Guess What

I'm still busy, lol. I haven't been doing anything particularly exciting, so I'll just talk about normal, everyday things.

I just finished my Japanese homework. I'm finally settling into the pattern of the schedule, even though there's still a lot I don't know.

(I've been working hard during class, as you can see.)

Today was reading. Tomorrow is writing. It's pretty thrilling. /sarcasm

I experienced my first typhoon ever on Sunday night. There were warnings posted on our school site that classes would be cancelled if the Chuo-sen (the main train line that runs to the station closest to my school) shut down. There was a lot of rain and A LOT of wind, but I felt safe as long as I was inside. Buildings in Japan are built to withstand that sort of stuff a lot better than houses around where I live in the US.

The Chuo-sen never shut down, so we had class. It was peaceful outside except for some branches and leaves scattered.

The day after a typhoon usually has really clear, nice weather. In Japanese, this is called 台風一過 (taifuuikka).

I might make another post about this, but I feel like Japanese people (especially young people) pay a lot more attention to their appearance than in the US. I feel really under-dressed if I wear a t-shirt with jeans and sneakers. What people would normally think of as dressing up is sort of an everyday thing here. As a result, I've been wearing a lot of skirts and dresses.

Heels are also a staple, but I haven't been clothes/shoe shopping very much, to be honest. So far I've bought one shirt/dress for a concert, one dress for everyday wear, and one skirt that I forgot on the bus and never bothered trying to get back. Sometimes, girls in my dorm will leave some of the clothes they don't want anymore in the hallway, which is how I acquired that cute skirt in the picture.

This week is the Dorm Fest, so there are events planned almost every night this week. Tonight was some sort of scavenger hunt, but I lost track of time and decided my homework was more important. Tomorrow night, we have 演芸会 (engeikai), which is basically an event where dorms perform skits for each other. If I can get someone to take a video of it, hopefully I can show you my dorm's performance. I'm the voice of the Chuo-sen, lol. I love imitating it when I'm riding the train.

Today, we also had an event called アイスじゃんけん (Ice cream Rock, Paper, Scissors). A bunch of people gathered outside of the main classroom building (Honkan). It's like normal rock-paper-scissors, except the final loser had to buy ice cream for everyone, haha. I was super disappointed when I went to claim my ice cream prize and there was no ice cream left, though. :( I wasn't the only one, so we went to the campus store with some of the event organizers and got to pick out what we wanted. Then I felt better. :D

Besides that, I think there's a dodgeball event on Thursday that I can't go to because it's during one of my classes, then there's a dinner on Friday where the winner of the engeikai event will be announced. My dorm is pretty awesome, so I'm sure we have a good chance of winning. :P

On Friday, I'm planning on going to a visual kei bar with my friend. Japan has a lot of themed bars...visual kei bars are just one type. It should be interesting. I'll make a post about it if anything exciting happens.