Christmas Report!

Christmas has come and gone, and it was the most unusual Christmas. I didnt see a single family member, or eat some good ol' home cooking. And despite being in a temperate climate, snow didnt fall. But that doesnt mean I didnt enjoy it! I spent most of it with my new friends that I've made up here. Maybe it wasnt my favorite Christmas, but it definitely was not the worst!

Let's start with Christmas Eve daytime. Most unlike America, I went to class on Christmas. I guess it should be expected in a country with a miniscule Christian population (holla, Nagasaki), but it was still weird. Most of the other Western people in that class didnt show up; only the guy from Nevada and the Finnish girl showed up. That class was Family Life in Japan, and isnt that interesting. I dont quite remember what the topic of the lecture was, but I really enjoyed the teacher. She was so airheady! She jumped from tangent to tangent, in a mix of Japanese and hesitant English. I want to know what she's teaching next semester, because I wouldnt mind taking a class with her.

After class, I scarfed down lunch, because I was invited to celebrate one of the Chinese girls' birthday. Since the Chinese and the Koreans stick to themselves, I was very flattered to be invited to go to karaoke with them. Unfortunately, due to my procrastination and disorganization, I didnt get her a birthday present (and now that I think about it, neither did I gift the Russian...more things to do). I was the only person there who didnt speak Chinese, so I was left out of the conversation quite often. Thankfully though, I usually got a summarization of the conversations in either Japanese or English. I really want to go karaoke with these girls again though; one of them has one of the most beautiful voices I've sung karaoke with! They call her the "Queen of Karaoke" because of it. Her rendition of this song made the whole thing worth it! (Well, at least, I think this is the song she sang...)



愛我

After that, I came back to my room to freshen up for the Christmas Party one of the Japanese kids had set up. Unlike most Christmas parties I've heard of, which take place at someone's house, this one was at a local 居酒屋. While I wasnt too keen on drinking up on Christmas, I did want to spend it with friends, so I went. And I did have a lot of fun! We had なべ, which is basically where we cook our own food in this soup thingy. Oh it was so good! And the other stuff we had was really delicious too. There was いか and soybeans, だし巻き卵 and so much more. I really ate up.



After that, I called it a night. The next day, I was invited to one of last year's HUSA students to have French Toast and more fun at his apartment. To be honest, I'm not keen on French Toast, and I wasnt familiar with the movie they said they wanted to watch, but in the spirit of the holidays, I roused myself from my warm bed, and met up with them.

Like I said above, I'm not too fond of French Toast, but I still enjoyed myself. Our sempai didnt use too much egg on them, and I used lots of whip cream and syrup on them, so it was actually really yummy. Of course, I had no idea how the whip cream thingy worked. I ended up squirting some of it out onto the table and someone's glasses. Memo to self: Whip cream comes out when you push DOWN on the button, not across. After brunch, we more or less just hung out, "being dudes", as sempai would say. We played a game of The Game of Things, which is kinda like Apples to Apples. After dinner, when one of our Japanese friends fell asleep on the floor, we decided to say goodbye and head back to the dorms.



All in all, not a terribly bad Christmas. I'll admit, I was afraid that this would be the most unhappy, miserable Christmas I've ever had. I was going to miss seeing my family, eating my favorite foods, HEAT, and the birth of my nephew. But you know what? It was actually a lot of fun. I spent it with some very cool people, who did some very cool things (thanks Mimu and Jeff!!). And I ate tons of おいしい food. So you know what? I think I'll count this as a successful Christmas.

OH! It's not the exact one that I wanted, but I succeeded in getting a Rilakkuma with a mushroom! Chee~!



Now, where to put it...

Game Center Fail

Near the university is a game center that we Hirodai kids visit rather often. It is quite different from American arcades, in my opinion. For one thing, there is always the smell of cigarette smoke. As you probably know, the Japanese enjoy their cigs, and though maybe not every patron is smoking, it happens often enough that they leave ashtrays around for you to use at your leisure. Another thing interesting is that the clientele is strictly male. Most girls in there are girlfriends of the guys playing their; only one of them actually plays the games. One of the HUSA girls figured this out when she used the toilets there: not a one had been used before. And about the guys there: while most of them are undoubtably university students, there are quite a few that are definitely working men, around their late thirties or forties. It has been my experience (which isnt that great) that most arcade gamers are not much older than their late twenties.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, and I'm pretty bad at most games I play. But there are a few games in there that I love to play, and am not too bad at. My major game is Jubeat Knit (read "yubeat knit"). It's a music based game. On the grid of sixteen squares, you have to touch them in time to the music, when the word TOUCH appears on them. The music you can play on there runs from the regular pop songs (Big Bang's Haru Haru) to crazy hard techno songs. The hardest song I've played there is this song, which is a techno version of some classical music. I posted my favorite song up on my facebook a while ago, but if you didnt see it, I'll link it again. It's a techno song called キラキラ (Kira Kira Sparkles). And tonight, I think I got better at it. My original rating was A; tonight I got it up to S. The highest rating is SSS, and I'm aiming for that. I have a long way to go.

