It's the First Day of School!

First day has come and gone.

Today I woke up at 5:00 am, and got out of bed to immediately review before class which starts at 9:10. I went over the kanji, memorized the dialogue and reviewed te-form. (te-form is a grammar structure for verbs that can be used for a variety of requests and grants.) I then had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast- using the microwave as a toaster oven. I'm getting better with the appliances here in Japan, and I'm understanding more kanji from use in every day life.

We then had class in the academic building. The academic building is strictly Japanese language only, so I had a good time utilizing my language as I said hello to everyone in the morning. My classroom was very open with the desks formed in a half circle, but the desks were very small so I had a hard time keeping all of my books on them.

Our classes are as follows: Class 1 is 9:10 to 10:00. Class 2 is 10:10 to 11:00. Class 3 is 11:10 to 12:00. We have a break for lunch and then resume class at 12:10 which then ends at 1:00. On Tuesdays and Fridays, class ends at noon. So, yesterday, for class 1 and 2, our sensee was Yoshida-sensee. Then, for Class 3, Naamitsu-sensee came in.

The class was very structured and very similar to my Japanese classes back at MSU. Yoshida-sensee and Nakamitsu-sensee used pictures of activities such as swimming and eating to represent the verb. Then, we as a class would say the verb in it's short form (infinitive), then conjugate it to te-form. Then, after we went through all of the verbs, she would show us the pictures again, and each student as an individual would be requested to used the verb in a sentence using te-form. It's a type of teaching style that uses visual representation and repetition- which may be why I love this class so much. In addition, the individual answers put you on the spot, which forces each student to pay attention during the entire class.

Then we went over kanji from the first three chapters. They are relatively easy kanji, 1-10 (一二三四五六七八九十）100（百）1000（千)　10000（万）、and then beginner kanji, kanji that is used in the first verbs that we learn, such as to eat（ 食べる） and to drink（飲む）, as well as kanji that we have just generally been using for a while and therefore are very familiar with. In particular with numbers, we also practiced listening and speaking skills, by pairing up into groups, where one person read the sentence (that was in kanji and hiragana) and the other person wrote the sentence down according to what they heard (in kanji and hiragana). It was very effective. Those were the first two classes of the day.

Note: For those who have no idea about Japanese language, I'll give a brief overview of the alphabets. Hiragana is Japanese script that represents Japanese words. I mentioned it in my previous blog, that hiragana is not used often in daily life. From personal experience, I have mostly seen hiragana used in essays and at the end of verbs. Katakana is for foreign words, such as my name ケイリーシェルトン、and hot cake mix (ホットケーキミックス）(hotto keki mikkusu). Kanji comes from Chinese characters, and represents a particular definition, such as sun or school. However, the pronunciation isn't always the same from word to word. In example, money or gold is "kane", 金. Now, when you add 金 to weekday "yo"(with a long "o" sound) 曜 and day "ni"日(which also means sun because the sun comes up each day) you get 金曜日、which is pronounced "kinyobi". Notice the difference between "kane" and "kin", as well as "ni" and "bi") However, while the pronunciation of various kanji has changed, the meaning hasn't. 金曜日 literally translates to gold day or money day- which in Japan is another way to say Friday. This is because Friday = payday. I hope that explains it for you.

And so, we continued at 11:10 with Nakamitsu-sensee. Nakamitsu-sensee focused more on the dialogues from chapter 6 (where we started reviewing) and kanji from chapters 7 and 8. We used white boards and wrote kanji on the boards then showed Nakamitsu-sensee to see if we were correct. Afterwards, while practicing the dialogues, we started role-playing by going up in pairs and acting our the dialogues changing various parts of the script to keep up more on the conversation part of Japanese rather than memorizing what to say in very particular situations.

After class was over, we went back to our rooms to rest for a little bit before we had our cooking class. I went downstairs and had a nice conversation in Japanese with my cooking partners. Two of them were graduate students, one was a level 1 student and another was a level 3 student. Then, an elderly woman came in to teach us how to cook Japanese cuisine. She was very nice and didn't speak any English so it was very immersive. There is nothing like cooking on a hot stove with directions flying at you in Japanese to immerse you into the language.

We took lots of pictures, and I will post the link to my photo albums at the end of the blog. First, we prepared the rice, then we put the rice into the rice cooker for it to get ready. The rice cooker generally takes a while to start up, so we had to do that first. Then, we made eggs sort of like an omelet, which we later cut up into small pieces. After that, we cut up tofu and then grilled that in a pan. We each had two tofu slices, one was just grilled and the other had a type of flour on it before it was also grilled. We also made soup with mitsubara みつばら (chives) and a fish paste. When the rice was done, we mixed in a packet of vegetables, eggs, and something else which I can't remember what it is called. We then sat together at the table and had lunch.

The tofu was excellent, and I would like to get some at the store next time I go. In addition, we had tea to go with our meal. It was a great experience and I hope I can cook some more Japanese food soon.

After our meal, we gave our cook a gift for coming and teaching us Japanese cuisine. I gave her a pin from Outback Steakhouse (where I work) and we all gave her a card which we signed in katakana and English script. Then Niki, Jackie and I headed up to the library to get some work done before we went out to the town. I got a significant amount of studying done, but I still need to review over the vocab and kanji for the next few lessons.

Around 6:00 the three of us plus Heather left JCMU and rode our bikes into town. We went back to the hyaku yen store, where we took pictures and picked up a few things such as bowls and chopsticks. Afterwards, we went to the superstore (think of a super Walmart) and there we had dinner. I personally had takoyaki (たこやき）which is a pastry with sauce and octopus. It was a little much on sauce so it wasn't my favorite meal of the trip, however I would like to try octopus again, in a different type of cooking style. We picked up some more food and then rode back in the dark, but our bikes are equipped with lights so we were able to see where we were going.

After we got back, the four of us hung out in Jackie's and my room. We had a great time while drinking tea and talking about our first day of class.

Well, I'm off to more exciting stuff today, (I've been writing these in the morning after I have woken up) and I will write again tomorrow!

By the way, here is the link for more pictures, this may be the same link as before, but I have uploaded more pictures since then.

Here is the cooking lesson that we had:

http://picasaweb.google.com/109784999825117962941/CookingInJapan?feat=directlink

And here is hanging out with my friends, Heather, Niki and Jackie.

http://picasaweb.google.com/109784999825117962941/oBkJdH?feat=directlink

Also, I have heard that you have to have an account in order to comment on my blog- but I don't want anyone to have to get an account if they don't want to. In case, my email address is kailey.shelton@gmail.com and if you want to say anything, you are more than welcome to send me an email. I'll reply and then we can keep in touch.

Thank you for all of your comments and I'll update again soon!