Host Family Update!

(Edit) I copied Nick's idea of embedding acronym tags. Now you can scroll over Japanese characters w/ your mouse to get English Romanizations and/or translations of words and phrases, yay!

We finally got our homestay information from HIF via email! I am rather saddened that my host family doesn't have small children or dogs (unless it just doesn't list pets, so I'll keep my fingers crossed). I told Ashok that if he ends up with kids, we're totally trading families. Anyway, there are three people in my host family: a 54-year old woman, a 24-year old guy, and a 28-year old girl. I can't tell if the latter two are a couple or if they're siblings...but it does say that they'll be staying in the same room, so I'm going to assume it's a married couple for the time being.

It took me a little while to figure out how to read most of the document, seeing as my カタカナ literacy is rather abysmal. For the non-Japanese literate, カタカナ is the phonetic character alphabet reserved for "loan-words" in order to prevent the tainting of Japanese with foreign terms. For instance, my host-mom has ウオーキング listed under her hobbies, which if you say really quickly is supposed to sound like (and translate to) "walking." If you think that was difficult, try converting Philadelphia to カタカナ, keeping in mind that the "f" sound is rendered by an "h" and the "l" sound by an "r" in Japanese, so you get something like "Hiraderuhuia" (I don't quite remember the spelling, although I recall I missed it on the カタカナ test we had during the fall semester and it's traumatized me since).

In other news, my host-brother has music and traveling listed under his hobbies whereas my host-sister has nothing. Oh well. Both of them have part-time jobs but unfortunately I can't read the 漢字 for what my host-mom does and I can't paste it from the Adobe Acrobat pdf---sad pandas. According to my electronic dictionary, the first two 漢字 translate to "self-employed" and the third 漢字 translates to "karma." Yeah. No idea what the heck "self-employed karma" is supposed to mean, and I can't get a reading of all three 漢字 together. I might make a jpeg of it and send it Michael Thornton's way and ask, although I feel bad pestering him about all my questions just because he's from there.

I looked up my homestay address and it seems I'm about a half hour walk from the train station which I'll have to use to get to school. Google estimated my trek as "26 minutes walking, 21 minute train ride, 9 minutes walking." I suppose that means I can start working off some of these pounds I've been putting on, *sigh*. For the record, I'm actually not serious--I'm well aware that weighing as much as I do probably means I'm underweight and malnourished, but I'm really vain. I miss playing three varsity sports and being hardcore in shape and running for miles and miles and not feeling tired. Also, running w/ Justin throughout New Haven during the school year was an unpleasant reminder of just how out of shape I've become (as well as yet another example of the brutal reality that Justin Hudak will always be better than me in everything I do, haha). I am hoping that Ashok or Elliot will run w/ me this summer, assuming we have time in between classes and everything else. I need the company to motivate me to run, plus my sense of direction is a complete fail. 失敗. I just hope I can find my way from my homestay to school w/o getting hopelessly lost.

However, the beginning of this summer's program will actually run somewhat differently from previous years. HIF included an attachment in the homestay email detailing a new "quarantine" procedure that we'll be undergoing as a result of the Swine Flu outbreak. Rather than go immediately to our homestays, we'll be residing at a hotel for a week where they'll monitor our frequency (sorry, couldn't resist the Star Trek movie joke), body temperature, health, etc. HIF covers the hotel cost and breakfast will be provided daily as well as ¥1000 for dinner each night (lunch is always at HIF). I'm actually pretty excited about the whole arrangement. It means I won't have a curfew for that week, I'll have people walking with me to/from school who will (theoretically) prevent me from getting lost, and I'll get to spend more time w/ my fellow HIFers in general. That and Ashok will be helping me w/ my 日本語の宿題 all week, although I have yet to inform him of that.

Anyway, I believe this post is sufficiently lengthy and this is probably the first time I actually have something legitimately relevant to this summer/of remote interest to post. Time for another hour of "studying" and such before bed--yay bad life habits (or at least, bad sleeping habits). Nick would shake his head and scold me. Oh well. G'night!

Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten!

I just bought a Nintendo DS (yes, it's pink, don't judge me) and the Kanji Reading Rom that will function as my electronic dictionary, woo! Unfortunately, it seems half the words I'll be looking up with all be from the user's manual which is in Japanese. Win! Still, it's pretty handy and given enough practice I'm sure I'll get used to using it despite my rather insubstantial knowledge of Japanese. I do need to start preparing for that placement exam...

Anyway, OMD, I leave for Japan in 22 DAYS! It isn't actually as bad being back home as I thought it would be, granted I've only been at home for about 2 of the 6 days that I've been in Texas. Is it sad that my first weekend home, and I already took off to visit one of my best friends from Yale who lives nearby? In any case, I can understand why David's so fat now, seeing as how great of a cook his mom is =). For the record, he's not actually fat, it's just this joke that has been circulating amongst our mutual friends since freshmen year...although I may or may not have been the instigator of that.

