"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
- Mark Twain
I’ve kept busy the past couple weekends, doing one sort of party or another. Not to say that the weekday stuff isn’t great, too. It’s hard to believe, but we’re more than half-way through this semester! Starting pretty soon, I’m going to have to start worrying about finals and presentations. Well, I’ll go over some of the highlights of the past weeks.
It’s been a while since I posted in this space, huh? Well, I just took my first trip during my time here: a couple days down in Tokyo with some of my Korean friends. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first I thought that I’d try to play catch-up and go over what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks since I posted last.
It’s been a pretty full weekend for me once again. Since Wednesday, I went to the second concert on Thursday (which rocked), went to Aomori with Hwang and Paku, did CPR training with my club, went out for karaoke and finally, on Sunday, spent the entire day with my new host family. Well, let’s get into then, shall we?
Sorry for taking so long to get a new post up! I’ve been busy with this and that, but I decided that enough was enough and that I’m writing this thing now. Thank you for bearing with me. I also decided that from now on I’m going to use a jump on my posts, since the long pages on this site are making it difficult for some people to load it properly. Click the following link to read the rest of the post.
I’ve been having another great week in Japan. This past Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended hanami on three separate occasions at Hirosaki park. Situated in the northeastern portion of Hirosaki, the park is home to about 2600 cherry trees, which all have spectacularly blossomed. I’ve been told that over the course of “Golden Week” (which happens next week), about 2 million people will pass through Hirosaki park. I will now do as many other gaijin already have and cover my blog here with photos of pink trees.
This past week has been one of adjustment - it’s been a long while since I last went to classes at a college level. Like I mentioned in my last post, I last went to classes last fall semester at UMaine, about four months ago. Now I’ve gotten my schedule all worked out and I feel like it won’t take long for me to get back into the swing of things. I’ll talk a bit about my classes, and then about the weekend, which was exceptionally fun - there was a welcome party for the new foreign students and then rafting with the club I just joined, the adventure club, or tanken-bu.
I met Lim upstairs at his room exactly at nine o’clock, just as we planned. He was already cooking some rice in his rice cooker, the steam warming the room. He mentioned that he was watching a “dorama” on his computer, but when I went to see what it was I found it not to be a drama at all, but rather a comedy. He was watching the American version of “The Office.” I was pretty surprised. I told him how popular the show is in America and how my brother Will is a big fan.
It’s been a couple days since I’ve been able to sit down and write a blog post. Being as such, I’m going to make this a quick one (I hope). My first weekend in Japan was one of two worlds: solitary exploration and raucous socializing.
I woke up a couple minutes before my alarm clock was to go off at 7 A.M.. This night went much better thanks to the working heater over in the corner. Today was the day of the Japanese Language Placement Test, the evaluation that would determine what level of Japanese language class I would take. I wasn’t too nervous, since there really wasn’t anything to be nervous about - it served only to place me in a class appropriate to my skill. I did the usual morning routine of showering and teeth brushing, grabbed my things and went out the door.
The second day has come and gone. I sit here in my room tonight, unpacking my things (finally) and getting ready to sleep, in preparation for the Japanese Language Placement Test tomorrow. Due to the incredibly long length of my last post and the need for me to get to bed on time, this will be a much more abbreviated entry.
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