Home Stay

The other exchange students and I were lucky enough to be able to do a really short home stay, thanks to one of our teachers asking her friend if she'd be willing to take us in for a few days to get a taste of Japanese life. I had hoped to learn a lot, but sadly I got some really bad food posioning the first day I got there and so I spent pretty much my entire stay throwing up or sleeping. This home stay did remind me of a couple of important things that I probably should mention though.

In class, we learn that byouin (病院）means hospital and that kaze (風邪) means a cold. These definitions aren't necessarily wrong, but they do need some clarifying. Byouin means everything from clinic to a regular doctor ER. Therefore, when someone ask if you need to go to the byouin for your acne, they're probably asking if you wanna go to a dermatologist. Also, kaze seems to be sickness in general. I was constantly throwing up, constantly going to the bathroom and had a fever. However, everyone kept calling it a cold. So yeah. Don't let these things confuse you!

Graduation

Today was our school's graduation. The graduations here are WAY different than from back at home. Everyone was dressed in suits and all serious. No one said a single word. The graduating students went up 1 by 1 emotionless like robots and the background music was a pianist playing really depressing songs like Moonlight Sonata. I swear I felt like I was at a funeral. Afterwards though everyone went to another room and there was a sort of party with food and everyone talked and took pictures and stuff so that was pretty cool. But yeah, culture shock.

Best Job

I have to say, the English teaching job that the school hooked us up with is a really, really good job. It doesn't pay much per say ($20/hour, but only work around 2 hours a week) but the students that we have a great! I think I'm actually closer with our students as opposed to the Hakodate University students. They take us out quite often. We've gone to dinner, karaoke, for coffee and even had a New Years party! They are the nicest people that I have met since I came here to Japan. This job gives me everything I need. I hope that next year's students get along with the English students as well as we do now!

Performance

Sorry for the late blog! I've been busy with work and trying to catch up in my Japanese studies and such. I told my professor before the break started that I would be able to learn all the kanji in the book that she gave us before school started up again and that's proving to be a bit more challenging than I thought. Anyway, another one of the exchange students and I were fortunate enough to perform onstage with a band for the music club's annual Bye Bye Live concert. It was really fun! We made a lot of friends. I've always loved how music can bring people together so smoothly. We had one of our friends record it but she accidentally ended the recording half way through. It was still fun nonetheless though! Sadly, most of the friends we made are seniors and thus will be graduating in a a few weeks. Time to make new friends again!

Band

While I was studying at school one day, a few guys who I had met before came up to me. They were in a band together and they really like foreign music, especially songs sung in English. They asked me if I could join their band and sing for them. I was never much of a singer. I took the vocal lessons course at HPU one semester to see how it would go and I did pretty poorly in it. However, I figured this would be a fun experience anyway so I agreed to join them. They have a concert this coming Friday. It's an annual concert for all the seniors who are in the music club so they can play one last show. I'm going to do my best to not mess it up for them!

Spring Break

Hello everyone. Not much to update on. We're on spring break now and we're all just taking it easy. I spend most of my day sleeping. Maybe I'll have something interesting to say next week! Until then~

Snow Festival

Today I just came back from a 3 day trip to Sapporo to see the Snow Festival. The Snow Festival that's held every year in Sapporo where various different kinds of snow and ice sculptures are put up on the streets for everyone to see. There were a lot of amazing sculptures and tons of awesome food stands.They also had ski/snowboarding exhibitions going on during the festival along with live performances and such. It was really a great experience. I highly suggest that students coming to Hakodate to study abroad to try their best to make it to the Snow Festival. They won't regret it!