Entrance Ceremony!

Kyou no Nihongo no Kotoba (今日の日本語の言葉): koshou (コショウ) - black pepper

This word was brought to you by my need for spicy things today at lunch!

Breakfast was an interesting affair this morning. I woke up at six and realized that I had forgotten to write my blog! I hope this doesn't happen again. I'm determined to keep up with it every day, since I want this blog for my own future memory records as well. So nevertheless, I wrote the blog post this morning in a rush (thus, sorry for its shortness and lack of detail), and then ran down for breakfast.

Breakfast consisted of bread, ham, yogurt, condiments, salad, and best of all, kaki. Kaki is the fruit picture above, which is a Japanese persimmon. I don't think I've ever had American persimmons to compare it with, and thus I don't know how to describe it to you. The best I can say it that it tasted like a pear. But a Vietnamese pear. Which I guess doesn't help some of you either. It's a certain type of watery sweetness.

Anyways, the rest of breakfast was a bit weird. I had toast and ham like a regular person, but how Ryosuke eats it is that he puts his ham and lettuce on buttered bread, covers it in mayo, and then adds some jam. I tried it that way, and it actually tastes pretty good! I'd definitely have that again (and as I'm writing this, I'm reminded of breakfast, because Yoshiko-san is currently baking bread, which makes the whole house smell like a bakery. YUM!).

Another thing I found interesting was the peanut butter, which can be seen in further detail below. It looks shiny, and kind of tastes like what I imagine peanut butter might taste like if it was a Nutella-like item. It has that texture and vaguely hazelnut taste, despite being peanuts. And it tastes a lot sweeter, and has a consistency a bit more like jam as well. It tastes better to me than American peanut butter though.

After breakfast, I left the house at 7:40 and went to school, not wanting to be late for the ceremony (it started at 10:00). I just wanted ample time just in case I got lost, though I ended up not needing it when I got to school at 8:40. Luckily, I had my kindle and my latest installment of Horatio Hornblower to hold me over (I'm rereading Midshipman Hornblower, the first in the series; it's so different from the show!). 

On the way, however, I got squished on the train! I got pushed in! Yatta! IT HAPPENED! And as much as I think it's cool that I finally experienced this on the Asakusa line (since I'm at the end of the line, and going into the city is uber crowded), it was really difficult to breathe. I've worn a tight corset before, and I totally would pick that over this any day. I was leaning against a handrail near the door, and thus was bent backwards over it a little, making my lower back hurt quite a bit. You have to breathe short breaths, since there's no space to expand much further. I am not exaggerating. If you ask someone else who's been on a pushed in train, they will tell you the same. It's a bit freaky.

View from Gotanda station. 

The conductor guy who pushes people onto trains! 

The train after it clears out. 

A little peace of daytime Akihabara 

Can you tell how crowded it is? 

Opening ceremony was fun. We played some trivia, discovered that we could see Tokyo Sky Tree from the school building, and introduced ourselves to each other. We got a tour of the classrooms and then took a group picture. That's about it. I met a few new people, and am very excited to start class on Thursday!

We went to lunch at an Italian/Japanese place, and I ate tonkatsu while others ate pasta. On our way back to the station, I saw a couple maids advertising maid cafes, and I managed to get a shot of this one. They are very out there when it comes to advertising. I also saw the Gundam Cafe, which I didn't enter, but sounds very interesting. Luckily, it's near school, so I'm sure to go there sometime soon.

I then made my way back to Nishi-Magome, which is my stop for home, and took a nice picture of the sunset on my main road. On the way back, I also noticed that crossing signs are very well dressed men. The have suits and hats and everything! They're so much more posh and polite than those naked American crossing signs...

For dinner, we just had leftovers, which is some porridge, fried pork, salad, sweet potatoes (which look like regular American purple potatoes), and a radishes. We also had freshly baked bread infused with sweet cream, so it was absolutely delicious!

I want to leave a parting image of a new umbrella I bought, which is so utterly adorable. It's got dark and light blue hues, with light green circles and highlights, and then it has white kitties all over! It's very, very cute, and it was pretty cheap.

I LOVE JAPAN! Tomorrow, I think I'll head to Harajuku, since I have the day off. I'll probably go with Julien (and maybe Ian) to get some kara-age for lunch (if you don't know what it is, hopefully you'll get pictures tomorrow; it's really good fried chicken with rice). I just learned how to say this in Japanese, so here goes nothing! Watashi ha mokuyoubi ni gakkou ni ikukoto wo tanoshimi ni shiteimasu! 私は木曜日に学校に行くことを楽しみにしています!  I'm looking forward to school on Thursday!

