School: I’ve officially finished my first week of school here. This past Monday we found out our placements and I am happy that I got into the third level (which is the end of beginning, so next semester I will be beginning intermediate). This is actually the perfect pace for me and I will get a really solid foundation before moving up. Class is four hours a day, every day. It gets a little long at the end, but for the most part I can handle it. We rotate teachers and study everything from grammar to kanji and vocabulary to reading and writing practice. They are also really big on repetition here, and although a little tedious, it gets the point across. We have had a quiz every day so far (actually, two on Thursday) and Monday is our first big test.
Fun: Wednesday a group of students from my program went to the Ghibli Museum , which features Hayao Miyazaki’s productions My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc. and other films like Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies. Amazing if you haven’t seen any of these, you should. I bought two smaller notebooks with little characters on them and I think I’ll write you all letters from the paper because it’s so cute.
And then on Friday directly after class we ate lunch in ten minutes and went to visit the neighboring elementary school. It was so cute! We got to sit in two different fifth grade classrooms during some of their math lessons—fractions, everyone’s favorite—and afterwards were divided up into groups of six with 4 students from the elementary school and 2 from ICU. The kids then gave us a grand tour where we stopped in every classroom (1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade…), gym, computer lab, music room, the roof play area and outside playground, as well as an inside play room with toys like tops, juggling bags and Daruma Otoshi (Daruma Tower). They sang us a short song and were so excited to ask about America—especially the scent. It was the first and last question they asked: what it smelled like in the US of A.
After the elementary school we went to a Kabuki theater performance at the National Theatre of Japan (in the heart of Tokyo). The color of the costumes and set design was amazing! The story was told not only by the characters in the play, but also by the musicians who framed the stage. They used long, stringed instruments called shamisen, drums of various sizes, and their voice to sing the forbidden love story. All of the actors were men in the modern style, even though Kabuki was created and developed by women. It was a great performance, and though it got a little long, I’m glad I’ve had the experience.
Food: The performance was over relatively early so we went to Shibuya and roamed the streets for a while before eating at this awesome restaurant that specialized in Okonomiyaki (sometimes called Japanese pancake or pizza). For 850 yen, you get a bowl filled with pancake batter, egg, cabbage, crisped rice, and your choice of meat/veggie (I got green onion) and are are supposed to cook the panake on the table in front of you. It was soo good, and really filling.
In general food is different here. I am still amazed by how few vegetables and fruit people eat on a daily basis. The cheapest apple you can find go for 100 yen, and a decent one cost more like 160 to 180. Peaches go for about the same, and bananas are really expensive too. So yes, believe it or not, I buy all my food at the dollar store.
Aren’t Japanese shopping carts cute?
Eating salad for a meal is unheard of. For breakfast every day I have been eating a bowl of frosted cornflakes, yoghurt, and a glass of OJ. The yoghurt is actually amazing. I was buying small individual containers for a while (they are about half the size of yoghurt in the US), but then I found a larger container (large, haha 500 grams) and I realized why it tastes so good. When I opened it up there was a packet of sugar that could be added. I tried the yoghurt without and soon realized it wasn’t really extra sugar. I’ve heard the strawberry flavored ones barely have a hint of the fruit taste. That’s ok because I like my plain just fine. Bread is also pretty good here, not bread for sandwiches, which is really Wonder Bread©, I mean, they cut off the crusts and everything, but bread from bakeries. It’s really fresh and is a great snack in between classes.
For lunch, I usually get a brick of tofu, a small salad with potato, carrots, and green cabbage, and a bowl of kabocha (a sweet squash) and sometimes rice depending how hungry I am at the cafeteria. It only cost 280 yen and taste pretty good. I think I may be sick of it by next week. It’s hard because there aren’t really any options without meat, and virtually no options without seafood/fish. I got chow mein the other day, and although it was only supposed to be shrimp, I found chunks of pork in the sauce. I’m glad I’m not that strict.
Dinners have been wonderful, the best meal by far. Master Chef Chatam cooks fairly regularly everything from eel-mushroom omelets to shrimp gumbo. I’ve gone out twice so far—once to a greasy, expensive Ramen-ya that had pork in everything and the other time in Kichijoji to a Chinese restaurant where we shared tomato-egg soup, tomato-egg salad, and a spicy spinach cashew dish. We passed a Nepali place that I’d like to go to, but otherwise there are rarely any restaurants that serve anything besides Japanese food.
All this food talk has got me hungry now. Today we are supposed to be hit by a big typhoon, and it has been raining non-stop for two days now but it seems to be lightening up. Maybe we will be allowed to leave the dorm after all! I do need to go grocery shopping, which people do about every other day.
I will definitely try to write in this more regularly. Time just seems to fly by here. I want to blog about environmentalism and waste and the crazy transportation systems here. But first, let me spend a special shoutout to my mom, so she knows that I still love her and think of her every day, especially when swimming. Thank you for helping me get here.
3 comments:
keep writing darling! it is so exciting to live vicariously through your adventures.
much love.
Is your hair darker? I like it.
i want to eat the food.
Post a Comment