期末試験週

On the weekend before final exams, Seminar House IV was filled with open Genki books of all levels. Mine remained contently shut under my table on the dusty tatami mat floor. Boxes appeared in the hallway that I could not help but look at out of the corner of my eye. "Unwanted belongings". Each box was for a different type of item and solely existed because Otousan and Okaasan knew that with all the shopping bags we carried home every day, there was no way we were making it home with all of the things we arrived with. How naive we were upon our arrival, in the hundred-degree heat of KIX.

And so it was December, and like I said before, the weekend before final exams. I decided to hit up Misa on my keitai (with the few Yen I had left on it), get a haircut with her in Kyoto, and spend the rest of the weekend at her parents house in Uji (hometown of green tea ice cream). The haircut (and half of the odd experiences of that weekend, really) are part of many other stories, but the way I avoided studying for those ridiculous exams are of this one. Going to Misa's meant being in a total culture clash and language battle. Her denshi jishou was out, open, and on, right between us at all times. I have never used so many gestures in my life. It was to the point of exhaustion. More or less, the visit consisted of this: point, say a word, realize she doesn't understand, punch it into the denshi jishou and out comes the word, still, after countless hours of this she seemed somewhat confused and I would realize that there was no hope in understanding. I would find myself slipping into Engrish and almost slap myself in the face for it.* For some reason, I bonded more with her 24 year old fire fighting sister who had never taken an English class in her life, compared to Misa who had taken English for years. Like I said, culture clash/language battle, but still I packed up and went to Kyoto that weekend to escape the dreadful winding down of the Seminar House and the studying that everybody else was doing.

On Sunday I returned to the Seminar House and me and my best gaijin companion Drew decided to skip out of studying for a few hours, head out to find Heian Jingu, and more or less, take pictures of ourselves walking on rocks in ponds. This excursion resulted in us getting lost like never before. Sanjo, backwards to Shijo, Gojo, Shichijo, and God only knows where we were that day. I wore the weight of my spoken exam on my shoulders and especially on my tired legs as we walked for miles not knowing where we would arrive next. Did I mention that I also had some of the worst PMS ever? I dodged into a kimono store because Drew didn't seem to be taking action on finding reliable directions, and so I finally got the directions we needed; a map on the back of a reciept that consisted of a drawing of 2 roads and a huge torii. I had no doubt I could find the huge torii. I was determined. I had spent the last few months pining over each and every torii in Fushimi Inari Jinja. I was in the middle of a ten-page paper about the beloved torii. It was on. And so, miles upon miles later, we arrived at Heian Jingu with no idea how to get home. Hopping a bus that drove slowly through the streets and past familiar sights, we finally arrived at Kyoto station as it began to get dark out. We spent even more hours there admiring the scene from the roof and the strange Kyoto tower we had somehow never heard of. I knew that I would never have enough time or ambition to study. At that point it did not even matter. We rode the train home on a line we had never known existed, and gawked at the amazing pictures we had taken on our strange adventure.

Arriving back at the Seminar House late that night, I was finally satisfied with Japan. My eyes lit up with amazement as I looked at the pictures from the whole weekend and proceeded to feindishly post them to facebook and skype my friends back home about them. From strange beauty salons and depaato's to amazing Christmas lights and scolding hot takoyaki makers to witnessing a traditional wedding and new parts of the city, I was finally content with the "Unwanted belongings" boxes and proceeded to fill them accordingly. A clock radio, my teddy bear, and a few shirts were only the beginning of my stockpile of "Unwanted belongings".

A desk in CIE awaited me on Monday morning and my final grade for Spoken Japanese was determined: a triumphant D+.



*I brought this home with me too. I somehow began to mix my L's and my R's and using small, fragments of sentences. This was the one thing that seemed to almost work! Surely this had to reflect upon my final papers I wrote for my classes in Japan and how I couldn't bear to watch American Television when I got home.



♪ Due to my current laziness and distraction from schoolwork from mono and tonsillitis, I seem to be falling into this same study mode. I have though, gotten a ridiculous amount of useless reading done.