*Turns Into Godzilla and Stomps all Over Tokyo*

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I am in a bad mood. I try not to write while I'm in a bad mood, because it seems like the sort of thing not to do, but I need to be doing something, and the idea of cleaning/packing isn't that grand, and the dorm is closed for the night so I can't go anywhere.

But yeah, I don't even know how to describe my mood right now. At least not without using a few choice words I'd rather leave out. But you know, after a long stream of them you'd kinda get the picture, so just imagine I had said them all. There. That's how I feel.

Today was my final for Japanese. That should be a good thing. Hurrah, done. Whatever. There's normally this anticipation leading up to a final, that half fear thing where you don't know what's gonna happen and you hope you know enough, because this is your chance to prove yourself, to show what you know, to show you're capable. I actually love final week, normally. There's the adrenalin, then that "Screw it, I'm done! Let's go party!" sort of feeling. And you know you did the best you could, and you know there's nothing left to do, and you just let it go and wait the month and a half it takes for the grades to be posted.

Today was not like that. I suppose we should move backwards.

Yesterday was not a good day. I stayed up too late Saturday getting pictures ready for facebook/myspace/this blog, cause I'd had a really great weekend, and I was in a good mood, and I just wanted to keep it going a few more hours before I went to bed and then started the school week. Consequently I went to bed at like 1 in the morning, and I wake up at 6am, so I woke up freaking tired, went to class freaking tired, my coffee didn't do much to help. Then it was Mitsuhashi Sensei day, which means class was freaking boring, and we just went over a review sheet of grammar I could do in my sleep (and in fact I hadn't done my homework, so I was doing it while half asleep), but I kinda just looked it over and though, "The hell with this" then sat back while we spent the entire class period basically redoing the homework. See, I didn't miss anything by not having it done in the first place.

But yeah, I was pretty much zonked. I didn't want to be there, didn't give a damn, didn't need help with the worksheet. We spent two hours doing something that I could have done in five minutes on my own (and actually did do in five minutes once Mitsuhashi started pestering me). But at first, I was so tired, when called on I just couldn't think of examples, and that was pissing people off. But literally, the only examples I could think of were like, "Even though this class is so freaking boring, I still have to come" and "No matter how many times I come to class, it's not going to get any more useful." There are reasons I didn't want to actually say those sentences. But yeah, it's not like I didn't know the grammar patterns. I'm rather certain I actually pissed people off about that. Because there were a few kids in class who didn't understand a couple things, and after they asked the teacher, and the teacher explained, and they still had questions, I explained them in English. And this happened like three times. And then later, the teacher's asking me to give an example by answering the question "Why do you study Chinese?" But I didn't know how to say my answer, so I answered, "My answer's too complicated, I don't know how to say it in Japanese," all said in Japanese, mind you. And then this girl Hayley goes off on me about how I can say it, and I'm just being difficult, and I snap back that no, in fact, I don't actually know how to say I'm studying Chinese because China's becoming a bigger international power and I find that interesting and want to learn more about how it's developing in the world. The whole IPE thing. Don't know how to explain that in Japanese. And then she just goes off on me more, and other people do as well, with Mark being like, "seriously, you could try a little, just a little" and I'm thinking, screw you guys, I answered in Japanese the first time, I've given other examples today, and you blow the teacher off more than I do.

Anywho, I'm officially pissed with half of my class. But that's okay, because apparently they don't like me anyway.

