01/21/10 room, night- I wound up watching a couple episodes actually… Actually I finished the series. YAY!! It was so good, but now I am bummed that there’s no more. :( At any rate, this is going to be a short entry unfortunately. I am so tired. I did enjoy the late start this morning. It brought me back to high school where we would start an hour later every Wednesday. Class went well. We studied intonation in the first section, which I thought was cool. By the end of all the sections I was starving so I found Doro san and Tana san and ate with them. My lunch my host mom packed was onigiri today (rice balls, which is what we call them in English. Though, geometrically speaking, they are not spherical at all, they are puffed up triangles with rounded edges). I went to my first history of tea ceremony class today at 1:30. The professor is from Shanghai, is very nice, very animated, and very passionate about his topic. He also can’t speak English. YIPE!! I struggled to follow his lecture, which was in Japanese of course. Except for when he lapsed into Chinese. There I was listening so hard and sort of understanding when all of a sudden; ZERO COMPRENSION. I almost had a heart attack thinking I’d forgotten all my Japanese until I realized he had jumped languages. He also gave us the textbook. Well that thing isn’t going to be very useful to me. I can’t read Japanese. In order to read Japanese you have to know about 2000 of the most commonly used Kanji. I know a few hundred tops. It is so very frustrating to be illiterate. Sure I can read hiragana (syllabary that represents the phonetic sounds in Japanese) but nothing is written in ONLY hiragana except picture books for very small children. Apparently all student work can be submitted in English and I guess he has a way to translate it or something?? I didn’t get that part. I will need to talk to my academic advisor about that class tomorrow. I just don’t know why I was allowed to take this course if it is taught in Japanese. Usually only IJ 600s and above can do that. So how’d this class slip through the cracks? I will get to the bottom of it tomorrow.
After class I checked my mail slot and then began the commute home. It was really windy outside and while I was standing on the train platform a wind tunnel effect started happening. I saw an older Japanese lady who was just taller than my waist (not by much). I thought she was going to blow away! My host mom served me tea and pastry when I got home (much appreciated, I was STARVING again). I checked email and unpacked and impatiently awaited dinner. Once I was fed I did homework. I didn’t get into the shower until 9:30 and after shower time I studied some more for our dialogue test tomorrow. Now it’s time for bed. Sorry I couldn’t be wittier tonight. I really am so tired. But happy!! :) 23:02
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