Eight Post-他の人みたい

Not much to say, but I gotta keep up with the daily posts, you know?

Today was pretty normal.  I had class and then afterwards went out to eat with some people and then watched some J-drama with friends.  We watched this one drama called Shinigami Kun, which means something like Death God, but Kun is what you call your friends I'm pretty sure so...idk, it was pretty awful and so we stopped watching it and switched to a different drama.  The only reason we found it was because my okaasan's daughter texted her saying that I look like this random Japanese actor.  When we looked up the actor he was apparently in a tv series that's airing now so we decided to try watching it.  The blog title basically means that, I look like some other guy.

 Do I really look like this guy??!! Apparently only his hair is different?

Well, we stopped watching that one, and a friend I was with recommended we start some other one, which turned out to be "Absolute Boyfriend", some parts of which we had to watch for homework at Yale!!!!!  I was so surprised to find someone else recommending it and I actually did want to watch it for real rather than just 10 minute clips, so yea, I started that series.

Read the next paragraph if you care about how my schoolwork is going...so basically only if you're mom...

We all had to meet with a sensei to go over the test we took on Friday and it was for them to check up on how we're doing with PII in general, including on how we're doing with our host families.  My test went.....well....it was so-so.  But when I went over it with the sensei, and we went over my mistakes she completely understood why I put the answers I did and once I explained a lot of the time she was like, 'oooo, I see, ahh, that's too bad...it makes sense" in a way that made it sound like "Ah I get why you wrote that...you do actually understand the material, I kinda wish I could give you those points back".  So I felt better.  And then she was even at the end like, "My advice is just that you study some more kanji, because you're so good at conversation...like...your personality really comes through".  So that made me feel better :)  Honestly though, I'm naturally the worst one in my class.  Like my best friend here Li san literally studies the morning of for about 15 minutes and consistently gets better scores than me on vocab and kanji quizzes!!!!!  Ah well, I'm going to try studying a little more each day anyways, but I think I'm doing ok so far.  I kind of like being the worst one in my class.  It forces me to get better faster.
 
On more fun topic:  I'm going to the beach tomorrow with some friends!! Probably....Plans made by teenagers might as well be sandcastles--built for fun and then swept away quietly overnight.  Idk where that came from...I'm probably too excited to go to the beach, thinking of all the fun beach things to do!!  AH i really hope we do end up going :)

Seventh Post-新しい友達

So, I've been writing the Japanese titles in romanji, which is like English spelling of Japanese words instead of writing it in the Japanese alphabet, but I feel like I should switch for a couple reasons:

1) There are some different ways of writing in romanji, and the one I was taught makes most other people who know Japanese mad at me for using it since it's a weird way

2) I don't even properly remember the way I was taught so my spelling is probably even more wrong

3) I doubt other people are reading it and pronouncing it right anyways, so, I might as well use the Japanese alphabet, right?

4) When my okaasan goes to my blog (I added a translating widget for her at the top, which you guys can use too!) she can at least immediately understand the title of each post!


Alright, that was kind of like filler in an anime...It really wasn't that important and was just stalling because I don't have that much content but I need to write each day.  So, my day was basically wake up really early since my body is used to getting up at 7 or 8 even though I was super tired.  I wanted to sleep in on the weekend but...oh well, I'm going to bed early tonight, so hopefully that makes up for it.  We were planning on going Dolphin Watching!!!!! but okaasan called somebody (im not sure who...like, are there professional dolphin watchers or something?) and they said the waves were too big and we probably wouldn't see any dolphins if we went :(  So, instead we went to this really pretty ancient village in the mountains which okaasan said was kind of like machu picchu.  There was room in the car to brgin two friends, yay!  So I asked two friends I met here to go, and we went and it was fun :)

 新しい友達！<---That means new friends, and it's the blog title!

Can't really see how beautiful our view was, but this gives an idea. Also that's my host mom's mom!

After walking around the ancient village and going inside some of the ancient houses and looking around at the gorgeous view of mountains all around blanketed in forest, we headed back to a local restaurant for some traditional ancient mountain food.  It was all strange mountain vegetables plus a bowl of ramen on the side, and it was pretty good.

 Our mountain vegetable lunch!

Afterwards we drove back and since my okaasan is a speed demon and the mountain road was windy and downhill, it was kinda like a roller coaster.  That was fun too.  

Oh last thing, this morning my okaasan was asking about who was coming with us and their names, and after I told her she was like, "they're both girls?", and then she joking called me a harem which was hilarious.  She was basically saying all my friends are girls, but in anime and manga and stuff it means like....well let's let yahoo answers handle this:

"Anime that involves one lead male character and many cute/pretty female support characters. Typically, the male lead ends up living with many female support characters within the same household. The lead male typically represents the average guy who is shy, awkward, and girlfriendless."