But then we had the test today, and the teacher said it was going to be harder, and that it was on all the kanji we'd studied so far, and that it was going to be longer and have a reading section we'd never seen before... ya da ya da ya da. But yeah, so I'm up late last night studying all our kanji (we've had like 216ish). And while the kanji itself wasn't hard, some of the compounds were new vocab I just hadn't memorized, so I'm studying all of that, and I don't even look at the worksheets we'd been given, I do glance at the past tests we'd had. But then I get to the final, and I'm worried a little about the listening, but I think I did pretty good on it, then I get to the actual test, and the kanji's okay. I forgot how to write part of tegami (letter) but I'm so familiar with it that my guess is probably right, and for some reason I Was worried about eki (station) but come on, I know that one. Anywho, 20 kanji, at worst 2 mistakes, really easy overall. NONE of the hard words I had studied. Next on to particle stuff, I did fine. I didn't bother studying it, because come on. I know that crap. Then on to multiple choice. With the exception of one I swear I've never seen before, I got them right. Then onto the next page (one page is like 2 normal pages). Which was exactly the review sheets. EXACTLY. And I'm just like. WTF! Seriously? I did this crap in five minutes! Five minutes! I prolly made a few mistakes because I rushed it and didn't bother to go back and check. By that point I just didn't care. I'm near banging my head on the desk, because this is an hour long test, and it's been less then 15 minutes. Then the last page, and it's a reading that we didn't do in level 1, but the level 2 class had done it, and I had been getting their homework for a bit, and I'd seen it before. Which I almost told the teacher, but then I remembered that the first time I'd seen it, over three freaking months ago, I was able to do it myself, with my dictionary only helping to look up vocab that they'd labeled anyway for us. And I got all the answers right then, too. What does this mean? This means that in fact, the final reading that was supposed to be an accumulation of everything we've learned, was something I could do the first week of class.

-.-

What a waste of a semester. But no, I'm just a stupid gaijin who couldn't possibly already be capable of this stuff, because I screwed up on a test, and that's all that counts.

And the worst part is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I knew all of this, and the class was pointless, and I hated going to it, and I hated that I didn't need to studying to get As on tests (by the way, I got a 97% on the last one). None of that matters, because there's nothing I can do about it, and I have to rearrange my entire plan for school, and I'll be way behind where I wanted to be, and there's nothing I can do about it. And my teacher back in America thinks I'm stupid, and was utterly useless throughout this whole ordeal, and straight up told me I was trying to do things for the wrong reasons, and in fact I belonged in the class I didn't have to study to get As in, but that doesn't matter. Seriously, there's not a damn thing I can do to change anything, I just have to suck it up and try to be happy with the fact that my Japanese has improved, I'm loads better at conversation and speaking, and now some new vocab, but that doesn't matter either cause I'll prolly lose most of it over the next seven months when I'm not in a Japanese class.

And then I get people, my friends, saying it's not worth being mad over. Get over it. Move on. Why the hell should I not be mad about this? It's my life. My life being screwed over and there's nothing I can do to stop it. That's exactly the sort of thing I think I should be getting mad about. I was right, and no one listened. And now, people are just ignoring me in class, and they argue with me about Japanese and stuff, but I'm right, and then when they find out I'm right they just roll their eyes and blow me off. THAT is exactly the sort of thing I should be getting mad about. I'm being made to jump through these hoops and I don't even want to be there, and at this point I'm done, I'm not getting anything out of it, and I don't want to be polite, because they weren't polite to me, and you know what, when I finally got a chance to explain all this to one of the Japanese staff ladies, she totally agreed that there were reasons for me to be angry.

And I'm not even that happy about being able to go home on Sunday, because what's going to happen then? There's going to be the initial bit of fun when I get to see all my family, and I'm really looking forward to that, but then what? Make it back to Washington, meet up with people, and spend forever pretending I enjoyed myself while I was here? Either that or failing miserably to explain why I've been frustrated with everything and spent most of the semester depressed or dealing with sever anxiety issues. I don't want to be that girl who complains all the time. I'm already that girl, but I want it to stop. As important as it is to me to express myself, after the first time or two, no one else cares.

I'm so tired of my class. Not just the teachers or the course, but some of the people in it. This girl Hayley, I used to hang out with her, but I kinda branched away from that group once it became apparent that they didn't really care if I was there or not, and then later that they'd rather I be not. But she complains more than I do, and she complains that I always complain, except her complaints are more like, about the teaching style, and how much it sucks, and how that's why she's not learning stuff. And I don't know, to me it seems to make sense, but then, I already know what they're teaching so it's not hard for it to make sense, but I get really annoyed at her because, like today, she was going off about how we shouldn't need to learn kanji because the Japanese people don't even remember it and they just use computers and cell phones and stuff, and I was just like, "come on, they might not know all two thousand kanji, but they almost certainly know everything we're learning" and everyone knew that was right, but they just kept insisting it was pointless to study it. Which left me with my head on my desk thinking about how they say everything I bring up is BS.

