Quick Post

Thursday, September 20, 2012
11:22 PM

Hi, everyone!

I just wanted to post the link to my latest YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0z8FCiOyP8


I don't have a lot of time to write right now, because I'm going to study, read, and go to bed soon, but here are a few exciting things that have happened recently...

1. I experienced an earthquake! It wasn't very big (a lot of people who live in Japan told me that they didn't even feel it), but it woke me up around 2:30 AM one morning! It was louder than I thought an earthquake would be. I think the sound of it woke me up, but my bed was shaking, too! I heard my two roommates, Alex and Sammy, talking about what was happening across the room (my third roomie, Kia, slept through it!), but I thought I was dreaming the entire thing until everyone started talking about it in the morning. Crazy!!!

2. I went to a real, live, professional Sumo wrestling tournament! This was something I really wanted to  do during my semester in Japan, so I'm so happy that I was able to go! We bought the cheapest seats (over 3,000 Yen...not actually that cheap!), so we didn't have the best seats, but it was still such a fun time! I never thought I would learn so much from watching two men in diaper thongs wrestle each other :) It was a super interesting cultural experience, and I got some great videos! (Posted in the YouTube video). Who knew that the bout preparation was way longer than the actual bout (wrestling period)? I also imaged Sumo as I had seen it in movies and on tv: man against man trying to push each other out of the ring. I never realized that so much preparation through rituals came before the actual wrestling. It was cool to see the wrestlers in their own corner of the ring, drinking a ladleful of water, the chikara-mizu ("power water"), then stepping back into the ring while tossing a handful of salt into it to purify the area.

3. I finally finished learning all of the characters in Hirigana! (The first of the three Japanese alphabets). I still don't know them perfectly by memory, and the characters definitely don't look very pretty when I write them, but at least I've learned how to write all of them! We were given an assignment to write a few sentences about our family- our parents occupations, how many siblings we have, where our families live, etc., and I wrote the entire thing completely in Hirigana! Yatta!

Tomorrow's Friday which means three classes until the weekend! I can't wait to hang out with my CSBSJU friends, hang out with my Japanese friends, sleep in for three days, hopefully talk to my parents, and hopefully skype my friends back home! I finally get to hang out with my host sister, Megumi, too! She suggested going to a Japanese izakaya (bar) tomorrow night after our classes. My homestay weekend is coming up- the first weekend in October, and I'm sooo excited! I'll update more soon!

Love,
Abby