Which brings me to my next point. With the exception of us HUSA kids/foreigners, EVERYONE IN THERE IS REALLY GOOD AT GAMING. And I'm not complaining because someone got a higher score than me. These guys are pros at what they do, taking on the Extreme mode like nothing. And it's not just the guys that play the Jubeat game; I have yet to see anyone play DDR, the Rock Band game, or the taiko game on easy. I'm not sure how they all got so good, but watching them play is just amazing to see. I am always in awe of these guys because they're so into what they do. It's awe inspiring.

Now, what does all this have to do with the title of this blog? As I was leaving the game center, I passed by the grabber games. You know, the one's that you have to use the claw thing to pick up little plushies? You dont have to tell me twice that these machines are very difficult to use, and will take more money than the plushie is worth, but for some reason, I decided to try it. I was aiming for a Rilakkuma holding a mushroom. It was so cute, and I had a few hundred yen coins, so I decided to try it. Unsurprisingly, I didnt get it. However, after one try, one of the workers came up to me and helped to reposition one of the Rilakkuma. And so, I went back at it. However, I still couldnt get it. Before my last play, he repositioned it again. Its legs were hovering over the edge, and it seemed so easy to get to. AND I STILL FAILED TO GET THE DAMN RILAKKUMA. After spending 2000￥, which is around $20, I still couldnt get one tiny little plush doll. You have no idea how pathetic and lame I felt. Especially because the guy moved it twice, the last time being so close to being easy to get. I'm pretty sure that would never happen in America. They'd just point and laugh.

Ah well. I've learned my lesson. I need to stick to the games that I can play, and steer clear from those that'll just suck my money out.


I wanted the one on the right. Image source: http://tinyurl.com/2ermhoy

出来るかどうか分からん

Last week Thursday was the midterm for the hardest class I'm taking this semester. It's the level five Japanese class on kanji readings and grammar forms. The kanji we had to learn ranged from 案山子 (かかし scarecrow) and 胡瓜 (きゅうり cucumber) to 老舗　(しにせ old shop) and　所謂 (いわゆる the aforementioned). Most are words I didnt think had kanji, like scarecrow, or are difficult to use (in my opinion), like 所謂. As for grammar, a lot of them are forms I've never learned in English, like ~がち, which is used to indicate an undesireable tendency, or ~的, which is attached to nouns and make them into adjectives. In addition to this, we learned the (usually very slight) difference between similar grammar points, such as the difference between ~間 and ~うちに (~間 implies a measurable time period, whereas ~うちに is used when a certain state of being is in effect).

Now dont get me wrong, there were many times that I feel I learned worthwhile information. Particularly in grammar, the many new suffixes will allow me to express myself more deeply in Japanese. And as someone who wants to eventually be fluent in the language, I must at least be exposed to every grammatical structure in Japanese.

That Wednesday night, as I used my flashcards to memorize the kanji that I didnt know already, I felt so overwhelmed. The kanji that I was memorising in this class and the other Japanese classes were but the tip of the iceberg. Around 2,000 kanji are required to read a newspaper, and that's only individual characters. They can be added together to create even more words, and those readings are not always obvious. To obtain the reading for 修行, for example, it can be broken into 修 and 行, しゅ and ぎょう. This gives us the reading しゅぎょう or learning. To get the meaning based from component kanji, we can take 若人 and split it into 若 for young, and 人 for person, and get Young Person. However, there are the special readings for 木綿 and 氷柱, both of which are not easily discovered. And while the grammar points are useful to deepen the meanings of the words I use, I must admit that they do not come quickly to the mind. ~かねる is attached to verbs to indicate that the despite how much you want to do something, you cant do the verb that it's attached to. I'm probably more likely to use ~にくい, which simply means "it's hard to ~" than use ~かねる.

But then again, I suppose that I should have been prepared for this. Human beings express themselves via language, and use it to paint descriptive pictures of themselves, their surroundings, their feelings. Everyone's got a story, and language is how we present that story to others. In this world, we are surrounded by complex situations and feelings. The only reason that I find it easy to express myself in English is because I grew up speaking it. In the same way, Japanese is easy to a 日本人 because they've grown up speaking only it. And I'm sure they get perplexed by some English quirks and oddities. I'm sure the practice of capitalizing certain words is confusing to them. And the way that English changes its endings to indicate plurals often seems to be so random and aribtrary. So I guess it's a give and take kind of thing. While I have been born into the English speaking world and can use it to its fullest degree, I must work hard to reach the same level of ability in 日本語.

A friend of mine who had already done a study abroad in Japan gave me some advice that, to be honest, I never really tried hard to follow. He said that I should constantly work on kanji. At lunch or on a train, I should always try to read what was written. I finally tried to do that, just a little bit, this weekend. When I was waiting at the bus stop, there was a notice from the bus company. It basically said that because of terrorist attacks, if any mysterious object is found near the bus stop, to contact the company or the next bus driver. Using the dictionary on my iPod touch, I was able to look up the readings and meanings of all the words on the notice. I think I ought to start being a little more proactive with this. I have a few magazines here, and I bought them mostly for the pictures. Perhaps it would be more useful to me if I were to translate these articles?



Can you read this?