Well might as well end this post on that strange note

Sixth Post (I think?)-Siken

So, I didn't post for a little bit because I had a test (siken!) on Friday so I 'studied' on Thursday.  I went home with Kat and we studied and had dinner, except my okaasan brought out this sauce which was the spiciest sauce she owns and we put way too much on our pasta.  The pasta was amazing btw, it was another Japanese spin on an Italian dish.  But it was so spicy that none of us could eat it and we had to give up.  It was rough.  The sauce was called like, after death sauce or something.

The sauce.  You could buy it here at extremefood.com, but it's out of stock right now...

One review says:

"Really fresh, savory, and chunky. It's also HOT. I can only use this sparingly, but it works well with so many food items.

The flavor may be similar to the Original Death, but the experience most certainly is not. The Original gives you a nice burn, but this one will make you FEEL ALIVE!"

Well, it was a rough time and I was just holding my tongue under the sink for a while since I felt bad wasting food I ate most of the pasta.  So I had the spiciest powder she owns in my eye and the spiciest sauce she owns in my mouth...I fear to think of what will come next if this pattern continues...

 Eating food with Li san :)

The spicy sauce and powder and the milk we drank a lot of to help us

 We also had some green tea cake that okaasan made!!!!!!!!

Anyways then the next day we took the test, and made sushi :) Then I was supposed to go to the movies with people but I lost them since I went to get my bus card fixed....I have a lot of problems here haha but they all get fixed.  So I found some other people and we had dinner at a friend's house and the dinner was ridiculously good since that friend's host family is absurdly rich.  Some of the Princeton in Ishikawa (PII) staff were even there and one of them drove me back home!  I was really happy because I always want to talk to them because they seem so cool and I got to have an actual conversation with one of the coolest ones on the drive back!  

Today I was supposed to go dolphin watching, but because it rained really hard the waves will be too big for the dolphins to come to the surface or something, so instead we're going sightseeing.  I think it's supposed to be some ancient mountain village or something?  

Last thing I want to address!  So, my mom says that she and several other people have noticed that in all my pictures I'm wearing the same shirt, and she emailed me saying that she hopes I'm washing it....That's my pajama shirt...I eat breakfast before showering and when I come hope I usually shower before dinner, so I'm always in my pjs when eating at home, which is, as you probably know by now, my okaasan's favorite time to take pictures.

My pj shirt...but I wear other things!!!!!

 

 

Fifth Post-Karai

Today I went to an art museum with some friends and it was soooo pretty!!!  The art was so impressive.  I got that intense and humbling feeling of witnessing the artwork of people whose skill in art is greater than my skill will ever be at anything I do.  But before I got to that museum, I got a little lost...again.  But this time it wasn't my fault!

So, me and two friends are waiting for a bus to go to the museum and when it comes, one friend says, "this is the one".  So naturally, I do what any rational person would do and I get on the bus and sit down...except when I turn around both of my friends are standing at the door of the bus staring at me with a slightly confused look on their faces.  After about 5 seconds of staring at each other just blinking basically the bus doors close and they didn't get on.  I raise my hand, palm facing upwards, and narrow my eyes in a kind of "What just happened..." expression as I'm whisked away by bus.  So I get off at the next stop and walk back.  Apparently the bus I got on was the right one, and my friends just took the next one, hoping I would stay on my bus until the museum.  Sadly, I got off on the first stop I could to walk back.  On my walk back, my friends saw me from their bus (much to their dismay) and one came running back for me as the others took the bus to the end and waited at the museum.  Moral of the story:  I get lost no matter what, (I'm ok mom...i always find my way back), and my friends, although they let me get on buses by myself and don't follow me, are still good friends because one ran back and the others waiting like 20 minutes in the awful Japanese humidity and heat.  Bonus: Because my friends got on the wrong bus, they ran into more friends on the second bus and convinced them to come to the museum with us!! :) :) :)

Anyways I walked back to the bus stop with a friend and we talked, and then I got home.  At home my Okaasan gave me what she said was her, (translating here...) "Most spicy powder in the kitchen", to put on my food, which was amazing.

 That was my dinner.  It was as good as it looks.

My Okaasan's Japanese spin on Italian cooking...whoops, now I'm hungry again :(

So I put the super spicy powder in my hand and sprinkle it onto the Italian/Japanese dish.  My okaasan tells me to be careful not to touch my eye because that would probably suck.  Well, what do you know, 20 minutes later I touch my eye.  It wasn't that bad, I just had to wipe it off, right?  Oh, no...rubbing my eye made it worse, now tears are starting.  Maybe I better...um....rub my eye maybe?? And repeat. So basically I find myself in the bathroom crying without restraint because the spiciest powder my okaasan owns is all up in my eye, and when I take out my contact lenses to rinse them with water, I find that my contact lenses were actually shielding me from the true pain of whatever delicious but evil powder I was fed. Btw, the title--Karai--means spicy.  

