice. On Saturday I did my laundry, and for the first time I hung it up outside (on the roof) instead of running it through the dryers and then hanging it up in my room, as I usually do. During most of the day on Saturday I had my window open as well, since it was pleasantly warm and there was a nice breeze. In the evenings it's still been getting cold enough that I close the window, and often after the sun is down I've been wearing a coat, but for the most part sweat shirts are all you need during the day.
Along with the weather getting nice, it has also gotten very nice outside visually. There are many cherry and plumb trees all over in Japan, and the often bloom around this time of year. I've been meaning to take some pictures, but haven't gotten around to that yet. They are very pretty, and seem somewhat surreal. In anime I'd always seen tons of cherry blossoms in school graduation ceremony scenes and things like that, and I'd always thought that it was an exaggeration over what it was really like in Japan, but it seems I was wrong. What I'm seeing matches fairly well with what I've seen in anime (this also goes for most of the rest of the backgrounds I've seen in anime). Now when I watch anime I'm often surprised to see backgrounds and think, "Hey! I know of a place in Sendai (or other part of Japan) that looks just like that!" whereas before I hadn't really noticed the backgrounds at all.
One thing that goes with the cherry blooms is allergies, which have been bothering me a little bit. Hopefully they won't get worse.
The other thing that goes with cherry blooms is something called "Hanami," which is Japanese for "flower viewing," and which means "let's go out and sit under the blooming cherry trees and drink copious amounts of alcohol" to the Japanese. Yesterday (Easter Sunday) a bunch of people from the kaikan made a bunch of food and went to a park downtown to do this very thing (I don't know how much alcohol they had though). I was unable to join them since I'd decided to go to the Japanese service at the Sendai Baptist Church since it was Easter Sunday.
Anyway, my lab has scheduled a hanami party for this friday which I'm planning to attend. In anime hanami has also usually involved singing (karaoke), but I don't know if that will be the case with my lab. We'll have to wait and see.
Oh, by the way, the title of this entry means roughly, "Bloomed! Bloomed! The cherry trees have bloomed!" which is (I'm told) the first sentence everyone studying Japanese used to learn. During the Okinawa trip I saw evidence of this, but I can't remember what that evidence was anymore.
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