There's a lot of things I need to do before Japan which should keep me occupied for 22 days anyway. I do miss Yale, and getting a bajillion emails from the YPMB Oh-Lev, YPMB-Discuss, and ViSA panlists doesn't help, but I'm actually enjoying relaxing at home and seeing high school friends (plus David), so I'm alright =). Next year I'll have to stay for Deadweek though, seeing as it'll be my last year to do so before I graduate, not to mention how a number of my closest band friends are all in Oh-Ten. Saaad. It's really scary to think about how I'm halfway done with college too, wow. Anyway, things to do before Japan:

-Download Skype on Dad's computer
-Back up Computer Files on Pantheon
-Figure out how to use this Electronic Dictionary
-Buy gifts for host family (HIF hasn't sent us our assignments yet)
-Rent a cell phone/Call AT&T
-Call the bank and change my PIN number/let them know I'll be traveling
-Install the webcam on my laptop
-Maybe cut my hair (still undecided)

Also, I did tell myself I would attempt to study Greek and catch up on my Hansen & Quinn. That's totally not happening right now =(

Japanese 120 Class Skits!

So this was our end of the year presentation for JAPN 120. We had the option of rewriting the lyrics to a song, writing a skit, or rewriting the words to one of the videos which we saw. My group opted for writing new lyrics to the song, "明日があるさ" and performing it before class that Monday, complete with props and everything.They awarded us best group and we won various items--mine were chopsticks, chocolate pocky sticks, an eraser (Mammoto-Sensee: "食べないで!"), all wrapped in this pretty wrapping paper. Win =)

Thanh Tran, Colin Sutherland, Carl Oswald

Ame ga hidoku hutte kita kedo
Kasa o wasurete, motte konakatta.
Boosi o kabutte, uwagi o kite iru,
Samuku natte syoo ga nai.

Eki ga sugoku konde iru,
kippu o katta kedo zikan ga nai,
nimotu omoi, kaisatuguti tooi
densya ga dete syoo ga nai.

Nihon no hosuto huamarii no otaku ni iru
zenbu tabenakutya, onaka ga itai,
Oisikunakatta si karasugita si,
Uti ni kaeritaku de, syoo ga nai.

And, the original song/video:

Yatta!

I'm done with 2 of my papers!!! Granted, this Latin paper is among the worst papers which I've ever written. I figure that in the worst case scenario, I won't get any lower than something in the 80-85 score range. Plus, I have 6 full pages of writing whereas the paper requirements ask for "4-5 pages with a maximum of 8-9 pages." I don't actually have any idea what the heck he means by those instructions, but I'm hoping I'll get some brownie points for writing so much, regardless if most of it is terrible...right?

In any case, my brief break from paper writing/studying to blog must now draw to a close. I have 219 Kanji to review as well as 12+ chapters of JSL to cover before the Japanese final on Tuesday. Komarimasita nee?

And to conclude this post:

急がなきゃ

We watched this absolutely adorable Japanese commercial in Japanese class a few weeks ago, and I figured I'd embed it here for the edification and enjoyment of anybody who comes across this:

39 Days until Japan!

I can't believe reading week is drawing to a close and finals are just around the corner! I really should be starting that Latin paper that's due this upcoming Monday, but I figured a first post on this blog was necessary. 39 days from now I will be flying to Japan to begin the 8-week long Japanese language program with the Hokkaido International Foundation (HIF)!!!1!1one1! In case you can't tell, I'm pretty excited. After the program's over, I'll be staying an extra week to go and visit my dad's side of the family whom I've never actually met before. It should be a good time attempting to communicate with them via my very badly pieced together Vietnamese and Japanese.

I don't know what I'm most excited about--not spending the summer in Texas in 100 degree weather everyday, hanging out with everybody in Japan (Ashok and Elliot are both doing HIF too!), or the fact that Yale (and the immense generosity of the Richard U. Light Fellowship) is footing the entire bill for the trip (plus ISA funding!)---and studying Japanese of course, that part's pretty cool. I'm kind of a foreign language dork and I really like being able to be somewhat multilingual. Seeing as I'm a Classics major, it's nice to delve into languages that are actually spoken nowadays too.

We had our Japanese oral exam this morning actually, which I am very glad to be done with for good this semester. I crashed Silliman last night to study with Chris Moon and practice some fake dialogues, and as luck would have it, we were paired up for the exam today! I know I stumbled a bit over the prohibition structures, but all in all I think it went pretty well. We weren't exactly the most productive pair last night, what with the Settlers of Catan game and the Halo tournament and the rest of the chaos going on all around us that always occurs with that group of Silliboys, all of whom are extremely politically incorrect--but fun--people. Good times. I've really missed them all and spending time with Kevin, seeing as he, David, and I were practically attached at the hip last year. Kevin will actually be going to China with the Light Fellowship too, so he won't actually be all that far away this summer after all =).

In any case, it's about time I did more than just think about starting my paper and actually get on that. Plus, my laptop battery's about to go out. Peace.