Well that was fun.  Afterwards I start to do homework but okaasan convinces me instead to go shopping with her because the store nearby is having a 50% ice cream sale and so we take the equivalent of $10 and spend it all on ice cream.  Yum :)  And here I am procrastinating on my homework yet again.....Mata!

Fourth post-Tasukarimasita

So, I don't have too much to say in this post.  I'm starting to think that if I blog every day I will run out of titles, so maybe I'll save the Japanese titles for larger posts which I'll try to do every weekend.  From now on, the small ones won't usually get a name. 

So, basically my day was typical in the beginning.  I woke up and went to class like usual, but afterwards I agreed to meet up with my okaasan, because she was going to take me to buy a bus pass.  We did all that and afterwards I met up with my friends and we ate lunch and talked and some of us agreed to go to this nice little park just 2 minutes away where we played frisbee and talked!

On the way home I got super lost because I took the wrong bus, and I had to call my okaasan for help and eventually she found me and took me home!  The title for this post is tasukarimasita, which means I was saved.  It's a way of thanking somebody by saying "Thanks, you really saved me!!" which today, really did happen! Because of that though, I was late meeting a friend to go running :( :(  Claire, (it feels weird calling people by first names since we always use last names in class....) was a very yasasii hito tho (chill person) and agreed to try and meet up with me again.  The second time I successfully found her and we went for an intense run by my standards since I suck at running. 

We ran along this river! (I think)

I'll try to get more pictures of where we ran since this one doesn't fully capture all the amazing views I had.  We're going to try to run together every Tuesday...at least that's the plan now.  I came back, showered and ate, and did hw, and now I'm procrastinating on studying the new vocab!  Some random things I might as well mention just because I'm thinking about them:

• I shower at least 2 times a day here, at morning and before bed
• Hw is really short!  Even though we have 3 classes a day, the written homework takes me less time than the Japanese homework at yale.  It's just that every night we have to study a good amount of vocab and kanji :(
• I eat ice cream all the time at my house, which my okaasan keeps buying.  Even though I eat so much ice cream, she also buys so much! 
• Japan is really humid, like you step outside and you immediately start sweating
• There's a bath in most Japanese houses that you soak in after you shower, and I thought Japanese people always use it, but I dont think my family uses it....maybe I'll ask about that
• There are some interesting cultural things here like, I'm pretty sure it's very strange for women to go out without makeup, but that's just based on what I see.  I should ask about that too....
• Japanese people never cross the road when the light is red even when there isn't a car in sight.  I accidentally ran through one because I wasn't looking and I got stares. 
• In Japan the Mom drives and the Dad sits in the passenger seat.  Isn't it usually the opposite in the US? I'm forgetting...I skyped with my best friend Kelsey and okaasan was there too!  I had to translate and it was pretty hard, but then afterwards when I was just talking to Kelsey I found myself forgetting some words and like...struggling to speak english sometimes hahaha.  Like I would have a thought and be like...how do you say this in Japanese? Oh wait, I can say it in English.  Or I would just have weird mental blanks where I couldn't form the idea into words in either language :o

Well, completely forgot about the bullet points...it just turned into random story time.  That's all, gotta study :/  勉強しなくてはいけない（ー＿ー）

 

Third Post-Syasin

The above video is from youtube, but was made by one of my host mom's previous students.  He takes amazing photos and writes incredible music.  If you're interested, check his website out! (His pictures of this year's Lanter Festival) It captures the lantern festival that is held every year in Kanazawa.  I went on Friday with friends and it was beautiful.  Basically it's straight out of Tangled (favorite movie) where they send these lanterns down the river.  To be honest I have no idea why it happens, but it was super pretty!!

I jumped down to get a closer look

 There were other super pretty things I've seen, but unfortunately I don't have a camera or a phone.  That brings me to the title of this page, which is Syasin, meaning picture.  Since I can't take pictures I'm going to have to rely on google and my friends for pictures.  Luckily I have some super awesome friends who take cool photos (and of course there's my Okaasan who takes photos of me all the time!)  Here are some photos they took!

 On Saturday there was festival! Photo by my friend--(Check out his blog!)

 Our friends danced in it

 For like 3 hours....(no thanks...not for me...)

They were so good!

 My host mom and her friends took me to a soy sauce shop on Sunday

Some friends came over to my house to pretend to do hw today

That's all for now!  Gotta study that kanji :( :( 

EDIT:

I forgot to include these amazing pictures (also by Thaddeus)!!!!

