Hi Everyone,
After reviewing the bus and train routes with me via printed maps until around 11pm last night, my host family walked me to the bus stop. To get to TIU, I need to go to a bus stop, ride the bus for about 6 minutes to the last stop of the line: tsurumagaseki train station. After that, I take the train to the next stop, get off, and walk the rest of the way to TIU. I got to school on time without getting lost. Then returned home the same way. Success! XD We try again tomorrow! Today was the last day of orientation power points/lectures I think. Not sure, but yea, they were very informative and ...necessary. ...another necessity: having an electric fan in my room. T_T
Interesting experiences:
• today: lunch time at the super market, me and a couple other ppl from Hawaii were trying to get some thing we had no idea of what it might be. That proved to be quite difficult. Bentos at the supermarket contained at least one thing in it that we knew. For the most part almost everyone else who tried to get a completely unknown bento/lunch succeeded without difficulty. It was a lot cheaper than shirokiya too.
• onigokko: one of two games that my host family's six year old daughter loves playing. it's like tag, but a little different when played on the street. Any elevated area was a safe zone, so the curb, short walls, rocks, etc. If someone playing is on an elevated surface, the oni (person out) needs to count up to a certain number. after that number they can tag whom ever they please.
• the bike i rode yesterday didn't have foot pedal breaks on it. there were hand breaks for the front and back wheels. the front one makes a high pitched noise when used (>_<)'''
• opening ceremony: after we took a 3 hour long placement test, all the JSP (Japan Studies Program) students met their host families at the opening ceremony luncheon. T_T About 1.5 hours into the test my brain had hit overload, and basically stopped working w/japanese or worked super slow and on occasion. Meeting my host family was a bit of an epic fail experience. Couldn't remember any thing, or say any thing correctly for the most part, and thought i saw my host family's daughter Ruru getting frustrated.
lol. I learn lots from her, and even more from her parents. So much vocab... I bought more than enough notebooks today from the kobini by the train station. Turned one of them into a vocab book. Right now I have one page. I can bet that it'll be full in no time, and I might actually use up the last notebook before the end of the semester. I hope so, I want to learn as much as I can. But I understand that my brain might go after a certain point, then it needs a break. Though Ruru can be loud at times, I'm not sure if I'd be getting along as well as I am with my host family so far if she wasn't here. Very thankful she is. When my brain kinda stopped working so well with Japanese the first day, she broke the ice many times by being very energetic and full of different ideas for things to do. They ranged from solving mazes in a kid's book she had in the car, to showing me how to wash money at a temple to please that particular spirit, taking me to her koto class and asking the teacher and a classmate to let me try play, to walking on pebbles. My host mom and dad took part in these activities too, and so everyone was engaged in doing different activities together. It was all a lot of fun!
• As much as I had failed when i met my host family, I was able to talk with them for a while the next night. We stayed up talking till about midnight. It was a lot of fun, and quite difficult too.
ok, I should go sleep soon now. It's basically 5 minutes to midnight here. Hope you all have a nice day! I shall hopefully b updating every week.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Are you Ready for the Time of Your Life?
HELLO EVERYONE,
Blog area = semi stream of consciousness depending on how rushed I feel/am. Feeling: rushed.
This is Janelle, writing from the lobby of the Kawagoe Dai Ichi Hotel! Made it here, safe and sound. A bit jet-lagged though cause I went to sleep at 9:30pm and woke up at 5am Japan time. ha ha, that never happens at home. Today we set foot on the Tokyo International University campus. Exciting. Read through the packet we were given yesterday, and it looks like finding shoes here might turn out to be a bit of a problem. Soba for dinner last night, oh, man, the air plane food was quite good. Unfortunately no pictures of the actual food were taken because by the time i remembered my camera was in my pocket the food was half gone. No one wants to see half eaten food right? or so I thought, so i finished it and took a picture of that. The noodles were so good. There are a good number of other people from Hawaii in the program. Placement test is on Saturday along with meeting host family. ok, gotta go get my bags now. just wanted to make sure you all knew I made it to Japan safely.
Blog area = semi stream of consciousness depending on how rushed I feel/am. Feeling: rushed.
