The first week of October

When I was packing for Japan I didn't realize how much free time I would actually have. I was so used to being at Beloit where my days were jam packed with classes, work, and paper writing and I dreamed of having time to read for pleasure. I don't have a job here (what with it being illegal and everything), I'm only in class 16 hours a week and I have yet to be assigned one paper to write or a massive reading assignment. (Gone are the days where I'd be asked to read 500 pages in the span of a week.)

I only brought four books along with me to Japan and I've already read two and am half way through the third. Luckily, I've discovered the library here on campus and boy, is it ever a library. I wish the Beloit College library could be half as nice. They have plenty of English books, so I have a lot more reading material to choose from. (And I'll admit, I was a bit excited when I saw they had the British versions of the Harry Potter series.) Not to mention, they also have an extensive collection of American movies (I've walked into the media part of the library and I've seen people watching Mean Girls, Pretty Woman, Enchanted, etc.)



I've been binging on American movies myself lately, often raiding my host family's DVD collection. (I didn't think to bring my own DVDs either. Again, the whole not having much free time theory.) On Wednesday, a typhoon hit Japan and I had the hardest time sleeping through it. I've never heard wind howl so loud and if I'm perfectly honest, I was a little freaked out by the whole typhoon thing. Tornadoes? No problem. But typhoons? ...I'm a complete newb. So I stayed up half the night eating Ritz crackers bathed in the glow of my laptop and watching Toy Story 2.
The typhoon didn't seem to do any damage in my part of Hirakata, but my Japanese teacher was telling us Friday morning that someone was crushed by a fallen electrical pole though I'm not sure where in Japan. (One plus of the typhoon: morning classes were cancelled the following day!)



Last weekend was my host sister's Sports Day at her school. It was a day-long event in which all the students' parents came and watched their kids compete against one another in a bunch of different playground games. There were relay races, obstacle courses, tug of war games and even choreographed dancing (which was surprisingly high quality for an elementary school). It was really fun to watch, but I was quite tired by the end of it.



The day before my sister's Sports Day, I was able to walk around the KG campus wearing a Yukata. A local, community dance troupe came and helped us put them on. It was really cool, but walking was difficult. You really had to shuffle along. Wide strides were way to hard to take.
After we all walked around a bit, the dance troupe taught us some traditional Japanese dance, which was fun. I actually might be performing with them in November, which is two parts exciting, one part nerve-wracking.

Now that October is here, Halloween decorations are starting to appear in Japanese stores. I didn't think Halloween was celebrated in Japan and when I asked my host mom about it, she said it was a relatively new thing in Japan. There are a lot of Halloween parties, she said, but trick-or-treating isn't a big thing. (And walking into the grocery stores, there aren't any aisles filled with industrial size bags of candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters.)
I haven't yet decided what I'm going to dress as for Halloween, but I think I may end up being the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland because I have a similarly striped sweater. All I need is some cat ears and voila. Not the most elaborate of costumes, but I didn't think to bring an actual Halloween costume to Japan.