Aoyama Sensei, New friends, Ikebana

Trip Start Sep 28, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Japan Okazaki, Chubu, Japan
Friday, October 10, 2008

Let's see, what happened on Tuesday...Oh that's right. We met Aoyama sensei, and she had us come to her phonetics class to help explain english vowels to her students. That was interesting...Amazingly most of the girls in my group had little to no accent. I went through the textbook exercises and for the most part everyone did fine except for R's and L's. I still felt like a Gaijin though, and it was hard to keep a lot of the students attention. I had 10 students, but for some reason university students are harder to keep entertained than high school students. After Aoyama's class we joined Sasaki's class where she was teaching Mother Goose nursery rhymes to her students. We ended up playing London Bridge with them, it was lots of fun! But still there was that feeling of being outsiders and not welcome. After lunch we checked out the sewing class, I may or may not take it...I'm only supposed to make a simple skirt but it seems far more difficult to learn how to do that in another language. Not to mention where I can get the material and what-not. After sewing class Nishio sensei took me and Roxy to get our Alien Registration cards. We aren't able to pick them up until at the earliest October 31st though. He then dropped us off at Aeon mall and I took a look at the cel phones. Roxy and I gave up on trying to find the type of phone we were looking for and decided to just go have fun. I ended up buying a new camera for 148,000 yen ($148) because it's pink :P it's tiny, it's a Canon Ixy L4 (apparently called a Canon Powershot SD40 in Canada). I also found something that at least I think Tara would like. But that's a secret for now. Roxy and I went and hit the clothing stores...and sadly only found sizes 1 through 3. Roxy tried to decide on a bag to get but in the end didn't get it. We grabbed Mister Donuts (expensive but way better tasting than Tim Hortons haha... I had a strawberry cream filled chocolate donut :P) and then I headed home. I met the oldest sister who actually knows the most english and she took me to Softbank to try and get a cel phone, I found out it might be more trouble than it's worth to bring one home though...for dinner that night I had a cabbage chicken roll, this really good potato salad, some more green stuff (don't actually know what it was, it was good) and of course nasu (egg plant).

The next day Emily, Roxy and I helped out for Aoyama's cross-cultural class. This was a little bit easier since a lot of her students were the same as yesterday. Yuna was extremely helpful and acted as a translator for my group. I learned that all the girls are 19, which means that next year is their seijin shiki. After introducing ourselves I asked if any of them had any questions, the first question they asked me was if I had a boyfriend. I didn't know how to answer this question, since as you all know, it's a complicated answer haha. Anyways, afterwards Emily, Roxy and I ended up having lunch with Ayami, Naoko and Yuka (students that were in Emily's group). After lunch it was time to try the cloth dying course. It was so much fun! I actually drew a decent silhouette of an elephant (used Derek's elephant to help me) and drew this vine with leaves that turned into a pretty good stencil. So I am very excited for this class! I came home straight after school because I'd been told to by my host mom and yet, she went out the moment I got home. I don't know, it didn't make sense. I tried senbei (some rice cracker thing) it was good! I also had half of a manju bun (it was green and interesting). For dinner I had salad, onigiri, miso soup and yaki udon. That pretty much ends that day.

Thursday I woke up at 7, I blame the heat, the past few days have been really sunny. Anyways I had granola with apple juice instead of milk. It was good! (i tried the milk, very little...and nonono it's even more creamy than homo milk) I biked to school and we had class with Aoyama, we got lots of homework but I'm glad because now I feel I am actually learning Japanese language again. Good review! Anyways then it was Nishio's class and I re-learnt the can do e-ru combination. After that we went to tea ceremony and ikebana club. The tea ceremony was good, the sweet wasn't too sweet and for once the tea wasn't too bitter. Then it was flower arranging and that was so much fun! However it costs 700 yen ($7) for every week and it seems we do the same thing every time, so I'm not sure if I will do this again. Or at least not every week. Dinner was delicious as usual, I had fish that had been dipped in miso, pasta salad, tamago tofu (egg-jigglers but sweeter) and sweet potatoes. I have got to do something about the mosquito living in my room though, I'm getting eaten alive. Japanese mosquitoes are sneaky and way harder to kill than canadian ones...*sigh*.