Quick update

I have some free time so I figured I’d write a quick update on my blog.  And by free time, I of course mean it’s about 1:30am and as I’m up late already, I figured I’d write a blog post.

I started my second term of school on Tuesday.  Though Tuesday was an opening orientation, Wednesday was a full day of tests, Thursday I only had two periods, Friday I was sick, and today was a half day, so I can’t exactly say I’ve felt the rhythm of how the second half of my school year will go.

Let’s see…my classes are very different from my first term.  First term I had about half normal classes, and the rest were private Japanese lessons or special courses for me as an exchange student

This term about all of my courses are normal courses.  Almost every single one of them.  Which means I’m also taking courses such as Math II (I’m still deciphering the meaning of the “II”. Whatever it is, it’s a very difficult II), Contemporary Japanese Literature, Biology, and Japanese Classics.  By the end of this year, I may not be able to say all my zoo animals but I may as heck be able to use vocabulary contained in literature from ancient Japan. 

Today, I had Chemistry (It’s not even on my schedule? Though for some reason I had it), Math II, Japanese History, and Japanese Classics. 

While the Japanese Classics teacher was explaining how the book he handed out in class would work throughout the year as well as gave an introduction, all I managed to do was translate the title of the book.  Turns out the book was assembled by the school, and thus the title was the course name.  I felt it wasn’t a good start.

I’m going to start Lacrosse on Monday.   Well, technically I’ll just be watching but that sounds really boring to write on a blog post.

Hmmm that’s about it.

Oh I saw this ad the other day in Shibuya advertising a skin lotion that raises money for a charity that combats sex trafficking. 

I don’t know.  It just didn’t seem like the right shop to sell it at.

Earthquake struck today

Today, I experienced my first major earthquake.  It occurred in Shizuoka, and while I don’t know where that is in Japan it was strong enough to register as 6.5 and to seem pretty darn scary when it struck at 5am this morning.

My phone, which has an earthquake alarm mailing system, sent me an email notifying me of the earthquake just seconds before it struck. My phone then sends off a special alarm, notifying me of my potentially impending doom.

I, ironically, had my phone on silent mode.

So, when my phone began to madly vibrate at 5am in the morning I angrily went over and picked it up, wondering why on earth somebody was texting me at such an early hour. 

Then the whole house began to shake violently side to side and I thought I was going to die and when it all ended I fell back asleep because it was frankly 5 o’clock in the morning and when I’m tired, for all I care the tripods could be invading and I’d still rather just go back to bed.

Now, had I not been in my home, sleeping, when the earthquake went off and had I been in, say, a crowded train traveling beneath Tokyo, I probably would’ve been freaking out when my phone alarm went off and said “You’re about to be hit by an earthquake. Take cover”.

But hey, it was a strong enough earthquake to do not very nice things to this wine:

Picture of the Day

I think it’s a pretty good panorama considering I took it from my phone camera.  Click on it to see a better quality (it wont let me upload with max quality)

Giant Gundam in Tokyo

Yesterday (Wait not the day before yesterday) I went to the giant Gundam they set up in Tokyo for the summer.  It was very large. And gundam-y. I guess.

The sun was right behind it so getting pictures of it was very difficult.  The line was long so we didn’t wait to go touch it’s foot. As exhilarating as that sounds.

There was a cool view of Tokyo nearby.

Man in the Mirror – Tokyo Vigil

Hey! no! Before you leave thinking this is another thing on Michael Jackson’s death, there’s relevancy to Japan!

First off, though, I must say I’ll miss MJ.  There was a tribute to him on TV last night and then they played the full “Thriller” music video, which has memory attachments to it as I had to learn the dance and perform it at one point in my life by watching the MV over and over, and thus I realized that I actually really do like MJ.

Well, today, I was in Yoyogi Park, in Harajuku, and there was a vigil going on in his memory. I got the following very, very bad picture: (so fuzzy. A friend is going to email me pics she took that weren’t so fuzzy)

I must say, I felt very, very, VERY bad. On two levels.

First off, he’s dead. I hope anyone who didn’t know that before reading this post has caught onto that by this point.

Secondly, I acted really, really badly at the vigil.

Everyone was joining together and singing songs by MJ (we were only there for “Man in the Mirror”), and I was trying to act serious, but nobody could speak English. They were all humming the song/making noises to the tune of the song, the only words they knew how to say being “I’m looking at the man in the mirror”, and the two Americans I was with and I could not stop from laughing very. very. hard. Though I sort of am very tall, and thus couldn’t hide it, and thus disguised it by covering my mouth and making my eyes look like I was crying and making it look like I was sobbing very hard into my hand. 

Eventually, people noticed the overly emotional student and people began to take pictures of me, including the newsgroup “Reuters”, who was there.

And then I looked to my right and an emotional Japanese woman looked at me and shook her head with a “everything’s going to be alright” look and I began a new spur of feigned crying.

I got a video of the vigil. Can’t hear much. Sorry. (It’s “Man in the Mirror”)

Picture of the Day #4

This pet store had a different owl! yay…