Sep
12
September Rain
Filed Under Newspost
No, it hasn’t rained in a while but I’m pro-rain when it comes to days being this suffocating.
On-campus sports
After two randomly organized sport events had ended abruptly with participating teams fading about two minutes after I joined (do I sense a pattern?) I was finally able to get to play some ultimate with mixed Japanese/exchange-student teams on Friday afternoon. Playing anything on the sand-covered artificial turf is already pretty annoying with shoes on, but gets really painful with bare feet. Unfortunately, I am still utterly worthless at throwing a Frisbee in any direction except towards the ground so I guess I will have to start training that part of my game. Running around only gets you that far. I also checked out the school gym, a place that is almost always empty currently; who knows what will happen to it on the 25th when local students start their second semester.
Resolving conflict
As for lecture courses, the international negotiation classes held by Professor Tracy started on Wednesday, and although he has not really taught us anything yet, I have to say that he is by far the most motivating and knowledgeable lecturer I have had since I can remember. I am already looking forward to becoming the person who unites the two Koreas using only a couple verbal tricks.
Tora-chan’s birthday party
Friday evening we held a birthday party for Travis (another exchange student, what did you expect?) in Kyoto, in a weird horror-themed restaurant. The table was situated in a prison cell and at some point during dinner an alarm went on and the whole place had a blackout, except for a few meticulously well placed UV-lamps that apparently were powered by the aforementioned alarm noise. After a few minutes, suspicious creatures dressed in black capes and wearing scream masks started jumping around the cells and entertaining / scaring people. Besides the show, the dinner included a decent amount of food and a two-hour nomihôdai. Tora-chan also received a piece of cake with his name written on it. Yatta! The whole experience was somewhat different than what I’m used to seeing at birthday parties but the evening was very unique and enjoyable nevertheless.
Je ne comprends pas
I’m slowly getting used to my keitai, although I’m still too scared to use the internet, TV or other advanced functions by fear of not being able to pay my first bill. The most useful feature until now has been the trading of contact information with other people via infrared connection, a process that looks quite retarded when taking in account that the IR transmitters are located in completely different locations on different phone models. The incessant contact card trading has transformed my phone’s contact list into an ambiguous collection of Japanese girls’ names I can’t possibly read. It is a good incentive to try and learn new kanji, though.
A small cultural note concerning those who are acquainted with mobile phone dangles and charms that make you look like you haven’t hit your teens yet. Well, in Japan, it seems to be a local policy to have a significant amount of them attached to your phone no matter how old or in what social position you are. Just from watching people during one short train ride you can see adults, elderly people, middle aged salarymen or pretty much anybody hanging around with a phone with so many useless gadgets and plushies hanging from it that it will not fit into any kind of pocket. Although this is Japan, so those dangles might actually be other smaller versions of the same phone that would get lost otherwise. I’ll have to ask people about that.
-Antti