This is Janelle, writing from the lobby of the Kawagoe Dai Ichi Hotel! Made it here, safe and sound. A bit jet-lagged though cause I went to sleep at 9:30pm and woke up at 5am Japan time. ha ha, that never happens at home. Today we set foot on the Tokyo International University campus. Exciting. Read through the packet we were given yesterday, and it looks like finding shoes here might turn out to be a bit of a problem. Soba for dinner last night, oh, man, the air plane food was quite good. Unfortunately no pictures of the actual food were taken because by the time i remembered my camera was in my pocket the food was half gone. No one wants to see half eaten food right? or so I thought, so i finished it and took a picture of that. The noodles were so good. There are a good number of other people from Hawaii in the program. Placement test is on Saturday along with meeting host family. ok, gotta go get my bags now. just wanted to make sure you all knew I made it to Japan safely.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
8th Annual Hawaii International Forgiveness Day Convention
The convention was simply amazing. Everyone has a story of their own. It's ever changing and growing in many different ways. This story is a person's life. The lives of the people who were honored in the convention's program are very powerful and inspirational. Granted I have quite a bias in saying so since Roy Sakuma was recognized as one of three Hawaii Forgiveness Heroes. Last summer and this summer I was fortunate enough to have the privalege of working for Roy and Kathy Sakuma. All the while I never fully realized what an honor or treasure it was to be working for them. Now in my last week of summer work for them, I am just so thankful that I got the chance to become friends, study under them for about ten years now, and work with them on the 39th and 40th Annual Ukulele Festivals. If you haven't gone to one of these festivals yet, I highly recommend that you do. It's absolutely wonderful. A free concert featuring the ukulele. Yes, free. What's the catch? Spreading laughter, love, and hope.
Any ways, going back to the forgiveness convention. When you don't forgive someone else, the only person who misses out on life is you. Carrying around all that hurt and emotional baggage. It isn't easy nor is it fun. But once you forgive, you are able to love. and love is extremely powerful. The greatest gift you can give yourself is forgiveness, and the greatest gift you can give someone else is love.
I go college on the mainland. A lot has happened during these past two years.Lots of drama as my family likes to put it. Lu`au during my freshman year was any thing but smooth sailing, and the after math still remains fresh and daunting in the minds of some people. Myself and a few others I know of had gone into this year's lu`au just praying it wouldn't be any thing like last year's. Last year at least one person in every committee had turned against another person they were once real good friends with. Unrelenting forces duke-ing it out to the bitter end Graduation. Gahndi, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcomb X, all of them were present conservatives and radicals alike. Graduation of the people who may have seemed like the catalysts of the movement to incorporate a more educational aspect to Lu`au, so it would be more than a show and some thing Hawaii Club members could relate to on a more personal level. I salute them. For not staying silent, striving to change things for the better, having good intentions at heart, doing their best to be rooted in the truth, and doing their very best to reach out to those younger than them and pass on their knowledge, hoping we would not end up having to deal with the cumupances of their actions.
Why I mention all this. To sum it up, it seems to me that while on the mainland, a bunch of us forget about where we're from and parts of who we are in an attempt to get to know the locals of our new environment. It serves as a way to be more socially acceptable, so there's a good margin of gray in the mix. The Aloha spirit in a lot of us got lost in that mix. I would like to see a little more of everyone's Aloha amidst the stress/pressue of this year's lu`au, in HI Club, and in my own life as I continue on my educational career.
Any ways, going back to the forgiveness convention. When you don't forgive someone else, the only person who misses out on life is you. Carrying around all that hurt and emotional baggage. It isn't easy nor is it fun. But once you forgive, you are able to love. and love is extremely powerful. The greatest gift you can give yourself is forgiveness, and the greatest gift you can give someone else is love.
I go college on the mainland. A lot has happened during these past two years.Lots of drama as my family likes to put it. Lu`au during my freshman year was any thing but smooth sailing, and the after math still remains fresh and daunting in the minds of some people. Myself and a few others I know of had gone into this year's lu`au just praying it wouldn't be any thing like last year's. Last year at least one person in every committee had turned against another person they were once real good friends with. Unrelenting forces duke-ing it out to the bitter end Graduation. Gahndi, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcomb X, all of them were present conservatives and radicals alike. Graduation of the people who may have seemed like the catalysts of the movement to incorporate a more educational aspect to Lu`au, so it would be more than a show and some thing Hawaii Club members could relate to on a more personal level. I salute them. For not staying silent, striving to change things for the better, having good intentions at heart, doing their best to be rooted in the truth, and doing their very best to reach out to those younger than them and pass on their knowledge, hoping we would not end up having to deal with the cumupances of their actions.
Why I mention all this. To sum it up, it seems to me that while on the mainland, a bunch of us forget about where we're from and parts of who we are in an attempt to get to know the locals of our new environment. It serves as a way to be more socially acceptable, so there's a good margin of gray in the mix. The Aloha spirit in a lot of us got lost in that mix. I would like to see a little more of everyone's Aloha amidst the stress/pressue of this year's lu`au, in HI Club, and in my own life as I continue on my educational career.
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