Fun and Games

Well, hello! Hisashiburi desu ne! Otherwise known as, "It's been a while." To justify my delay in posting, not much new has been going on here! Saturday and Sunday I didn't leave the dorm much...mainly watched some shows and movies and played lots of 42. So there's nothing exciting to report.
Here's my random Japanese photo of the day...I was at Viva City with a friend and there was a girls' dance group performing. The girls were all really sparkly and happy and doing dance moves like you'd see in a J-Pop music video. And we wonder why Japan has such an idol-centric culture...

Yesterday was the last day of my elementary school internship! It really felt like less of an internship and more of an observational period because I felt like I didn't do a whole lot. We spent an hour playing games in an English class and then an hour participating in club activities. I made candles in science club this week. :)
The games were really fun! In this first one, we were all a number (ie one, two, three, four). And you would say your number and then someone else's ("One two"). Then that person has to do the same thing. It was silly, but fun!We also played a rock-paper-scissors animal name relay. XD All the pictures on the table have animals on them - you have to touch each one and name the animal in English and work your way around the table. We started in 2 lines at the opposite ends of the table. When you encounter another person, you play Rock Paper Scissors (known as Jan-ken-po here). Everyone in Japan takes their Jan-ken very seriously. If you win, you get to keep going. If you lose, you go to the back of your line and the next person gets to try. If you get to the other side undefeated, you win! Our team was superior at Janken, so we won twice. :)

It's a bit strange, not having my internship now. I liked getting to know the teachers, because a lot of them were really nice. And playing with kids is fun. :) Having the afternoons to myself again is nice, though! Class prep is starting to take more time than it used to, so having the internship was starting to cut into my spare time.
And last night, we watched a cool movie called Summer Wars. A lot of people equate the movie to Studio Ghibli, and I can see why...it's not necessarily in the animation style because there's a whole different feel, but the movie itself has that sort of storyline. It's a feel-good movie in which everything rights itself in the end. I don't want to give away much of the plot, but it centers around this online world called OZ. You create a character for yourself and can roam the world as you please. In the movie OZ is popular on a Facebook scale (perhaps more so), to the point where people even manage things like taxes and water systems on OZ. It's a bit of a cautionary tale about putting too much faith in computers. But so good! Go find it and watch it.Tonight we had an epic American Chinese food dinner. It was a ton of cooking...about 2 and a half hours of work. But it was so tasty! We made honey walnut shrimp, sesame chicken, pork fried rice, ginger stir-fry vegetables, and eggrolls with sweet and sour sauce. Definitely a success, though I have a feeling I won't want to make any more big meals like that for a while!

Classes are going well! Midterm grades came out today for Japanese and I'm doing just fine. :) It's sort of irrelevant because the grades won't transfer back to A&M (only the credits), but it's still nice to know! Japanese has fallen into a rhythm for me, though I don't know if that's good or not. We cover a chapter a week, so that means 3 dialogues to memorize, about 60 vocabulary words to learn, 16 new kanji, a reading passage to translate, and 5 new grammar patterns each week. It's a pretty fast pace! A break would be nice, but it's not hard for me to keep up and I know this semester is a vacation compared to what I would be having back home. I'm so grateful!

History and Culture is pretty good as well. We have our midterm on Thursday, which is a little worrisome just because of the sheer volume of information we've covered over the past few weeks...Japan's history from BC to about 1925. But I still love the class! Professor Morris talked about our field trip today - we're going to Osaka at some point. He's hoping to make it an overnight trip so we get to see a lot of stuff. Should be fun! Of course, I'm going to Osaka this weekend as well. But that's more of a shopping/aquarium trip, whereas the field trip will be to historic sites. Sounds like a good balance to me. :)

That's all I know for now...I hope your week is going well!