January 22-31 (Wed-Fri) - We Will Survive, or I’m Still Alive p2

After Dad, life returned to normal. Or as normal as it is around here, where so much happens I can’t remember any of it. 

Wednesday-Friday: Since I can’t remember anything particular, here’s a picture of a deformed tomato.

Saturday: After my regular classes, I had an extra demo class with two adorable little boys. They were all the more adorable because they wanted to learn and play games. Then that evening Alice and I went to the mall and ate this Korean food:

Then we watched a movie at my kotatsu :) We watched Frozen. It was cute. I laughed. It’s fun watching a movie with someone.

Miss you, Dad.

Sunday: Today, I went snowboarding for the first time in my life. I was dreading it horribly. Two things I fear as much as tornados and bugs in my ear: heights (more specifically, going down them), and not being able to move freely. Just the thought of strapping my legs together was about as much as I could bare. However, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, observing the one member of our group who chose to try skiing, I think snowboarding is much easier on the beginner, because it’s very easy to sit/fall-down and very easy to get back up. It does kill the knees though. Here I am my first round, cheerily making friends with the snow!

The first run was really long but it got better, thanks to help from Mako and her sister. There were so many people, more often I was worried of being run over than anything else ^^

It worked out well. The only thing I didn’t like, aside from the biting cold :p was that the place had announcements going all the time, interspersed with pop music. Horror. The speakers are not synced to account for distance, so if you are between them you get a horrible echo effect. Horror. Hard to enjoy the beauty of nature. Seems… really… Japanese. Not that I ever generalize. 

We were all exhausted at the end, but it was fun, we survived, and I’m glad we got to do that. Before Hugh injured himself. (Writing two weeks from the future.)

Monday: I had koto lesson today, and liked how the dandan-batake look in the snow:

Tuesday-Friday: This is what I get for falling behind. Big. Gaps. In. Memory. 

Oh, Hugh and Nathan and I tried putting our classes together for a test and movie night. It worked out pretty well. We’re watching My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro) in English. I’ve never seen it, despite it being the most famous and earliest of Ghibli films. 

And during Miki’s class, we talked about French, since she is going to Paris, and she thought the language sounds like spells. (At least my Japanese app has word lists. Memory returns.)

Recent Japanese:

yaruki (やる気) = willingness to do something

uwagaki (上書き) = overwrite

haragurio (腹黒い) = mean, malicious, lit. black stomached

hokenshitsu (保健室) = school infirmary

kusu[no ki] (楠) = camphor tree

shinkoku (深刻) = serious

jumon (呪文) = spell, charm