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Published: July 11th 2014
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Japanese Tavern (Izakaya) in Shibuya!
At Japanese Izakayas, you can get tons of small plates of food really cheaply. Kind of like Chinese dim sum. I ate at one (with Naomi, Mei, Will, and Jade) called Ginironokura, a famous Izakaya in Shibuya. This place has the cool Japanese style floor where you step down into the seats instead of sitting up at tables. Carleton students reunion! Hey everybody, sorry it's been a while since the last post!
I've officially made it through my first week of classes here. Five more to go! Things are moving at an incredibly fast pace, but also incredibly slowly. It reminds me of the first few weeks of college, where everything was new and you didn't take any experience for granted. And at the same time, because you're always busy, the actual day itself feels like it goes by in a flash.
At this point, I'm incredibly exhausted. I thought I tricked jet lag, but it turns out my body had other plans. I've been waking up at 5:00am every day, and then going back to sleep until 6:30 when I wake up to commute to class. I've only had one day where I actually woke up to my alarm clock. However, I still go to bed around midnight and can't fall asleep any earlier. At this point, I've slightly turned into a zombie. Anyways, obviously a bunch of cool stuff happened this week, so i'll just talk about some of it here:
Homestay: I absolutely love my homestay family. I'm living with Naoko and Manabu Takashima, two very
kind and very patient people. They've bent over backwards to help me adjust and feel welcome at all times, truly incredible people. They're also amazing cooks- every breakfast and dinner, I've been lucky enough to taste homemade Japanese food that's better than anything you can buy at a restaurant back in Seattle. Hopefully I pick up a few tricks while I'm here! Also, my commute is relatively pretty good, compared to what it could have been. I only have to take one bus to the college, about half an hour either direction. Because I'm taking the bus instead of the train every day, my commute costs about a third of what it could have (bus fare's about 2 bucks either way). It's also nice because the commute forces me to wake up early enough to be awake for my classes. Speaking of classes...
I took my course placement test on Monday, and got my results the next day. There are 8 levels, with C8 being the highest. C1 is for beginning students, and most students in C8 are native speakers who are refining their writing and reading abilities at the college level. I placed into C4, which is actually
a little too high for only having a year of Japanese study. It doesn't necessarily reflect my abilities, as much as how lucky I got with what questions appeared on the exam. Ideally, I'd be in a C3.5, but that doesn't exist. I've decided (at least for now) to stick with C4 and try to muscle through. So far, I've already memorized about 40 or 50 kanji, easily over a hundred words, and tons and tons of grammar. The constant speaking experience I get with my homestay family will definitely help me bridge the gap.
Classes run for three hours every week day, excluding breaks. Then, once a week, I have an individual session with my professors. The classes are tough, but it's really exciting to see how quickly we make progress. Altogether, I'll be covering 8 chapters (in a normal college term we cover 6), plus about 4 chapters on my own from a different textbook to catch up. I've definitely got my work cut out for me, but I'm ready to give it the best shot I can.
The summer program also runs culture events that you can enter a lottery to go to, and I
won three of the last four. That means that next week, I'll get to try my hand at Japanese flower arrangement and watch a genuine Kabuki show! The third lottery I won was a five hour long visit to a Japanese Zen temple near Musashi-Sakai in Tokyo. The temple is actually over 300 years old, so it looks a lot like your stereotypical image of a Japanese shrine (I've got a few pictures below). We learned how to eat in the proper Zen manner (which is incredibly complicated... it took about an hour to teach us, and then an hour to actually do it), and then meditated for almost an hour.
I'll conclude my brain dump here before this ramble turns into a small novel. I miss everybody back at home, thanks everybody who's sent me an email, please keep 'em coming!
This weekend, I'm going to Nikkou, a famous spot near Tokyo with hot springs and a very famous temple. I'll be sure to update the blog when I get back (Sunday night).
Until my next ramble, then.
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