More new classes

Also food because Jen keeps telling me I need to talk about food.  Hi Jen! 

Today Japanese was more review, but with a different teacher; this one was actually review, mostly of stuff I learned freshman year (or more accurately, learned while abroad in high school, and then learned properly freshman year when someone explained how it worked and why half the time what I was doing was wrong).  It's been a while, so the review was good for me.  Then we spent about half the class talking about plastic surgery and the merits and problems that arise from allowing children to get it, theoretically to practice -ば form verbs ('if' conjugation), but really mostly just all of us going, "Um, no, 12 year olds should not be getting nose jobs."  It was a fun class, for the most part. 

Then, after lunch, we had a workshop--we get to have various workshops throughout the semester, called 'practicals', that will let us learn about different parts of Japanese culture and lifestyle.  This one wasn't really culture oriented so much as safety--it was all about self defense.  It was actually pretty funny, watching a bunch of adult men trying to explain different things to guard against to an audience where only half or less understood what they were saying most of the time.  Then they taught us various hold breaks (aka what to do if someone grabs you) and taught us the local equivalent of 911 and basically ran around in circles making funny faces while acting out various scenarios, then encouraging us to copy the scenarios amongst ourselves (ostensibly to practice the various hold breaks).  It was fun.

Finally, I had my last class, which is a seminar made up of half AKP students and half Doshisha students.  Except the Doshisha students are still on summer vacation.  A little problematic.  Anyways, the topic of the class seems to be comparing Japanese and American culture through examining the little stories and toys and etc. that everyone knows but people don't really talk about--like, we all know Beauty and the Beast and The Little Engine That Could, and lots of us played with Barbie or Legos, but they don't come up in everyday conversation.  So we're starting to look into that stuff, and we can do some of it by looking at readings and talking about commonalities in American culture, but we need to wait for the Japanese students to start classes to really get into the meaty bits.  It should be a really interesting class, I think. 

Food.  Jen, hi, you've been looking for this--I don't have pictures of food but all the stuff I'm eating is really yummy and way better than dining hall food, so you can be jealous.  <3 

Food at home is pretty much made by my host mother.  Breakfast is bread (Japanese bread consists of huge, puffy slices, like twice the size of a normal slice of bread but so airy that it's got about the same substance) and fruit and yogurt and sometimes an egg with ham but not always.  My host mom always asks if I've really eaten enough and I always end up insisting that yes, I really couldn't eat any more if I tried so she should finish that last slice of apple. (Japanese fruit, guys....it's expensive compared to American, but it's so perfect and ripe and delicious that it's WORTH IT.  I swear, their humongous apples are the sweetest, crispest, juiciest apples ever.) 

Lunch I eat at/around school, which up 'till now has meant at the dining hall.  It's different than a normal dining hall because the food is DELICIOUS.  Like, not just good for dining hall food, but good in general compared to real people food.  Also most things are around 200 yen, about $2.50 (THE EXCHANGE RATE MAKES ME SOOOOO SAD), which is pretty cheap compared to what it works out to with AVI Fresh at Wellesley.  Today I had udon with a sort of disk of tempura'd onions and carrot chunks and all sorts of veggies all in one mixed-up chunk.  Yesterday I had some kind of I don't even know what kind of chicken but it was tasty.  Last week I had kara-age (fried chicken, Japanese style) and it was tender and delicious.  I'm sure at some point we'll branch out and find other places to eat (e.g. once we get bored of the dining hall's admittedly limited options), but for right now tasty food is readily available.

Dinner is at home again.  Today my host mom made grilled fish, which literally means a big chunk of fish stuck under the broiler.  She called the type of fish 'sabo', which according to my new electronic dictionary (which the AKP people found a company to donate, it turns out!!!!  Yay happy wallet!!!), is not a word that in any way relates to fish.  But the internet tells me that the reason my electronic dictionary is unhelpful is that the word I'm looking for is actually 'saba', which both the internet and my dictionary say is mackerel.  Either way, it's very tasty fish.  We also had octopus mixed with cucumber slices and a mix of boiled veggies and (of course) rice.  Other dinners have been things like Chinese-style stir fry (I would question how Chinese this is and how much that's just the word my mom uses for it), delicious wonderful noodles of chilled deliciousness, etc.  I like homemade food lots. 

Umm....yes.  That covers the most important things.  Last but not least: purikura looks like this. 

 See all the shinies and colors and everything?  I can't get a closer shot with my camera, unfortunately, I can't hold it still enough and everything gets blurry.  But there are hearts and rainbows and bows everywhere and eyes look twice as big as normal and everyone turns pale which means I turn WHITE.  It's fun.