 Taken from Kenrokuen garden, a pic of Kanazawa at night

Thaddues and I went to Kenrokuen at night during the festival!  Here a woman plays a Japanese flute on a lake

Second Post-Ippai

Second Post!  So, I haven't really been blogging, just because there's been so much to do.  I wrote my first post a long time ago, but never published it for some reason.  I think I'm going to try to start blogging just a little bit each day so that I don't forget what happened by the end of the week.  So, I was considering writing about my past week, but there's just too much.  In a nutshell I was juggling this new living situation with cool trips every day after school and meeting a ton of new people and figuring out bus stops and much much more.  Luckily one thing I didn't have to worry about was my Okaasan! (Host mom!)  She's been so great and talks to me all the time with patience far exceeding what my Japanese skills deserve. She's also great in that she makes AMAZING FOOD.  The title for this post is the word for full.

If you haven't noticed, my facebook page is now entirely filled with food.  But in case you haven't noticed I'll share a few now!

Eating a fish bone!

 Can always count on Okaasan to take pics of me when I'm looking my best.....

 I kid you not, this was my breakfast one day. To say the least, it was indeed a good morning.

 Some yummy rice topped with an omelet with sauce spelling out my name

Curry! My Okaasan calls it "Curry, to my taste"

 So I thought I might get hungry in Japan, since I have a budget and since I heard that Japanese portions are smaller, but I was so wrong.  Okaasan feeds me so much food, our fridge is always so packed with random stuff and she's always asking me if I want a snack or ice cream.  The first day I met her she took me to some bakery type place where we bought cake and ice cream to take home.  The next morning she asks me if I want cake...like I didn't even have breakfast yet!!  And tonight she made these really tasty sandwiches which were made of ham, lettuce, mayo, spicy japanese mustard, cheese, and some other stuff.  I ate two and I was full, but then she was like, "you should try this sandwhich, it's the same thing but I put peppers on it!"  So of course I had to have another sandwhich.  After I'm done, and super full, she jokes about how, "That was just a snack, we haven't even had dinner yet".  Or at least I thought that was a joke.  In all seriousness that wasn't dinner.  She made a platter of around 8 sandwhiches (all with bread slightly bigger than the standard american bread) and it was a snack she made me.  She always makes a ton of food and wraps up what we don't eat, but I don't know where that uneaten food goes, because she makes new food every morning and night!  Ippai datta yo! (I was seriously full!)

First Post-Taihen

Hi!! Since this is my first post, I guess I'll talk a little bit about the blog before I get into talking about Japan.  The blog's name, Naruhodo, means something like, "I see", or "I should have known!".  It doesn't really carry any deep meaning, unlike my friends' blog titles (http://meliabernal.blogspot.jp/ http://zheqi.blogspot.jp/ <----check them out!!!).  However, naruhodo is basically my favorite Japanese word/phrase besides komarimasita nee, which, according to Google Translate means "I was troubled", and that's not a very positive blog title...even though it might be pretty accurate....Anyways, I also plan to always use a Japanese word or phrase that best represents what each post is about.  For this post, that word is taihen.  

Taihen basically means a mess or a very difficult time, and I assure you, my trip getting to Japan was definitely taihen!!!! The plane rides were long, but not too bad, so that was ok.  I talked to some nice people on the plane in Japanese and then struggled for the next 10 hours not to fall asleep on them.  However, once I got to the airport, I needed to take a train and meet up with my friends.  I ended up wandering train stations for a total of 3 hours and I bought the wrong ticket 3 times.  The train station in Japan didn't have turnstiles like the NY subways do.  It looks like you can just walk through without buying a ticket.  I should have known better than that...(Naruhodo!!!)  Well, I tried to go through with the wrong ticket, and so these gates came out of nowhere and blocked me. 

Usually they're open, except if something goes wrong the gates pop out, like on the right

This Japanese train station was also really busy and I had a ton of luggage, so as I get blocked by the gate I try to back out and find a ton of other people squashed behind me.  たいへんですねえ！Well that happened another two times, but I finally found my way to the correct train.  I get to the station to meet my friends, but we never really specified a place to meet.  We just kind of said, the station.  Oh! I forgot the worst part.  About 3 hours before I need to be at the airport I left my wallet and phone somewhere for 10 minutes and they got stolen....-_-.  So, I'm in this foreign country, I don't know where my friends are, and I don't have my phone!  I was getting pretty worried, but luckily I bought some wifi for an hour and facebook messaged my friends where I was and they were just like, "Don't move please.  We will find you".  And they did!!!!! Thank god they have their stuff together.  Well, that was the end of my troubles.  After that my friends helped me a ton! (本当にたすかりました)