Random!

Hello! I hope you all are doing well. :)

Not much to report here at JCMU, except that we have some Japanese students living here now! Students from Otemon University in Osaka are here for an intensive English course, so they're staying in the dorm for the next 10 days. One of the girls, Junko, is my conversation partner for the duration of her stay so we've been talking some. :) We had a welcome party yesterday for all of them, complete with Digiorno pizza and cookies from Costco! I had butterscotch for the first time since my arrival in Japan. Mmm!

Also, we had a really amusing Japanese lesson a few days ago. Aizawa Sensei was trying to explain to us the difference between 2 verbs, both of which mean "help". "Tetsudau" is used when you are helping someone continue what they are doing, like paint a house or do their homework. Tasukeru is used when you are helping someone out of a situation, like if they have a flat tire or if they are dying or something. To demonstrate, Aizawa Sensei had a student pretend he was drowning, and he acted as the lifeguard. When the swimmer said "Tasukete!", he "swam" over and rescued him. However, when the swimmer said "Tetsudatte!", he came over and "dunked" the person further down. XD I will never forget the difference now!Yesterday, I went with Brad to a type of restaurant I've never been before - a yakiniku place! Yakiniku literally means "cooked meat", and that's exactly what they serve you. The coolest part is probably your table - you have a little charcoal cooker nested right inside! They just turn on the gas to heat things up, and then the rest is up to you.You can order all sorts of different meats, but the easiest thing to do is to get a set so you get assortments of lots of different kinds of meat along with some vegetables. 2 of my favorites are here: Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) and Japanese sweet potato (satsuma).
Once everything is cooked, then you get to experiment with sauces. Instead of a plate, you get a compartmentalized tray, so you can have multiple sauces at once. I forgot my Japanese dictionary so we just sort of guessed at what everything was. They had sesame, teriyaki-ish, lemon, garlic, and even chili sauces. Plus, you can add other things like chili paste or sesame seeds to add texture and flavor. Mmmm.

Definitely a treat! :) If you ever go to Japan, I highly recommend going to a yakiniku place. They can be a bit pricy, but they're definitely worth it.

One more thing. :) I'm going to another concert! A band my friends have introduced me to, Abingdon Boys School, has a lead singer who also makes solo albums under the name TM Revolution. And he'll be playing in Otsu! That's between here and Kyoto, making it pretty close. It's going to be in a nice concert hall and everything. So, that's something to look forward to in a few weeks. Here's a sample of his music, as well as ABS's. :)

TM Revolution - Invoke
Abingdon Boys School - Howling

Have a great week! Sorry, I know this was kind of a random post. But this is what happens when I don't have many new pictures. XD

Best day ever?

Happy Friday! Because we have a test every Friday here, when I finish that I really feel like it's worth celebrating. :)

What made Friday so good, you might ask? Well, it was just one of those days when everything goes well! It's my first weekend since January I get to spend here in Hikone, so we actually made plans and I wasn't busy rushing off anywhere. The test was okay - I won't say it went really well because it didn't, but I think I did plenty well enough. :) After the exam, we had another cultural activity - Wadaiko!
Wadaiko means "Japanese drums". These three awesome ladies came to perform for us, then taught us a short piece to play. There's a story behind these masks. The person in the middle is a random guy heading home on an errand along a mountain path. He hears this weird noise up ahead, and discovers it's a demon and a monkey, playing drums right in the middle of the path. The man wants to go home but he can't pass by so he has to play the drums in front of him. He likes it so much he decides to continue playing!

I'm afraid I don't have any photos of me showing off my mad drumming skills, but getting to play on that kind of instrument was pretty cool. We also sounded really good!After wadaiko we went out for Indian food out on Bell Road, one of the main thoroughfares in Hikone that's full of shops and restaurants. The restaurant, Sapna, is pretty new but has such tasty food. Look at the naan! It's amazingly delicious...my trial when I get home will be to find an Indian place that's up to snuff.Then, we did karaoke for 4 hours! Japanese karaoke is pretty awesome. You can queue up songs on this little display so there's no time wasted on choosing songs after you finish one. And they have SO MANY SONGS! Of course, their Japanese selection is pretty prodigious - basically every song in Japanese I knew was in that database. But they have a lot of other stuff too! We sang 2 K-Pop songs and I found Nightwish AND Sonata Arctica AND Kamelot! None of my favorites of theirs were there, but the fact that they were there at all was pretty fun. I ended up singing a combination of symphonic metal, random Japanese songs, K-pop and anime intros. I love karaoke, and I can't wait to go back. :)

Tonight we spent teaching more people to play 42! Its popularity is constantly spreading, which is awesome. We played for about 3 hours, and definitely recruited more to the cause. The current count of people here who know how to play is 8, and we have 2 more wanting to learn. I'm so glad I can continue one of my favorite pastimes here. :)

ALSO, I found white button mushrooms at Beisia! I didn't think they were here in Japan at all until I saw them in Kusatsu while shopping with my homestay family last weekend. And they magically appeared at the grocery store. Guess who's making pasta with sauteed mushrooms? :D

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Crepes and Verbing

Hi! So, I think I'm on the mend. Besides a nagging cough, I don't feel too bad at all. :) I'm hoping I'll be completely recovered by Friday...I won't be traveling this weekend (for once), so we're celebrating with Indian food, karaoke, and 42! Friday post-exam is going to be awesome.

Monday we had an adventure and went to Omi-hachiman! My friend Addie's homestay family lives in Omi-hachiman (a town about midway between Hikone and Kyoto) so we decided to accompany her there. We mainly hung around the station, which was fine because there was a big shopping mall right nearby! As with most big cities, the station has a lot of cool stuff nearby. Including a CREPE OJISAN! Oh my, delicious. So, we had yummy crepes and went through shops full of cute things (and I now have Sentimental Circus mugs! :DDDDD) and a music store and generally wandered around the mall for a while.

We've been taking liberties with the Japanese language here at JCMU. In class, of course we have to speak properly, but certain things have been co-opted into our everyday language. Easy ones to integrate are "sumimasen" (excuse me/I'm sorry), "daijobu" (are you okay/I'm okay), "yappari" (as expected), and "tabun" (probably). I'm pretty sure I will be using all of these phrases upon my return - it will be a hard habit to break! My personal favorite, though, is changing the part of speech. For example, the adjective for something you like is "suki" (pronounced "ski"). My roommate today used it as a noun: "This is my suki." And you can sometimes conjugate adjectives as verbs, like daijobu! Using verb conjugations we just learned, you can use the phrase "Daijondemite kudasai", which literally translates to "please try to be okay". That one is probably the silliest, and therefore my favorite. And I'm sorry for the lengthy language lesson, but I've found it amusing.

Besides the Omihachiman trip, not much has happened! I had a paper to write for history, so that (and being sick and a little miserable) has sort of taken up my time. Life is going as normal otherwise, so I don't have much to report. Which is why you get another picture of a plum tree in a pot. XD

New song! It's by Super Junior, a Korean band (yes, another one). It's called Perfection. Ignoring the fur hats, I LOVE the video. I'm definitely becoming a K-Pop fan. :D

Good luck with the rest of your week!