There's this girl Ashley, who no one really likes. I've become the Ashley of my class. I don't know when or why it happened. I do know Hayley's been bad mouthing me. I know this because I do have friends, and they told me. Which I didn't understand at first, because I'd actually stood up for her. I mean, I thought the kids I used to hang out with were cool, we just weren't a fit for each other.

I'm really tired of these people.

The best thing happened yesterday, though. I was by myself down in the lobby, and I'd gotten there first and grabbed the table next to the outlet so I could use my computer, and when everyone else came down they all grabbed their own spots, and no one sat with me. But then about ten minutes later, the girls I've been hanging out with recently saw me sitting by myself and called me over to hang out. Which may possibly be the first time I was intentionally included in something by other people since I came to Japan. Or rather, the first time I was singled out to be included, other than a sort of "you can tag along if you like" thing.

But yeah. Too little too late. I've got five days left here and I just want them to go away.

Tomorrow's my day off. My friends are going to Disney Sea, I've already been, so I'm thinking about doing laundry (definitely doing laundry) and then cleaning, and then packing, and then maybe going shopping. I want to go to this store in Harajuku, kiddy land, because it's got a bunch of really cute toy stuff and what not. I don't know. I want to print off some pictures cause I'm gonna make a mini scrap book for our dorm managers. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. I don't know. I have to call the luggage people and set up a time for them to pick up my bags. On Thursday maybe I'll talk to shin san about finding someone to order flowers from (to send to my dorm managers after I leave). Thursday is the happyo skit day ending ceremony that I really wish I didn't have to go to. Friday is a few different goodbye parties. I think we might be doing kareoke afterwards, I want to do purikura, which is amazing, just for the record. (Think photo booths made a million times cooler.) I don't know what I'm doing Saturday yet. I plan on leaving early on Sunday to get to the airport. (My flight's at 5ish, but it'll prolly take like 3 hours to get to the airport. Okay, 2 and a half).

As I said, I'm in a bad mood, which means I want to buy something, which is a really bad outlet for frustration, cause what I want to buy is a DS. Which I suppose it better than wanting to buy a $200 purse, which is what I wanted last time I was upset. But I don't really need a DS. In fact, having a DS would get in the way of things like school work, and reading, and, you know, productive stuff. This is why I have yet to buy a PS2. And really, if I bought one I'd need games, and let's just save that chunk of money for cool stuff, like a deposit on an apartment. Or utility bills. Or a real coat. I could use a real coat. It's getting cold here.

And now I've spent all that time ranting. You didn't even get to hear about the cool stuff, like what all those pictures are about. And I'm not really in the mood to elaborate. Well, maybe a little, but not as cool of a blog as you could have gotten.

Well, as I mentioned briefly, I really enjoyed this weekend. As bad as the last two days have been, the weekend was all that and more in goodness. Friday I had my conversation partners (there are pictures of them) and they were just a lot of fun. I'm feeling more comfortable with them, more confident in my kaiwa skills, and I'm actually going to miss them a little when I leave. After that, I was thinking about going to the Tokyo dome to pick up a gift for my step dad (no need to mention that to him, mum, if you're reading this) but ran into some guys from school on the train. Where were they going? To the movie theater! Disney has its own movie theater, just one stop away from school. Seriously, I should have seen that one coming. We saw "I Am Legend" and it was a nice taste of Americanness. And not as bad as it could have been.

Saturday was so awesome. I met up with my host mom and sister Naomi for the day. I ended up being late, which meant I didn't get the shower I needed to look as presentable as I would have liked, but still I had fun. Minus the headache. I've been getting a lot of headaches as of late. Oh, migraines! How I wish I could stab you with a spork! But yes, host mom! We went to kamakura, and saw a temple, and ate some food, and she bought me little tiny geta shoes (like for a doll) and we saw a big buddha!!!!! I've been wanting to see a big buddha sense I first heard of them, but I kinda didn't want to go alone, so I didn't think I'd make it this trip, but then she took me there and it was amazing! I've included good pictures. Look at them. Imagine it bigger. Like, over 31 meters. It was gorgeous, and while the day was freezing, the weather was beautiful. I'm so happy we got to go.

