Quake-tastic.

Hi! I hope you all are well. :)

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of the lovely natural disaster that happened yesterday and has been all over the news. Let me start off by saying that the earthquake in Japan may have been huge, but here at Lake Biwa we're pretty well-protected. We're pretty far inland, way south of the epicenter, and surrounded by mountains. We've barely gotten any rain, let alone flooding, and we had a magnitude 4 aftershock in the middle of the afternoon yesterday with no harm done. So, I hope that puts you all at ease. :) My friends here are all safe, in Sapporo and otherwise, so I'm glad it was so far north of us. The greatest inconvenience the quake poses is traveling to Tokyo next weekend, which may not be a good idea considering the damage done. Other parts of Japan are not in the best shape, though. I haven't looked at too many pictures but the ones I have seen are really worrisome. Keep the people of northern Honshu in your thoughts!I do have a funny story about the quake we did feel, though. I was actually at karaoke with a bunch of friends, and at the time of the quake we were rocking out to a K-Pop song (Korean pop). We were all dancing around to the song as we sang, and I started feeling a little dizzy, feeling like the bench underneath me was moving. And then we all stop singing and look up at each other, realizing that the building around us was moving. It's a really weird feeling, having the BUILDING you're in moving. It's like you're on a ride, but a really big one you can't get off of. I thought it was sorta fun, to be honest. :) We didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just rode it out in our room. It was a fairly long quake, though - lasted for about 3 minutes, maybe? But then things got back to normal, just in time for the next song. XD
What else happened on Friday, you ask? Well, after our exam, our "cultural activity" for the week was Naginata. :)Naginata is the name of this weapon. Real Naginatas are long spears with metal tips, but we practiced with these wood-and-bamboo ones instead. There were 2 parts to the lesson - we learned a series of moves to practice, and then we also practiced really simple sparring. Fun, right?There's something very empowering about wielding a spear. Here, my friends Meg and Brad are re-enacting a scene from Summer Wars. In the movie, the grandmother goes after one of her grandsons with one of these. Scary!We also hit Sapna and rocked out at karaoke for 5 hours. I've learned something about karaoke! Picking songs you can sing with multiple people is way more fun than just finding one you personally know. So I fit in my Nightwish and Sonata Arctica fix but also do a lot of songs we all know. This time, we did Bohemian Rhapsody, Potential Breakup Song and Don't Stop Believin', among other things. And, because we were feeling silly, we finished with the Star-Spangled Banner (and yes, they did have that as a karaoke choice). I looked for the Aggie War Hymn, but no such luck. XD It was a fun afternoon, even with the crazy weather. We rode to Bell Road in the rain, experienced an earthquake while there, and rode back in the snow. The night was ended with 42, which is always a pleasure. :)

Today, I went to help another girl here with her internship - she teaches English at the children's English school JCMU hosts on Saturdays. It was the kids' last day for the semester - school ends around this time for all Japanese students and starts up again in April. So, we were giving them an English assessment! We were testing 3-7 year-olds, some of whom have never taken a test before. It was pretty simple - in most cases we would say a phrase in English and they would have to pick the picture corresponding to what they said. Most of the kids knew at least some of the answers, but some struggled a lot. It was good practice for me, though, as I gave instructions for each section in Japanese! It was simple stuff like "I'm going to read 4 sentences. Write down the number of the correct picture for each sentence." but it was still empowering. XD

This afternoon, I got to do some swing-dancing! 2 other students and I are hosting a swing dance lesson on Tuesday night, so we met up to work out details and figure out the steps we're teaching. It was fun! I'm a little rusty and not nearly as good as the other two are, but that's okay because I'm just glad to be dancing again. :) Hopefully the lesson will go well!

Have a great weekend. :D