Ghibli- Future ...

Hey hey! so stuff that happened. 

Mid terms, Kawagoe Festival, bonding with my host family, not my taisho debate 4-6 page paper, what i believe to be THE low point in study abroad (the other one was a falsie in comparisson to how i felt this past week), prep for the Kansai Trip (shuppatsu: tomorrow), and Ghibli Museum. Loads of thinking in the lieu of it all though. hey, i spelled that word right! XD what if going to japan helped expand my english vocab too? hmm...ah oh well. 

Mid-term grade in Japanese classs: Passing so far. Awaiting my grade for the history mid term... I hope i passed that too at the very least. After the japanese mid term, my brain was basically shot. so took the weekend a little more easier than i should have. barely studied for the exam on the following monday. >_<''''~ Working on not being too terribly hard on myself though, so hopefully it works out (being happier about not A grades. Will pass fo sho though).

Leaving for Kansai trip tomorrow morning, bright and early! didn't research for it much at all cause i was just kinda over every thing... sporadic periods of inspiration to study hard. the rest of the time i was like no more studying! it's all evil. So EvIl, but i need to know about the Taisho period. I know nothing. 

Kawagoe Festival. Lots of fun! ... but sooo much foooooooddd. Good food, games, spent a bunch of money T_T. Was charged the children's rate for a game that vaguely resembled pinball, while the friend i went with got charged the adult rate even though we're bascially the same age. Didn't win any of the games. I'm better off just buying a stuffed animal from the store. I was after a cute stuffed animal...or Arashi merchandise. Ended up buying a poster of them later on the way back to the station. ^_^ it's apparently their 10th anniversay poster: it was all wrappedup and in a box, a bit russian roullette style. there was AKB48 there too, but I'd personally much rather have a picture of Arashi up on my wall since I like a bunch of their music. <3 Second day of Kawagoe Matsuri JSPers got to help pull a neighboorhood's float. We really didn't get to pull in the way we thought we would cause of the danger the dashi(float) presented to the ppl closest to it's direciton of travel (and consequently the place where you get to feel like you're helping to pull it). Later, met up with a the same guy from Kauai, and basically hung out with him in Kawagoe into the early evening. Went to the old-fashioned candy lane and walked around the older store area: sweet potato ice cream, sweet potato steak fries, fabric store, chopstick store, looking for the vendors with the small octopus tako-yaki (they put an entire tiny octopus in one tako-yaki ball! and it tastes goood. lol, ate one ^_^. 

ah, yes, the low point... um, just felt like i was done w/Japanese. I learned my year's worth already, and just felt like i didn't want to learn any more. then would get these urges to try learn as much as i could and do it issyoukenmei style, talk to japanese citizen students here I made friends with, try do the homework with their help...then an annoying person on the same program would be like oh that's so kantan, you don't get it? sit there in front of me and do his homework in like literally 7 minutes and be like you're not done yet? I like didn't have to think. get admiration and praise from the japanese ppl i was sitting with, say he would help me, explain the grammar points, then while i was doing the work, talk so loud with
the people at the table that i couldn't think properly, ask me if i was done yet and if not why not, and it just annoyed me so much that i was just like i'm not doing any thing for you at all. you need a pen? sorry, you bascially just called me a bitch the last time you talked to me. other than that, just been struggling with Japanese, the debate stuff, and yea...school work is school work. 
Although we did take a trip to the same elementary school my host sister goes to and got to play games with the 5th graders there. For another time, I felt like a disappointment cause i think my group of 3 fifth graders were expecitng someone who looked a bit more foreign since a couple of them migrated towards other ppl who looked less japanese. lol. hurt my feelings at the time, but eh... just need to remember that it's for the same reason that my host family was a bit more relieved or less stressed out about hosting a study abroad student before i came here. part of the selection process i guess. So i guess there's ur pros and cons. Not always the kind of mentally weird japanese person cause you can't speak japanese perapera. But also make people here feel a bit more comfortable and get free membership cards to places. ^_^ mr. donut, medicine store, hair cut place, yup. 


Lastly, Ghibli. No picture taking allowed in the museum T_T so sad. but man, that place was amazing! There might not be very much there, and I wouldn't mind going again by myself or with people who don't mind me spending at least an hour gawking at the drawings/set up in the room dedicated to the making/birth of a miyazaki film. It's unreal, the artistry, colors, lines, composition, ...so sharp and clear though it's with paint brushes. I wonder if it's japanese paint brushes...hmmm. regardless, it's probably the expensive kind of paint brush. o-(>.<)-o then spent a lot of money at the omiyage store.. may have gone a little nuts, didn't get much, but it was expensive. I get espensive taste? maybe. but had enough money on me. Almost completely done with everyone's omiyage stuff. the wardrobe update needs to be worked on a little more. leather jacket. but any ways, ghibli museum. one of the rooms was dedicated entirely to how animation came to be, different kinds of animation, displays of the afore mentioned. ok, clay animation right (night before christmas, corpse bride, movies like that) a spinning thing with tons of miniaturized models on it. it starts and stops every so often, but when it starts spinning, the lights turn off, and turns back on to reveal a view of running cats, mei jump ropeing, bats flying, etc. There was also a sort of holligraphic birds circling the robot from laputa so pretty. definately inspiring, but i still don't know what i want to do for my thesis. sotsugyou ronbun. although, if i can't think of any thing else, i wouldn't mind researching manhole covers across japan to take care of the japanese one....or i could do an examination of disney and miyazaki films. animation. 


将来に何になりたいかな？何になるかな？明日の朝ご飯何を食べるかな？笑う。on that note, i go bed now. is past 1am, waking up at 545am i believe. but figured i'd better write some thing now before Kansai cause my host mom told me to not bring any hw with me on the trip, so i can enjoy and she knows i've been trying to work super hard on the debate prep. I should be posting again in about a week since i don't intend on bringing my computer with me. c u all later next time. lots more to come!