HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

Meet the Family..... and some Karaoke too

Ok soo..... firstly, I went to Shibuya today with Sarah and our friend Erin. Erin went to UW-Madison too, graduated and now lives in Hokkaido (The northern island of Japan). She was an exchange student at Keio two years ago. Poor girl lives in Hokkaido now, where its below freezing and has sooo much snow. Kinda like Wisconsin.. ha ha ha.. Only in Japan there is no central heating.... :(

Anyway, she is in town for a few days and today we went out to dinner with her and our other friend Keita. It was her "bachelorette" party. She's getting married in a month to her boyfriend of three years whom of which she MET at Keio university. He was an exchange student from Canada. After they both finished the program, they had a long distance relationship for two years.. and are now getting married. I'm so happy for her.

After dinner with them, I prepared to go out for dinner with Kouta and.. du duuuuuuuun... his UNCLE from Kumamoto. This was the first relative besides Kouta's brother Yuuki that I've met. To say the least I was really nervous. Kouta was going to arrive late soo that made me even more nervous. We were all supposed to meet @ Hachiko in Shibuya.. the place where EVERYONE meets in Shibuya. So anyway, I got there before Kouta.. I spotted Yuuki and saw that he was with his Uncle and a few cousins and his girlfriend Chika. I didn't want to approach them without Kouta being there cause I was so nervous, so I tried to hide behind some other people until I Kouta got there. Unfortunately, Yuuki almost instantly saw me and recognized me and called me over. I reluctantly went and there Yuuki introduced me as Kouta's girlfriend. The uncle and cousins' jaws dropped to the ground. Well apparantly, no one in Kouta's family had heard that he had a girlfriend let alone that she was a foreigner. IT was a nice surprise and everyone got all excited about it. They teased Kouta relentlessly through the dinner of delicious Korean food and scolded him for not learning English. ha ha ha Kouta's uncle even took my picture and sent it via phone email to Kouta's grandma and his mother. In which an hour later, Kouta's dad called Kouta and was teasing him via telephone. By the end of the night everyone new about Kouta's new, American girlfriend and all was well.

To be honest, I didn't know how his family was going to take that I was foreign. In the states everyone is of different races so interracial relationships, although sometimes still a wary subject, is more common and accepted. In Japan, especially since I'm American, I've heard it can be really tough on couples. But they all seemed to like me well enough, and although I felt as if I were some sort of novelty at first ('look she can speak Japanese' 'Look at how well she uses chopsticks' etc. seemed too be some of the features of the Paulina Product).. It seemed as if by the end of the night, after speaking with me more and getting to know me a little bit better, everyone seemed to accept as Kouta's girlfriend.. American or not... which was nice.
Yay for international relationships..... I wonder if my dad had the same worries back when he and my mom first started dating...

An ad for the PSP game called Talkman... I hope you can see it

Erin and Sarah on the Train on our way to Shibuya

Chika (Yuuki's girlfriend) @ Karaoke

Yuuki and friend @ Karaoke

Kouta and I @ Karaoke :)

Well, I'm feeling a little better... so lets go to MITA SAI!

I was feeling a little bit better today. So I went to Mita Sai (Mita is the name of the Keio University campus that I attend, and 'Sai' means festival in Japanese.) So in short, I went to the Mita Campus festival. It was interesting to say the least. There were sooooo many people on campus it was crazy. In Japan school festivals are huge, and Mita sai is the MOST attended college festival in the country. Pretty cool huh? Well it was... except for the amount of PEOPLE that were there. In the 5 days that the festival ran, an estimated 100,000 people attended. That would mean 20,000 people on average per day. If you could see how teeny tiny our campus is, then you would be able to feel the crowd-o-phobia I felt that day... oi... But it was really fun.

Where to begin about Mita sai....

