Final-Freaking-Ly Part 3

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Alright, so now we're up to Sunday August 5th. After the craziness of the previous two days, it was finally time to get down to some studying. Today is Monday, and we had a placement test today, so I had to review all that fun grammar and kanji so that I don't get placed in special kids Japanese ( I probably will be anyway).

AFTER the studying though, the tutors all came to take us to the Kojiyosai festival, which is a big festival that takes place at like Kawaguchi, right by Mt. Fuji.

I'd like to nerd it up a bit here and mention that it's kind of silly to say things like Senso-ji temple, Kojiyosai festival, and Mt. Fujiyama (which people don't say often, but I've heard it before). A lot of the time, the last syllable or so translates to whatever english word follows it. Thus, senso-ji temple = senso temple temple. Kojiyosai festival = kojiyo festival festival. Mt. Fujiyama = Mt. Fuji Mt.

Admitted there's no way for people to know it, but if I lop off the english description of the event/thing, now you know why.

(insert, the "The More You Know" music)

So it was pretty sweet. We got packed into the train like sardines, since just about everyone from the local area seemed to decide to go to the festival at the same time. Many people dressed in kimonos, yukata (basically a more simpler kimono), and the guy-version of a yukata. I felt like a fool b/c all the girls implored us to come with them while they bought yukata and get some guy outfits, but, being too cool for school, we decided against it. Once I saw all the people dressed in the outfits, I thought it was pretty neat. All the girls look great! I may still get a yukata for the weekends.......

There were tons of stands all around serving Okonomiyaki (crazy japanese pancake thing), yakisoba (fried noodles with pickled cabbage and nori ), and takoyaki, which are little balls of dough with an octopus tentacle inside. Pretty interesting dish. Especially if you like chewing on a rubber band. Apparently Osaka is renown for its takoyaki, so I'm excited to try that. There were also little games you could play, but I didn't do any of that.

The big attraction was the fireworks show. Apparently, various companies set up rafts in the lake and at around eight the fireworks started and I think there was some sort of voting to see which company had the best display - they kept shouting out this gibberish over the loudspeaker and I didn't know what was going on.

However, my camera has a neat continuous shooting mode, and I got some interesting pictures of what had to be an HOUR of fireworks! Very exciting.

So that brings us to today, where we had our first day of class. Kind of. It was a two hour placement exam, which was MUCH less frightening than anticipated .

Now I'm off to make dinner and prepare for my first full week of classes in Japan.

Remedial Japanese here I come!

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Comments

[Mum]

Does this mean you'll be wearing a dress?
I'm all for cross-culturalism, but does this mean you'll be wearing a dress every weekend? Oh, I'm sorry, a yakota? Love you! Mum