Birthday in Japan!

What an amazing day! If you don't mind though, we're going to back up a few minutes

Yesterday was my "shiken" or big test on Genki 1 and the first two chapters of Genki 2. To be rather honest, it was fairly easy, with a few problems with various particles and tenses here and there, but nothing to completely fret about. I also had my oral test, in which I "applied" for a job as an English teacher. Yoshida-sensee, who did my oral test, asked me if I could sing songs, cook and write kanji. She also asked if I had taught before. I answered everything very truthfully, which is not normal in an oral test. Usually, you bend the truth in order to use certain grammar structures and because of lack of vocabulary. I stumbled a few times with the pronunciation and word order, (I do the same thing in English half the time) but overall I had a very good feeling about it.

Another note: My Japanese has gotten more respondent and thoughtful fluent. I don't need to translate in my head what I want to say, and when I hear other people talk, I hear Japanese, I think Japanese, and then I respond in Japanese. Reading kanji has also gotten much easier and when I recognize kanji, I think in Japanese as well. Reading is my only slow suit, but with time that should get better.

Yesterday after I got back home, I did my laundry and then my host mom and I made inarizushi, it's little hand made packets of soy sauce and eggs fried in a pan, filled with rice with black peppers. They are really delicious, and it's my favorite Japanese food. After we had finished, my laundry had also finished washing, so I put the clothes in a basket and then took them outside to hang on the line. It was very hot yesterday, so most of my clothes dried fairly quickly, but I started my laundry kind of late, so not everything was able to become completely dry. I brought them back in for the night, with intents to hang them up the following morning.

The next morning I woke up a little later than usual, actually around 6:15 am. I skyped with my mom, which she told me "Happy Birthday", and then I got dressed for the day. My clothes still were completely dry, but I didn't have time to go out to the line, so I just hung them up in my makeshift closet hoping that they would dry while I was in Hikone.

I got to JCMU around 8:15, and I hung out downstairs with some of my friends. Today we visited an Elementary school in Hikone. It was about a 20 minute taxi ride to Wakaba Elementary School. We had already be divided into groups of three or four, with each group going to a different Elementary School.

When we got there, we noticed that there was a gate surrounding the school, and that there was also a pool, which was currently being used by kids who were taking swim lessons. (As part of the school day). We walked into the building, and were generally left alone, so we explored the nearby area, (the lobby and just outside the door) before the principal of the school came to us twenty minutes later, gave us indoor shoes to wear and then showed us to his office.

In his office, two fourth graders brought us Japanese green tea. One of the office ladies also asked us a few questions in Japanese. The kids were very bright and happy, and also asked us questions, though they didn't use a lot of "polite form".

Culture Note: Polite form is normally taught to kids in school, contrary to the order that foreign students learn Japanese. This is because as a foreigner, you always want to be as polite as possible, whereas the kids learn Japanese from home, where the parents use plain form.

After sitting for another ten minutes, the two kids then showed us to the fourth grade classrooms. There we had to introduce ourselves. I said that my name was Kailey, and then I accidentally said that I was 18 years old. I corrected myself, which led the kids to giggle. The four of us then split off into four different groups, where each group attempted to teach us a traditional Japanese game. In each of the four groups, there were three different games. We only managed to go to three out of the four groups, but I'll describe the nine games we had to play.

1: Similar to billiards, only you have to flick your finger and there are only two colors, the object is to get all of the small wooden objects (shaped like a wheel) of your color into one of the four holes at the corner of the box. In order to do this, you have to flick your tan object with your finger and hit your color which should go into the corner. If you accidently hit the "eight-ball" fancy wheel object, you have to take out one of your colors that had already gone into the hole and put it back on the board.

2: Juggling. We each had 2 or 3 hacky sacks and we had to juggle with them.

3: Marbles, only with flatter marbles, like those small objects you get in mancala sets.

4: Similar to Jenga, you have a stack of wooden blocks and you have to use a mallet and attempt to get rid of the bottom block without the whole thing falling over. I was pretty good at this one, and had some of the kids staring in disbelief.

5: This was a card game, where the girl would say a sentence, and we would have to find the card (they had all been spread out among the floor) which matched the first hiragana character that she had said. For example, if the girl had said "Neko..." then we would have had to find the card with the "ne" character on it.

6. Tops and yarn. Fairly simple.

7. Another card game, only instead of finding just hiragana characters, we had to find the whole sentence that the girl said. At first it was kind of confusing, but by the end I managed to just barely win.

8. A game involving a little wooden tool, where there was a stick and a ball attached to it by a piece of string. The idea was to get the ball to land on the stick. (There was a hole in the ball). I was not successful, and none of the other kids were either.

9. Jump rope, only lower to the ground. Once again, with previous knowledge, I managed to do this fairly easily and the kids were very amazed.

I had lots of fun with the kids, and after we left, and returned to JCMU, we met with all of the other groups and apparently they had a lot of fun too. I do feel as though not all of the kids play those games very often. I guess it would have been like shoots and ladders, or that paddle with a ball on the end. Every house has one, but it's not used that often. Which makes Japan in a way, just like America. Regardless, I had fun learning new, (and somewhat familiar) games.

After that, Heather and I headed over to Vidal's, which has become our regular lunch place. It's a small pastry shop, literally about the size of a guest bathroom in a normal American household. All of the pastries are handmade and sold by the lady who also lives in the shop, as it is half her shop and half her house. They are all very delicious. I have tried potato bread, cheese bread, chocolate chip icing bread, pizza and mellon bread, but my favorite is banana bread.

We headed back to JCMU, did our homework and then turned it in. Then we watched The Outsiders, (my favorite movie) in the TV room, and invited other people who were already there to join in. Xiao, (the guy I had already known from China) thought the movie was a riot. In his exact words, as Dallas, Ponyboy and Johnny were scaring some kids across a vacant lot: "American movies are always so funny!" He wouldn't stop laughing, which meant that I wouldn't stop laughing, which meant everyone else laughed, which kind of ruined the tone, but we had a good time anyway.

Halfway through the movie, I went to Nakamitsu-sensee's office to practice speaking. I ended up talking about the movie, and I described it using new grammar structures. In particular, I tried to use noun modification as much as possible. Noun modification is when instead of saying "I bought that book", you describe the noun as "That is the book that I bought". I stumbled a lot, but after I grasped the sentence I would say it again. After a half hour, I was very happy, and Nakamitsu-sensee told me that she would attempt to find where I can buy The Outsiders in Japanese. That really made my day.

Afterwards, I headed back, and we finished the movie. I then left soon after that. I caught the train back and got back to the house just before dinner started. For my birthday, Okaasan made my favorite foods, pizza and potatoes. We also had some meat, a traditional "fancy day" sushi-rice dish, cantaloupe and banana bread from Vidal's for dessert.

And now, I'm finishing up my blog before I clean my room and then get ready for this weekend. I will be heading out to Tokyo tomorrow morning, so I won't write my blog until Sunday night. I will be sure to include pictures though. Don't worry.

See you soon!