Well, I can start with one of the most interesting aspects... and that's Mita sai's nickname... Nanpa sai. 'Nanpa' in Japanese means 'to pick up..' as in pick up women.. or pick up men... Basically, Mita sai is a huge hookup festival for girls looking to hook up with rich Keio boys. However, most of the boys there are not Keio boys. For those other boys (non-Keio students) know that lots of girls will flock to this festival looking for Keio boy booty.. they show up too looking for a piece of the action. It's a vicious cycle and what is produced is a giant barrage of horrible Japanese pick up lines... college guys picking up high school girls in their little uniforms.. a varying array of cell phone email swapping etc etc... No ones there to see the shows.. they're there to get as many phone numbers and email addresses as possible. It was kinda nuts.

Another interesting aspect of THIS year's Mita sai was the HG or Hard Gay effect. In a previous post I had explained a little about this stereotypical tiny patent leather short and vest and leather police hat clad "gay" comedian... He's HUGE in japan and shows up just about everywhere.. INCLUDING Mita sai in which there were "Hard Gay Hard Franks" (hot dogs), and other people dressed in the HG garb selling tickets for food and entertainment at the festival. I wonder if HG will still be popular next year and if everyone will be dressed up as him next year? hmmmmmm..

What else... oh we went to see the JADE (Keio's dance group) show. It was really cool. Hiphop, house, breakdance, modern dance.. it was all really cool.

That was pretty much it... it was a fun day. Thanks to Mita sai we get a whole week off of school. Yay for that :) Too bad that for a little over half of it I've been soooo sick :'(

Anyway, I'm getting better.. that's a good thing. Later.... foooooooooooooooooooo!! ("Foo..." is HG's token phrase)

Hard Gay Hard Franks.... (The writing on the left says "Haado Furanku" and the word bubble says "fooooooo!")

Rina and Lina @ Mita sai. Rina is my conversation partner :)

Some weirdo wrestling show at Mita sai

Been sooo busy.. so now I'm sick too

Ok.. so the past three days have been CRAZY busy, and from being that busy, I'm sick now too. :(
Monday: I had school until 2:30, then I studied at the library for about an hour, then I met with my conversation partners to go over my speech for the speech contest. Well, that ended up taking like four hours and we STILL didn't finish. I'm speaking about JApanese onomadapeioa and psychomimes.. he he he Sounds really complicated huh.. he he he The words for that in Japanese are giongo and gitaigo (respectively). So after I worked on it with them, we ran out of time.. So we had to plan to meet the next day (Tuesday) in the early afternoon because the written copy of the speech was due by email at 6 p.m. So I went home and proceeded to memorize my essay that I wrote a few weeks back about Wisconsin because Tuesday I had to do a speech about that in class. So I memorized and entire speech (about 3 minutes long) in another 4 hours. Man, Tuesday was gonna be a long day.

So on Tuesday, I lugged my laptop on the train to school. What a pain.. it's bad enough that I can barely fit on the train without being smashed.. trying to look out for my laptop so that it didn't get banged or stepped on or something was really tough. So I get to school and I did my speech in class about good ol' Wisconsin. That turned out to be really good. After classes, I met with Rina and Mako to work on my speech contest (speecon for short in japanese, he he he) speech all the way up until the deadline. We finished it just in time and mailed it at 5:56 p.m. Girigiri dane~ (girigiri = cutting it close) The next day (Wednesday) was going to be my interview for the speecon. I felt like I should have been nervous, but by this point I was too tired and starting to get sick to notice.

So I Wednesday I had class from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. It was a rough day. I was starting to get sick with this crazy Japanese cold, I was tired from all the running around I've been doing for the speecon and such, and it was a 9 hour day... ugh... So I finally get through all my classes and go to the Speecon meeting. Apparantly, they originally only wanted to have 10 people compete in the speech contest. 3 in the Beginner/Intermediate level, and 7 in the advanced level. I can't remember if I explained the contest in an earlier post or not, but.. the prize for the beginner level is a $100 travel certificate with JTB Travel company, and the prize for Advanced is a $500 travel certificate. I'm only in level two so I will be competing in the Beginner/intermediate level. WEll, since WAAAY more than 10 people applied (7 for B/I, and like 20 for Advanced) they decided to have these screening interviews to see who they were actually going to ALLOW to compete. So I went to mine at 6:15, right after my classes... I think it went really well. All we really had to do was read our speech. I read it pretty well and only stumbled once. My speech has a few comedic moments at which all of the three judges snickered at... so I think the impact of my speech was good too :) I find out if I make it in the actual competition on Saturday, and the ACTUAL competition is on December 17th.