XOXO,

Maggie

National Health and Fitness Day

Japanese word of the day: Yukan (勇敢) - brave

This word has been brought to you by the little people I saw today at the park, who fearlessly charged into each and every obstacle course.

First off, I'm very happy that Japan has a health and fitness day. If only America had that holiday (and actually participated in it). Families in Japan are very into each and every holiday, whereas the case is obviously not the same in America (Columbus Day? Does anyone walk into some stranger's house and start declaring that this is now their living room?). 

Anyways, the day started off with breakfast, which was pancakes, to my delight! However, as I started to make them, all the ingredients were in grams/ounces/mili-litres. I got really confused, needless to say, and took a while to actually get into things. The pancakes ended up being delicious! Apparently, people in Japan often eat pancakes with condensed milk drizzled over it, which is delicious, but it's something I hadn't tried until that day.

After breakfast, we departed for the park in celebration of National Health and Fitness Day (Taiiku no Hi). It's apparently a famous park around this here parts, and it was very crowded when we got there. The line was incredibly long. 

Nevertheless, when we got into the park, that's where the fun began. I found that I'm definitely not as agile as I wanted to be, but that wasn't much of a surprise. It's a big ropes and wood course with 40 obstacles. It's more for the children than anything else, though there are a few challenging ones that adults try themselves as well. Each course is marked with it's own number sign, and a description as to how to do the course correctly. Then you have your own pamphlet in which you can mark whether or not you were successful in completing that course.

I did some cool things at the park, such as tightrope walking and running on a water wheel. Mostly I just stood around and took pictures though.

I'm not good at balance.

Ain't she a cutie?

Walking on a water wheel isn't easy.

SO MANY people got wet. Full on. Head and all.

I didn't want to run. At all. 

Very cool architecture! 

After the park, we went to a food court for lunch. On the way, I saw this whole baseball team travel in their bikes, and when I asked, apparently that's how many baseball teams get around. Biking with the whole team to your destination. That sounds a lot more fun than getting rides to the game, don't you think?

7/11 has their own premium brand here that sells
special rice and bedsheets, among other things.

For lunch, I had this beef and rice dish, which is definitely even more delicious than it looks. It's really good. Really, really good. Masahiro-san had ramen, and the rest of them had McDonald's, as you can see in the background.

After that, I went shopping for groceries with Yoshiko-san, where I saw many interesting things, like pikachu fish cakes. Their meat selection is also massive. They have every cut of meat I can imagine, and in many different sized packages, for different needs. They also had corn dogs in that section, which I thought was weird.

I also saw some very large green onions, and some very small bell peppers (they don't get much bigger than that around this here parts). In addition, everywhere, they were giving out samples, but samples of things I didn't find that special, like hard boiled eggs and rice...

When you check out, it's a three step process. First, you get your items scanned, and they put the necessary bags into your basket for you. Then you go and pay with a different lady. Then you take your basket to the bagging station and bag the stuff yourself.

After that, we went back home. The streets near the house are really small and narrow, and they barely fit two cars side by side, yet they're still two way roads. People are so used to it, like Masahiro-san, that they drive pretty quickly past other cars. I flinch every time.

For dinner (after some relaxing, a walk to the library, etc.), we had chawanmushi (the pudding like thing) and this little fish, whose name I forget. The miso soup and rice were regular stuff I'd had before, but I was hesitant about the rest.

The chawanmushi tastes like miso soup a little bit, but it's god baked egg on top, which is why it looks like pudding and has that consistency as well. I ate that all with enthusiasm when I actually realized that despite my dislike for pudding-like things, this was actually pretty good.

The fish, however, was a different story. You're actually supposed to eat the fish head and all, but I couldn't bear to eat that head. So after the head, you're still supposed to eat all the bones and spine and stuff, which I still found difficult. When you break open the fish, there are eggs everywhere too, and I usually don't like fish eggs when they're on sushi, so...

Nevertheless, I promised myself that I'd try everything that came my way, and so I took a bite of the fish, spine and all, and it actually just tasted like... fish. I don't think I'd order this of my own volition at a restaurant, but it actually wasn't that bad. The spine was a bit difficult to chew, though, so I left it alone and ate the rest of the fish. I was pretty proud of myself (and I still am).

Apologies for the late post! I fell asleep last night, having forgotten to blog. But here you are! And just in time for me to head to my school's entrance ceremony!

All the best,

Maggie