Last night the weather reports all said we would be getting snow starting sometime between midnight and three in the morning. But we got rain instead. So I went to bed a bit bummed, and woke up as normal. But when I looked out my window, this is what I did:
P.S. Don't make fun of me for not being able to make up my mind about whether it's cold or not. I know I go from "it's so cold!" to "it's not that cold..." to "it's cold, but not as cold as I expected." It was snow. It blew my mind straight out of order.
I took pictures with Mariko, but she's sleeping right now so I can't get them from her just yet. But I promise that by tomorrow I will have them up here, so if you want to see them, check back!
These are the only two pictures I have:
I'm the only one of us who had never walked to class in the snow before. Can you tell?
Left to right, Simon is from The Netherlands, Jessica is from Hong Kong, and David is from New York.
The view from the third floor of Honkan. Stright ahead all the way down that path is the dining commons/Dialogue House (just to give you perspective, if you've watched my walking around videos).
Well, tonight is the Global House ball, so I will definitely be taking pictures and I'll upload my final post about the ball tomorrow when I update this one. Hopefully people still come, even though it's snowing. We made a paper mache snowman for decorations but now we're going to have a real one, too!!
I'm back! These are the pictures Mariko took:
Untouched snow, waiting for us!
The first footprints up to Bakayama in the first snow of the year!
Before I jump straight into this list, I want to clarify that some of these points may be generally incorrect, or could be exclusive to Tokyo. I could also have some of my reasonings wrong. This list is simply something I compiled based off of my own experiences throughout the year that I lived and traveled throughout Japan. This list is also not, in any way, a complete one. I'm sure if you search the internet you can find many other very true facts about Japan that I have forgotten to list here. In urban areas there will, at any given time or place, be at least one コンビニ ("conbini" / convenience store) within walking distance. Japanese people don’t usually have middle names . Japanese people are very interested in each others' blood type - it's like astrology in America, except people take it very seriously. Expect to be asked what your blood type is at least once. Japanese deodorant supposedly doesn't work very well. I brought my own deodo...
Just a short (15 minute) walk from campus there is an elementary school, and I was one of the people who visited it today. When we first walked in, we saw a bike rack... full of unicycles!? Two steps into their territory and Japanese children are already proving their superiority over me. We walked into the school building where we took off our shoes and were given slippers to wear. Then we met all the children (the 5th grade class) in the gym. Each of us was paired up with two children. My partners were Yuta (the boy) and Olivia (the girl... obviously). The children gave us a tour of the school. Olivia is half British and fluent in English just as much as she is in Japanese, so I received a very comprehensive tour. Her accent was very interesting, as you can imagine. Yuta was pretty good at English, too, but was a little bit shy and spacey. This elementary school was just amazing. They had classrooms for each grade...
Being away from friends and family has gotten me down a bit lately. It's been a month, and the homesickness started to kick in. Also, I think I understand what they mean by culture shock now. I admit, I was starting to regret my decision just a little bit. All I could think about was how long it would be until I could have a hug from my mom and my dad and my boyfriend, and my mind started to become physically tired from all the Japanese. It's exhausting to feel like you don't understand a single thing in your life; when you don't understand what anyone is saying, when you don't know anything about where you are, when you don't know anything about the people around you, and when nobody who truly loves you is by your side, and won't be for another 11 months. But then I remembered: I may not understand anything around me, but I understand myself. It sounds so moral-y, but I honestly think it's important to remember. I need to remember it, and...
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