Cherry Blossoms

It's cherry blossom season right now. This year is exceptionally cold, and so they bloomed a few weeks later than they normally do. They also didn't stay pink for too long and quickly turned to white, but they're still very pretty to look at! Yesterday I went to Goryokaku Park with some friends. There are so many cherry blossom trees there it's awesome! The park is a really popular place for cherry blossom viewing. Not only is it a nice park with lots of cherry blossoms, but you're also allowed to have a bbq and little parties there as well! They light up lanterns at night so that's pretty cool as well. Too bad it's too cold at night to stay out and enjoy the night view.

Nice people

I noticed that the middle aged group and older people are about 100x nicer than the younger people. For example, the other day I was walking home and I passed a place where I got my haircut once. The hairstylist who was in his 30s invited us to a party he was having that night. We stayed for a long time and there was a lot of good food and we made lots of new friends. And I've only met this guy once! One of the student teachers at the adult school for learning English gets taken out to dinner by his students all the time. If you're looking for really nice people, looking for the ones that are older than you!

Brain farts

I've had so many brain farts since I got to Japan. They happen really frequently now. Simple Japanese that I use all the time will sometimes not come out at all. It's a really discouraging thing. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that even though it may not feel like it, your brain is working very hard to be able to speak in another language. Your brain never stops working if you're always speaking in another language and if it doesn't get any rest, it will just stop working when you need it to. If you ever study abroad in a place where English isn't spoken, make sure you give your brain ample rest time! But at the same time you can't give it too much rest time and allow it to become lazy. You need to find that perfect balance or work and relaxation.

Bingo with kids

Today we had a special work day. We had a large room of children of ages ranging from 2-13 it seemed. Some of the children were accompanied by their parents. The other 2 exchange students and I held a sort of English class with them. First, we played Bingo and we would call out the numbers in English. Everyone who won would get a prize. After that, we played hangman. The children really got into that game because they didn't want the man to die. Finally, we played a game where we put cards on the floor and when we call out a number, the kids had to run and grab the card and whoever had the most cards at the end of the game wins. They had a lot of fun with that game as well. It was a pretty fun work day.

Round 1

Last night we went to Round 1 with some friends. Round 1 is a pretty cool place. It's a building with 6 floors. The first two floors are arcades, the 3rd floor is a bowling alley and the last 3 floors are sports centers. They have some really cool games at the arcades and lots of crane games. They have some pretty unique crane games too so that was interesting. One of our friends works in the crane game area and so she taught us little tricks on how to win the games easier. I won a stuffed animal! The sports areas are really cool. You pay about $16 for 3 hours and you can go to any of the 3 floors within that time. They have tons of stuff you can do. They have batting cages, archery, soccer, tennis, mini golf, karaoke; they even have fishing! It's definitely a fun place to be and I'm sure anyone who comes here to study abroad will end up going here at least once.

New classmates

We had class with new classmates this past week. The two new Chinese exchange students were in our class. They seem to be really nice people. In class we introduced ourselves and taught the rest of the class how to introduce yourself in our native tongue. Introducing yourself in Chinese is pretty hard! The language is hard enough with all the tones and such, but introducing yourself is so long it's hard to remember. It took a while for me to be able to introduce myself in Chinese but I forgot how to say it almost immediately afterwards. It was a fun experience though.

New Semester

The new semester finally started this week! Although it started at the end of the week and thus I only went to one class. The semester has started nonetheless! I spent a good deal of the break studying kanji and my teacher seemed really happy about that, because she wants to start on a new kanji textbook this semester. Lucky for me I studied so much during the break that I learned all the kanji in the current book already so I think I'll be ready for the new book. This semester we have classes every day. That wouldn't be a problem, but we all worked every Friday cuz we did not have class that day. However now we have class on Friday and have to run to the tram stop as soon as class is over to make it to work just in time. And I mean seriously run, so that's kind of a bummer. I asked the school if they could change the time of our Friday class and they refused, so there isn't really anything we can do about it I guess. Time to cut back on meals again!