Then we went to an aquarium, and that was cool. The girl in the funny outfit was a dolphin trainer or what not, or at least in the dolphin show. Now, they call it a dolphin show, but what it really was three or four girls singing, dancing, and doing water aerobics, while an occasional dolphin made an appearance. The show was about the girls. But they were pretty cool, so it was good. We had lunch at a French restaurant, which, I dunno, seemed like fairly normal food. (I don't know French food, what is it, pasta? This wasn't pasta). Anywho, it was a lot of fun, and I was very happy, and it was great to be able to see my host mom again. I wasn't as talkative as I could have been, because my head was killing me, but it was still a lot of fun.

Here's something I've noticed about the Japanese. Statistically they're one of the most medicated countries in the world (if not the most). There's a lot of reasons for it, political and social and what not, not important. What is important, is that the idea of taking painkillers for a headache gets me a lot of stares. I've had several people ask me why I do it. And I just look at them, and say "because it hurts." And they point out it's bad for me, the liver and what not. And I just kinda go, "it really, really hurts." and I don't know if they have headaches on a different scale, or if they just know how to suck it up, but I spent the outrageous amount of money on pain killers that are weaker than those in America because when my head is pulsing and thumping, and even opening my eyes causes pain because the tiny spec of light squeezing through the blinds is like a knife to my skull, I'm going to do something about it. They have a specific word for medicine for headaches. It's on my kanji sheet, even if I don't remember it. If they have a word for it, someone in Japan is doing the same thing as me.

I want a nikuman. I'm hungry, and a nikuman sounds really good. I don't know if the konbini is 24 hours, though. I don't know if I get out of the dorm, whether or not I'll be able to get back in. I bet you I could set it up to test the theory. But yes, nikuman are like these fist sized balls of dough, with meet inside, and they're addictive, and I wish America had them, because that would be great. There're one of those convenience store foods that are probably not good for you, but still better than what they got in America, and oh so tasty. They also have pizaman. Which is the same thing, but with a pizza flavor. Not as good, but slightly more cheesy.

Oh, yes, lots of pictures from the dorms X-mas party. That was a lot of fun, even if I forget to mention it to you.

Rawr. I'm not tired. I wonder if Caitlyn's sleeping. Probably, she has field placement tomorrow. I shouldn't bug her about helping me test out the leaving the dorm theory. Sad day.

I should probably mention that I made it to the Tokyo Dome Sunday, and ran into an anime convention, that's where those pictures are from. It was awesome.

Rawr again. Arg. *Turns into Godzilla and stomps all over Tokyo*

Thank you mom and Sensei for reviewing! It made me very happy. (Part of my good weekend, actually). Have a good night everyone! See you soon.

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Photos

Sushi Time!
I've only had sushi a couple times this time in Japan. Why? It' expensive. The perfect holiday treat.

Me and Caitlyn
Yeah, we're cool. And my headband rocks my socks off

Me, ryobosan and rochosan
My suragate parents. They're really sweet.

Christmas Cake!
ChristmasCake ChristmasCake ChristmasCake ChristmasCake!!!!!

Lots of us
Samia got to wear the dorm manager's kimino. She was really pretty

Me and Niki
Getting ready for the end of the progrom skit

Me and conversation partners!
Mai and Asami are both awesome! I'm going to miss them

Mai!
I'm fairly certain I edited myself out of this picture...

Me and my host mom!
At Kamakura, the city that was the capital over a thousand years ago

Naomi and I infront of the big buddha
past Kamakura, I don't remember exactly where...

Big Buddha
I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to get a picture of him. Simply gorgeous

Lady with Dolphin
Yeah, strange outfit girl was the performer...

Jumping Dolphin
You have to squint, but it's in there

Cosplayers
This is the only group picture I took that wasn't blury

Lulu
Heck. Yes.

Mecha Guy
Because every good cosplay needs one.