So Tuesday the 14th, I abandoned all pretenses of after school studying to go visit with Ojii-chan's friend and caricature sensei for the evening. His art pseudonym is Daimon. Daimon lives very close to the sea in a bright pink house which is somehow more colorful on the inside than it is on the outside. It's an absolutely gorgeous blend of ancient and modern Japanese architectural styles. And there is art everywhere. Literally, everywhere. Daimon's works, pieces he's collected over the years, a lot of war memorabilia, and many kabuki-esque things wildly adorning his walls. Much to my delight, Daimon matched his house - you should have seen his pants. They had to be the most fantastic silk-patch-samurai print-loud colored pants I have ever seen. Honestly, they were fantastic. Add to this his traditional cloth house sandals made by an artist friend of his that were so worn he might as well have been barefoot and a White Sox tee-shirt and you have Daimon.
Daimon very graciously drew a caricature of me in like...five minutes flat. Well, draw is wrong, I suppose, it was more like drawing a cartoon with a sumi-e brush. Which was fascinating to watch.
This was the end result...
We went to this awesome little out of the way restaurant where everyone knew Daimon as soon as he walked in - starting our "secret service" meal for the evening. They ordered so much food! Which was only topped by the amount of beer Oko-san drank...Daimon summed it up like this:
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| Daimon after the two HUGE ume-sours he had... |
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| Oko-san always ends up like this when they go out to eat:p |
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| Or like this... |
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| Oko-san's ideal bathtub |
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| Sleeping in her favorite food we ate that night... |
Wednesday and Thursday...mmmmm, lots of catching up to do because Friday we had our midterm - so EARLY!! The midterm was the first time I felt like actually shouldn't be here. I'm not homesick or feel like I'm out of place, fewer people stare at me for so long (though every now and again in the morning I'm afraid I'll cause an accident as drivers pass me at the bus stop - they look back for so long!! it's scary!) but the test...was difficult. And while I feel like I've made a lot of progress in communicating and understanding [[read: not translating]] at home, in the class room I'm doing poorly. It's really frustrating for me, because I know that I can't get better at home or when I'm out and about in Hamamatsu if I don't do better in class but I feel like I'm doing awful. I leave early to get to class via bus and don't home until 5:30ish pm, and then it's time to pick up Keiji-kun and I love going to pick him up, but I feel kind of guilty for immediately scooting into my room to study dialogues, kanji, and vocab and not spending more time with my family before dinner.
Balance is what I'm struggling to find - it's either too much time studying or too much time not studying. :/ たいへんねえ。。。
So. After a TERRIBLE midterm it was time to go meet the SUAC college students. I was nervous. Especially because I was positive I had failed (such great intuition there...) so my confidence level was around a negative 3000 and now I had to not only spend a long period of time speaking only in Japanese buuuuuut we were also scheduled to go to a カラオケ restaurant aaaand I cannot sing soooo...I was ya know, a little nervous.
After self introductions everyone was split into groups of three - Japanese students were to speak English, American to speak Japanese - at first, everyone was pretty shy and nervous but lots of じょうず's later, I think most of us were feeling pretty at ease with each other. Now we were a bit more chatty, taking pictures up on the green roof of the college (it's a field with real grass and these huge benches so you can sit and study and see soooo much of Hamamatsu city) and trading facebook info. Off to karaoke we went, still trading facebook infos and talking, talking, talking :) By this point, I felt like I'd made quite a few awesome friends and wanted the evening to stretch out.
[[insert: sideways proof of Lindsey's skillage]]
When I got home, Obaa-chan and Ojii-chan had onigiri and tomatoe juice waiting for me (I cannot recommend onigiri highly enough. I one or two for lunch almost every day. Also. With tomato juice. Amazing) and told me to ゆうくりねますよ "sleep slowly" the next morning hah. When Keiji-kun poked his head in around 7:30 I decided it was time to get up :p
Saturday Lindsey and I went to the most amazing cave I've ever been to http://en.japantourist.jp/view/ryugashido-cavern. We were actually able to crawl through a little crevice, walk under a waterfall, and see straight up into 40 feet of sheer rock and darkness. It was seriously incredible. I really wish I'd had my camera with me :( The whole time I had a geekish experience of understanding what it is that Gimli loves about caves so much. I wanted to sit and study and sketch and create for hours...but we were headed to the onsen after that!!
Ok. Obaa-chan is adorable, but even more so when it anything involving being "OPEN", as she puts it. haha. The onsen was sooooooo relaxing, absolutely lovely. My favorite bath was definitely the Gold Rose bath, which had a rose-herb bag soaking in the pool to make everything smell absolutely delicious.
Sundaysundaysunday....we didn't get to sleep slowly T_T <-- sadness, because Eiji-kun and Keiji-kun had a boy scout ceremony at the local じんじゃ (it was very different seeing a park around a temple). I pretty much had no idea what was going on during the ceremony accept that there was a lot of saluting, and a bunch of adorable little kids were inducted into the Beavers group, and then Lindsey, Tiffany and me were introducing ourselves in Japanese. Before the ceremony started though, we were introduced to a little girl who spoke English beautifully and not shyly at all, something which was very surprising - all the other kids who were gently pushed towards us by their parents urging them to say "My name is ___. How are you?" were veeeeeeery shy. We were also introduced to a pet rabbit who was running around on a leash and was totally chill about the weird noises, random kids picking him up, and so on. After the ceremony was over, it was time for the games!
The part that made me all mushy about the whole morning was the way the boys on my team (in Hamamatsu there are girls in Boy Scouts too but my team only had boys on it) grabbed my hand and made sure that I knew where I was going/what to do - even the 14/15 year old distantly made sure I went before him at each of the games. We made it through the "Spider's nest" - a bunch of ropes strung at diagonals through a bunch of trees (super fun, I really enjoyed that), making our own せんべい to eat, a memory game essential to all Boy Scouts, and a game I didn't understand at all :p
Pictures long over due:
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| bfast - ホムライス, cucumber, fish, and sweet bread |
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| Happy Birthday Suzuki-Sensei!!!! |
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| Kadekawa-sensei's childhood idol |
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| Back spines are incorrectMUSTFIXXXX!!! |
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