As far as INFES went, which was hosted in the CIE (of course), it went pretty well though I wished I would have gotten to do a different booth than food booth. In total, INFES hosted two food booths (Hawaiian chicken and Japanese parfaits), a dance booth, a fashion booth, a singing booth and world booth (which was basically international students sitting at tables and talking about their respective countries with Japanese visitors). The food booths were the only ones stuck out in the cold all day and in hindsight, I wish I would have done dance booth (as it was offered to me as an option when I was first signing up). Oh well. It was still fun getting to know the people working my booth (especially getting to hang out with my speaking partner so much, who was in the same booth as me) and I was able to sneak away far more often than I would if I worked a different booth. At my food booth there were more people than there were jobs, so I often was able to escape without anyone noticing I’d gone, eat some tempura ice cream, and sneak back again.
One of the best parts of INFES was when my host family stopped by to say hello. It was nice seeing them out and about and I’ll admit, I felt kind of cool having my host sibs run up super excited to see me. Though my host brother’s interest was short-lived when some Gaidai students walked by dressed up as power rangers. I didn’t mind though – the power rangers are way cooler than I am!
Yesterday (November 28) I spent the day with my speaking partner, Rina. At the start of the semester, everyone who asked was assigned a speaking partner: a Japanese student to practice Japanese with (and someone they can practice English with). Study abroad programs, you’ll find, are all about the cultural exchange stuff. But Rina and I often have trouble hanging out because she’s incredibly busy. I really don't know how she does it! She goes to a different campus that's half an hour away from the main one so I was really happy to get to have a little speaking partner bonding time on Saturday.
We went to Fushimi Inari shrine which, if you’ve seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, you’d recognize. (The scene where Chiyo/Sayuri is running through the torii gates to pray at the temple – kind of funny seeing as Fushimi Inari shrine is… well, a shrine.) Anyway, so Fushimi Inari has thousands of torii lined up next to each other and you get to walk through them all. It’s like being in a really beautiful, orange corridor out in the woods. (Probably not the best description!) With the colors changing on the trees and the weather being perfect for autumn, being at Fushimi Inari really felt magical. Rina and I only walked up part of the way – there was a break in the torii and then it continued on up the mountainside and to reach the top would take two hours. We decided we weren’t so up for it and were getting hungry for lunch, so we stopped at a nearby restaurant outside Fushimi Inari and shared some yakisoba and okonomiyaki (my two food loves in Japan).
We went browsing about a bunch of stores (later going to a sort of indoor strip mall thing in Kyoto) and I finally got the bulk of my Christmas shopping done which was good. I’m really excited to see everyone unwrap their gifts from Japan when I come home!
After Christmas shopping, we stopped at a little café and rested a bit with some hot drinks before we headed back to Hirakata city. Before Rina and I parted ways at the station, we did some purikura which is basically like really advanced mall photo booths. They’re super fun to do and some people have entire purikura photo albums! (You can print them out as stickers or have them sent to your cell phone.)
I think my luck continued when I got assigned Rina as my speaking partner because she's truly fantastic. I feel like I can ask her pretty much anything about Japanese language or culture and she doesn't mind when I try to bumble along in Japanese. Haha. She's also damn good at English, so there's never really any communication problems which is nice. We've had a lot of good coffee dates where we just hang out and chat about what we've been up to and laugh about this or that (there's also some good gossip thrown in for good measure!). I'm really glad I've finally gotten to know her better and I hope we'll remain friends for a good long time.
Today was pretty laid back and I spent most of it at home by myself because my host family went to the hospital to visit their grandfather who’s recovering from pretty serious surgery. It sounds like he isn’t doing so well and I’m really worried for him (and for my host family because it’s been really hard on them too).
I worked on a Japanese essay today (about my memories of Japan) and though I could have said a lot more, tried to just stick with one memory (Fushimi Inari with my speaking partner). When I was writing it, I noticed how much easier it was to do, how much quicker. I can remember when writing a couple sentences in Japanese took me forever and they were always incredibly simple sentences too such as “I like Japanese.” Now I’m writing more complex things like “Although I’m not the best at Japanese and it’s always been a challenge for me, I still love studying it and would like to be fluent one day.” And it isn’t taking me an hour and a half to do either. I don’t have to look up every single kanji I want to use and I don’t second guess myself so often on the grammar. (I actually recently competed with my host sister, who’s in the first grade, to see who could write the most first grade kanji. I’m fairly sure she won because there were two or three that I’d forgotten, but it was still nice knowing I could at least keep up with a Japanese first grader!)
I think with language learning, it’s so easy to become frustrated because it’s almost always slow going, but when you get some distance between where you were and where you are now, it’s very rewarding and gratifying. Keep in mind I’m still dreadful at Japanese, particularly speaking. I’ve just gotten a bit less dreadful it seems. I really hope I can stay motivated and keep studying Japanese because it’s a truly fascinating language and culture.
It’s so weird to think that there are only three weeks left for me in Japan. I’ve been really homesick lately, but when I looked at the calendar a couple days ago, I decided to stop feeling so mopey and *enjoy* Japan again while I’m here. I think somewhere between the middle of October and now I just started to fall deeper and deeper into homesickness and all I could think about was home all the time. I’m still super excited for Christmas, but I’m trying to keep up a renewed outlook on things and feel the way I did in September and the first half of October when everything was wonderful and exciting. Coming to Japan has really been a once in a lifetime opportunity and while I hope to return one day, I’ll never have this particular set of circumstances again (going to school at Kansai Gaidai, living with the best host family in Japan, etc.) so I’m going to enjoy every bit of it as much as I can!
P.S. If you're interested in seeing a great video about the INFES experience (and seeing a tiny glimpse of me holding tempura ice cream) check out the youtube video below. (It was made by a fellow food-boother!)
"Click here for video"
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