I had a difficult night last night, since I got dropped from four of my 8 total classes. Today was my chance to rebuild. I managed to add in a bunch of different classes. Unfortunately, I won't know if I'll get bumped from them, too, until the 13th. Uuuugh. I also found out that the contemporary japanese lit class I wanted to take is now only being offered in Japanese. And all the books are in Japanese, have to read 13 full books by the end of the class, as well as make presentations in Japanese. Yeah, that's not happening. I signed up for a Literature and Art class today as well, that should be in english, and that sounds much more promising.
First class of the morning started at 9, and I got there just fine. It was weird though. It's development economics, which is fine, but the prof decided to not even bother coming in today. He had recorded his entire lecture, reading from a script, and reading from the slides connected to the lecture. It was the most boring 45min of Japan so far. However, I feel it will be an interesting class, and I don't really have any alternatives.
Next was a newly added Japanese class about communicating personal history, and it's mostly a writing class. It's a little below my level, but it also looks like a lot of fun. Tamarra and I went to Japanese KFC for lunch. My host sister told me it was very different from her Australian KFC, but I didn't really notice the difference. The portion sizes were smaller, but that's to be expected. There was also a lot of mayo on the sandwich, and it was kind of … zesty? It was okay. The weird thing was that there was a smoking section inside that we had to sit in since there was no room elsewhere. Oh well.
After that was the dreaded Contemporary Lit class. I decided to at least check it out for today. It was worse than I thought. I also stuck around too long. The prof started assigning dates for peoples' projects, and I wanted none of that, and had to explain in Japanese that there's no way I'd be able to do the class. Seriously. That's like, level 6-8 stuff, and I tested into 2. And it's supposed to be in english anyway. I don't know why he thought he could do that. Anyway, water under the bridge, I'm dropping that asap.
After that embarrassing horror of a class, was the other lit class. The prof. had hay fever, which made the class both boring and difficult to understand. It seems like it will be mainly on poetry, and looks like it will be pretty interesting as well. Last class of the day was Thinking and Speaking in Japanese. It's only a 1-2 level class, and really showed. We spent the class doing self-introductions. Basic, this is my name, I come from here, I like this, I don't like that, my major is… etc. I hope it picks up a little bit so I'm not terribly bored.
Coming back to the homestay today was easily the most interesting part of my day. Mama was going wild in the kitchen, frying up a storm. She make almost $100 worth of Tempura, various vegetables, fish, and shrimp. And also grilled some beef. And made udon and soba noodles. It was a sight to see. I wish I had taken a picture of it all arranged together. The occasion for such a meal, was Miri-chan's parents were coming from Korea to visit! Her father was very excited to use his english. He's been studying for a long time, and honestly was very good, if you could get around the accent. Miri's mom was also very nice, but only spoke Korean and a little Japanese. I think they both were overwhelmed by Mama's vigor, which is easy. There were seven of us at Mama's little table, and still we weren't able to eat all that Mama cooked. So that means leftover soba and tempura tomorrow! We bid them good night, and after helping with the enormous cleaning task, I also came to bed. I did a little budgeting, and discovered that if I'm very careful, I'll actually be able to do everything I plan to do. The day ended on a high note finally. But I'm sooooo tired now…
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