Week 1 - School, mostly

Man, it's hard to find the time to update this. I'll try to bring you guys up to date on what I've been up to.

Monday was my first day of school. I'm going to a school called, no lie, Touhoku Seikatsu Bunka Daigaku Koutougakkou. It has about 1000 kids, making it quite big for a Japanese school.

It takes about 15 minutes to ride my bike to school, and, despite the killer hills, it's a nice ride. The first day, however, my host mom took me in the car. Upon arriving, we talked for a bit with the principal and vice principal. They introduced me and the other exchange YFU exchange student at my school, Rebecca, to a year exchange student from Lithuania whose name is Eva. Being European and all, she's fluent in English. Next, I went to my class, 2-9. I walked in to a lot of stares, whispering, and giggling. I gave a self-introduction in front of the class, which induced a few head explosions (what I call how Japanese people react when a gaijin speaks Japanese at a level above beginner). They had a desk prepared for me in the back of the classroom. I sat down, and classes started. Learned some biology words and a bit about ancient Japanese poetry.

What were fun, though, were the periods of free time between classes (which are about 10 minutes). I talked some to the guy next to me, and then a group of about 6 girls came up and started asking me a bunch of questions. That was fun. Those six and this one guy, Onomasa, have become my best friends in the class. You may think that male/female ratio is strange, but what's strange is this: in my class of about 30, there are only about 7 guys. I have yet to discover the reason.

We had gym before lunch, so everyone started changing into their gym clothes...in the classroom. This kind of surprised me, but changing into gym clothes just entails putting a different shirt over the undershirt of the school uniform, so nothing explicit. You also have to change shoes. This brings me to the interesting topic of shoes in Japan. You need a lot of them: shoes to go to school in, shoes to wear in school, shoes to wear outside for gym, shoes to wear inside for gym, slippers to walk around the house in, different slippers to put on when in the bathroom in the house, etc. Never in my life have I taken of my shoes so many times a day. But, I digress.

The guys went outside for gym that day, which entails going to the guraundo (ground). This is basically a large sand/dirt surface on which all sports have practices. I didn't have a change of clothes, so I figured I wouldn't participate that day. So, I was a little surprised when the first thing I had to do was 30 push ups in the dirt. I heard the guys muttering behind me, "dakara motenase ttsuno", which is kind of like, "Come on, welcome your guests." Luckily, I didn't have to take part in the activity of the day (baseball), so my uniform only got slightly dirty. I spent the rest of the time talking with one of the gym teachers, which was fun. I went back to the classroom and it was lunch time. My host mom packs me a delicious bentou every day, for which I'm eternally grateful. We eat lunch in the classroom and someone always turns on music, so it's pretty fun. I talked some more with people in the class. In the afternoon, there was one more regular class, and then an hour and a half art class. Turns out I'm in a class that specializes in art. I'm not to into doing artsy stuff, but I figured it could be fun. We went to a pottery class that day, which was pretty cool. Made a few, um, pots.

I sat next to Onomasa, which was pretty funny. He kept saying stuff about the guy across the table like, "Hee izu derukkusu gayee" (he is deluxe gay). The other guy would respond, and they'd go back and forth for a while, which was quite amusing.

The school day came to an end around 3:30. Then the cleaning started. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Japanese schools don't have janitors. The students do the cleaning. It's not bad, though; we were done in about 10 minutes. I stayed around and talked for a while, then headed out. On the way home, I bought some wagashi (japanese sweets) at a supermarket. I do love red bean. I think I'll be doing that every week.

No connection with anything else: my host mom just had a phone conversation that consisted of her saying "hai" 19 times in a row. True story.

Anyway, there were tests the rest of the week, so we three exchange students spent those days in the library. Here's how pretty much every day went: we went to the library first thing in the morning, worked on this art project they gave us, talked, ate lunch at 12:30, and left school. A couple of the days we watched American movies in Japanese thanks to the English teacher from Montreal, Bouchard-sensei. He is such an awesome guy. He is incredibly helpful and fun to talk to. On top of that, he speaks excellent Japanese. Khatz would be proud.

After school every day, Rebecca, Eva, and I did some fun things. One day, we went to this huge mall called Itoyokado. I bought a couple of Harry Potter books and experienced my first taiyaki in Japan. mmm taiyaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyaki) Another day, we went to karaoke. That was incredibly fun. It was Rebecca, Eva, Sora, Kailee, two Japanese guys and I (Sora and Kailee are the two other YFU exchange students in Sendai). We sang for 4 hours! The best part: before 6:00, it costs only 10 yen an hour. Add one mandatory drink and you get 4 hours of karaoke fore 340 yen. You could also bring in all the snacks and drinks you wanted, so we had a veritable mountain of snack items on the table in the room. It was truly great. Oh, Susi, I suddenly had a sister who was really into Arashi, if you know what I mean.

One of those nights, I also visited the kindergarten where my host mom used to work. It's a pretty unique place because almost all of the teachers are gaijin (foreigners). Kids go to this school until the 4th grade and half to all of the instruction is in English. It's a child's paradise. There are waterfalls, tons of slides, a horse, bunnies running around, etc. It was a very interesting experience. (I'm just giving a basic overview of things because I'm pretty behind)

On Friday, I went back to the class and talked with some of my classmates. There was an earthquake drill, and this gave me a lot of time to talk with people. That was fun, and those 6 girls I mentioned earlier invited me to kaitenzushi (sushi conveyor belt) and purikira sometime the next week. I was (and still am) really enjoying myself.

There's so much I left out in this post, but it's a pretty good overview. This post brings us up to Friday, June 19. Today is Wednesday, June 24. Eh, not bad.