Last weekend we stumbled across a festival. It seems it was something like a japanese version of halloween; a day of the dead sort of thing. Or so we think. We were out riding our bikes when we stumbled across this huge parade, with people dressed in oldfashioned traditional outfits and priests and huge floats and everything. It was really fun to see, and the floats were very beautiful. A shame I left my phone at home, or I'd have taken some pictures of it for you guys.
That evening there were celebrations all over town, and we found this party close right next to the dorm of some of the other students. They were selling all kinds of yummy food, plus cotton candy and chocolatedipped bananas which tasted awesome :) There was also a huge stage there, where every old lady in the neighbourhood (or so it seemed) would get up on stage in kimono and make-up and sing old folksongs. It was kind of nice but still kind of creepy :S
And then a whole troupe showed up, and played the samisen.
Everyone there were really friendly with us, and we felt very welcome there, even though I think we kind of crashed a local party. But everyone were smiling and waving at us and giving us drinks and stuff. I left pretty early, but I've heard from some of the others that people were generous with the drinks, and some of them generous with their hands :P
Tuesday we had this huge test for the chapters we've been through so far. I thought I'd studied enough but man, that test was a killer. I did my best, but though I haven't gotten the results yet, I know I did very poorly. I got really depressed afterwards, and started thinking that maybe I just wasn't meant to study japanese at all, but I managed to pull myself together, and instead channel it to study harder instead. So the rest of the week I've been studying like a madman, and the latest tests and homeworks I've done have gotten very good results. I will keep working hard this weekend, since I'm hoping to get a head start on the next chapter, so I won't get so overwhelmed in the future. Fingers crossed that I can keep it up :)
Last saturday we had a huge ceremony at school to welcome us foreign students to Josai. We started in the cafeteria, where they'd decked out a ton of delicious-looking food (which I never got to sample because the chinese students managed to wolf it down before the rest of us could get a shot at it :P), and we listened to several long speeches we understood nothing of. Afterwards there were pictures taken. Me and some other girls were hijacked over to the table of the honorary members of the school faculty, and some other bigshots to get photographed. After that Karianne was introduced to two girls who were supposed to be her mentors (mentors and conversationpartners are not the same thing, though the line seems blurry), and we ended up spending most of the day together with them. They're really cute and really nice, so I hope we'll get to spend more time with them :)
After this we were sent to a big hall, where we were introduced to several of the clubs; by which I mean martial arts clubs, who tried to lure us in by showing their skill at hurting eachother. I've considered joining, but ended up deciding that I was too much of a coward, and that I probably wouldn't have time anyway. There was also a huge concertband that played a few tunes, including the Josai schoolsong. There were also two guys who played the guitar and sang, and they had more than one foreign girl wanting their autograph later. Though I can't really see why, they weren't very good looking, and though they were fairly good I don't think it was anything to go nuts about :S but then I'm just an old auntie who has no idea what the kids like these days ;)
We went to dinner after the show, together with the two japanese girls we met earlier, Mina and Hari. They took us to try okonomiyaki for the first time, and I'm really not sure what I think. We were given this bowl of various vegetables, meats, eggs and some other stuff, and we were supposed to make a sort of omelet thingy on the fryingplate embedded in the table. It tasted ok, but the fun part was that I was talked into trying to put thin slices of dried fish on it, and it tasted it really great together. The chopped-up, dried seaweed was not as good though :S But we had a great time :)
Wednesday was a really long day. Apart from having three lessons with the obligatory tests, we were also suddenly having a meeting for those who were helping with the JIU festival (which I signed up to do), and we were also getting our conversationpartners! Josai just likes to spring things on us at the last minute :P
I was very nerveous about meeting my conversationpartner, but she turned out to be a really sweet and friendly girl called Aiko, and though we didn't have much time to get to know eachother since it was lunchtime, we ended up talking a great deal together. Turns out she's just started studying english, so hopefully we can help eachother out a bit. Guess it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, and it wasn't awkward at all. Though I might have been lucky with mine, I don't know :)
The JIU festival meeting thing was part embarrassement and part stress. We had to turn in a stool sample to be able to serve food, and let me tell you: carrying your stuff around in your bag the whole day is just too weird. Plus that the word stool sample in itself seems to effectively stop any and all bowel movement. It's amazing the nurse got anything from any of us :S
After seeing the nurse (very briefly, accompanied by red faces and high-pitched nerveous laughter), we went to the meeting room, where we were informed that we had like 10 minutes to think up a menu, decide on price and find out what cutlery and stuff we'd need. After some frantic discussing we ended up relatively unanimously voting for waffles. I was put in charge of decorating our booth, so send me all the norwegian flags and trolls and mooses you have please ;)
Today I was woken by the doorbell, to find a japanese guy waiting outside with a packagedelivery for me. When I opened it, I found this:
Do I have the best husband in the world or what? He knew I was a little down after the test on tuesday, so he decided to order me flowers to cheer me up. Of course I cried the second I saw them. And then I ran over to show them to Karianne, and then I cried some more. And then I came home and looked at them again and cried. And I've been getting choked up every time I look at them. I miss that man so much it's not even funny.
The day got even better when I went to Cainz and managed to get a toastiron (thanks Kjersti!), and a small stove (thanks mom and dad!), plus a vase for the flowers. And a chocolate cake from kasumi that looks scrumptous. So now I've cleaned the appartment, cooked some toast and I'm looking forward to having dinner with the rest of the gang tonight. Tomorrow I'm gonna mess about with the new stove; yay for food that's not noodles!
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