So after I did my interview I went home. And proceeded to get sicker... And now, I'm soo tired from the past three days and I'm sick. What a lovely combo. Luckily for me, we now have a week long vacation from school because its the Mita Sai (Mita Campus Festival) for the next 6 days :) So I have 6 days to rest and get better.. even though I wanted to use those 6 days to go to the Mita sai and venture around Tokyo a little more. There are still so many places I've never been here!!!!

Anyway, I'm going to take a nice hot bath and take nap now..

Everone Sick but me.. ha ha ha ha!!!

I really better stop saying it, but, everyone I know is sick with a suckey Japanese cold but me!!! Although I've been feeling slightly under the weather, its no where near as bad as everyone else!! People are looking ghostly, pastey.. Yuuki was out for three days, Kouta can't talk because his voice is all messed up due to a sore throat, the Brit Daniel is sick, a few kids in my class are sick, Jina's sick.. Everybody except me. God I hope I don't get sick.. although I'm starting to feel it coming. That's ok, I got some kick ass strong American medicine. The medicine in JApan is sooooo weak... It doesn't really do anything really. And, can you believe it? but people actually go to the hospital when they get a cold!!!!! Because cold medicine is not available over the counter here... crazy huh...

Anyway, as for this weekend for the most part it was pretty chill. On Friday I hung out with Kouta all day as per usual.. ha ha ha... Then he had a show at Milk.. where we first met.. :) So we went to the show together and I got to dance my butt off again. I met a few friends, old and new, there as well. It was a pretty good time. Since Kouta was performing, he had to stay out until the bar closed at 5 a.m. and then help tear down the DJ equipment, but I had school the next day (school on Saturdays suck so bad), so I had to leave early and crash at Kouta's. When I woke up for school, Kouta was just coming home.. ha ha ha!! Poor guy had to work all day Saturday too.. from 11 a.m. AND it was when he was just starting to get sick. So anyway, school was fine, I was feeling pretty good actually with a good nights sleep and I wasn't sick.. but damn.. everyone else in class looked so ruff... Half of the class wasn't even there due to illness. It's crazy though how fast a cold can spread here. Most all the JApanese when theyre sick wear these scary mask things that make them look like they're going to perform surgery at any moment.... but sometimes you get a few who don't and they don't cover their mouths when they sneeze or cough... so when you're on the train.. its SOOO easy to catch a cold. Especially during peak hours when you're crammed up next to someone who is sick. Like today!!! I was on the way to school, crammed in like a sardine as usual, and some guy behind me was sick and kept coughing on the back of my neck... either he wouldn't or couldn't (because it was so packed he prolly couldn't lift his arm) to cover his mouth.. so yeah.. he coughed on the back of my neck for the fifteen minutes from Shinkawasaki station to Shinagawa.... gross huh?

ANYWAY, moving on.. after school on Saturday I came home and watched almost 3 DVDs of anime and took a nap. It felt great. After that, Sarah, Daniel, and I went to Kichijoji for some Bubuka ramen. They had never had it and boy was it delicious :) WE were soooo full :-/
So after that we walked around Kichijoji a bit and did some shopping. I got a cute little jacket for 1200 yen (approx. 12 bucks) and I got a nice long green scarf for 500 yen (approx. 5 bucks). I swear I luck out so well on the shopping here!

But I'm soooo broke!!! AHHHH!!! he he he I'm still waiting to get paid from work. And I'm waiting for a more regular work schedule. IT's getting to the point where she just calls me and asks me to come in in like 3 hours. I can't work on such short notice like this.. not when it takes me an hour or so to even GET to work!

Ok, moving on... after Kichijoji, I went to hang out with Kouta, Yuuki, Chika, and Taisuke. We watched Braveheart on TV. Kouta had to work on Sunday so we went to bed early. I woke up.. had some delcious lovely wonderous McDonald's hotcakes for breakfast.. and made my way home. Once home, I did laundry all day, cleaned my room, and studied! It was a pretty productive day if I might say so myself. And for dinner I had chinese food. Which was really tasty :)

hmmm what else...
Oh today.. it kinda sucked. I had school this morning and had a kanji test.. as usual.. ha ha ha... Then I went to newspaper reading class and today it was really hard. The content of the paper we were reading to day was really complicated and the kanji (Chinese characters) were really complex and hard to understand. So that was kinda a headache. Afterwards, I went to the school's Pizza La Cafe to start practicing my speech. I guess I never really talked about it. A week and a half back, we had to write essays about our home country and some special thing about it. Well I wrote about Wisconsin. And now, we have to memorize the essay and put on a speech. Lucky me, I get chosen to be the first person to speak and I go tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. sharp. I have a little over half of the speech memorized.. so I think I'm in good shape.

BUT, on another note, I entered in the International Student Speech competition. There are two levels: Beginner/Intermediate, and Advanced. Since I am in the intermediate class, I had to enter the Beginner/ Intermediate level. There are only going to be 10 speakers at the actual competition (3 from B/I and 7 from A) but only 6 people from my division applied. So... a written copy of my speech is due tomorrow night at 6 p.m. On Wednesday at 6:15 I have my screening where I go in and read them my speech. Then they decide if I can actually compete. The prize is: For Advanced a $500 dollar JTB Travel Agency certificate for travel within Japan.. For B/I a $100 dollar JTB Travel Agency certificate. So it's a pretty good prize.. if you win...... So anyway, the topic is "My favorite part of the JApanese Language." Crazy topic eh? I chose to write about Giongo and Gitaigo... Giongo are onomadapeioa and Gitaigo are psychomimes like "squishy" or "fuzzy" etc... So anyway, I wrote this crazy speech.. its about 4 minutes long.. I wrote it in like 5 hours... And I got assigned advisors.. luckily for me they are my conversation partners :) So we met today to go over some final issues, and then decided to rewrite an entire portion (about 1/3) of the speech... That took like three hours, and there are still other corrections that need to be made. So in addition to memorizing the speech about Wisconsin, I have to type this contest speech tonight so that we can work on it tomorrow at school before the 6 oclock deadline. blech.... wish me luck people :)

So anyway, enough gabbing from me.. I'm going to go gargle (yes I do this now so that I don't get sick!!! ha ha ha) And then I have to practice my speech and type my other one... yeesh.. I can't wait until Wednesday is over. Next week is our school festival so no class until NEXT THURSDAY!!! YESSSSSS!!!!

Here are some pics from Barricade at Milk :)

Kouta DJing @ Barricade <3

Kouta right before he's going on to DJ... gotta take a swig of that Asahi beer ;)

Kouta and Kaazu messing with the Monchichi Balloons

Kyouko (DJ Aki's girlfriend) and Me - She's soo great! :)

Me and Kaazu.. he's pointing at my Monchichi Intercontinental Championship belt. (That's my $5 dollar scarf!! ha ha ha)

Shannon wearing the Monchichi Hat

Kouta wearing the Monchichi Hat :)

Monchichi Band - Monchichi was the sponser of this month's Barricade. It's some weird Japanese pop band.. the guys pink suit was great! ha ha ha

I love Japanese kiddies~!

I taught two four year olds and a three year old at work today. They reminded me of nephews and my neice. I miss you my babies!!!

Monitu: I hope you're having fun at school and learning a lot! I love you <3
Myway: I hope you're having fun too and making lots of friends! I love you too! <3
Preegert: My sweet nephew! I hope you're having fun at school too! I love you! <3
Tavia: Love you baby Tavia bumps! <3

I miss you all!