Exploration, Karaoke, Cards, and Video Games

Wow... it has been a while since I posted anything.

I have been SO BUSY!
It has been great and crazy all at once haha

So I'll start off with some pics me and Molly took one day while we were exploring Toyo (our school).
We managed to find our way onto the roof and took some great pictures of the view from there ^^

Last weekend I went with a huge group to karaoke and we had a blast!! 8 solid hours of singing, laughing, eating, and just having fun in general. ♥

Then the other night my Language Exchange Partner (LEP) Daiki brought his Wii and a big group of us played Super Smash Bros for most of the evening!  I was SO bad the first day, but since then I have been practicing because I am determined to be able to keep up with the guys haha  But before we played video games, since Takuto, Masaki, and Naoki taught me how to play Old Maid (which I never knew how to play to everyone's extreme surprise), I decided to try (with the help of Nick and Molly) to teach them how to play E.R.S. which ended up being extremely fun even though most of the time I was out of cards and on the side trying to slap my way back in :P

Today I'm going to do homework and sleep.  You know... have to work that in somewhere LOL

Hanabi

Ok.... fastest blog post ever because I am so tired and I have to wake up early tomorrow!

Today I went to my first Japanese festival!
We went to see the Adachi Fireworks Festival next to the Arakawa River~
It was amazing and fireworks will never be quite the same for me again I think.
Thank you Japan, you have spoiled me :P

I'll post more soon and include some videos I took of the fireworks~

Change of plans....

Ok so....
when I posted that I was placed in the level two class, it looks like I lied.
They have moved me up into the highest level class now (L3)
I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this...
The class is full of people who are absolutely brilliant at not only reading and writing Japanese but speaking it as well.  In fact, most of them have lived in Japan at some point before now.  It makes it very intimidating for me because I'm definitely at the bottom of the class.... but I talked to the people at the GIO office and they said that I scored really high on my placement test and barely fell short of making it into the level 3 class to start with so they think I have the skills needed for the class....
The level two class was comfortable for me.  Level three pushes me way outside that comfort zone, but seeing as how I chose to come live in a country that speaks an entirely different language for a year at a school where I didn't know anyone, being in my comfort zone wasn't a luxury I expected to have anyway haha so I think I can survive.  It's just going to mean a lot of time spent studying each night.  But again, since I came here to learn the language, that's not such a bad thing.  I guess I will just have to see how it goes :/

がんばりますよ！！ (it means: I will do my best!)

DRUM ROLL~~~~

The results are in: I have been placed in Japanese level 2!
That's out of 3 possible classes so I'm in the middle one :D

Today was the first official day of Japanese class and it started at 9:00AM this morning.
If there is one thing about myself that I am certain of it is that I am NOT a morning person haha
It's going to take some serious amounts of coffee or red bull to keep me awake through 3 hours of Japanese study every day!!
But my teacher is really really nice and I enjoyed the class today.  It's slightly intimidating because she only speaks in Japanese, but I was doing ok understanding it until I started falling asleep.... oops ^^;

Tomorrow I have 'integrated Japanese' and 'reading and composition'
I'm nervous.

And now it's entirely too late and I have class at 9:00am again tomorrow. so BED TIME~!

First Day of School

Today was my first day of "classes"
I say "classes" because I actually didn't have class today, just a placement test. But I did have to go to the school and take a really hard test! So I'm pretty sure it counts!  The test today was three parts: composition, multiple choice, and kanji.  And they TOTALLY made us start the test with composition.

So at 9:00 in the morning and having not taken a Japanese class in almost 5 months, I wrote my first ever essay in Japanese.  The subject was "things you have experienced since coming to Japan" ... I'm pretty sure that was the most random thing I have ever written.  I'm not even sure it can count as an 'essay' I'm pretty sure it was just a bunch of sentences thrown together in no particular order.  For example: "I have made a lot of good Japanese friends.  My roommate and I like to take purikura when we go to Shibuya. I tried watching movies in Japanese, but it is difficult."  At least they will know I can form sentences I guess even if I can't make them flow haha

Then we got a ten minute break before we had to start the insanity that was the multiple choice portion.  It started out easy with test A...then I raised my hand and got test B and was thinking 'ok this is a little harder but I'm still understanding...' so I raised my hand and got test C.  By the end of test C my eyes were starting to cross and I was going 'hmm well I've never even seen that before but this looks familiar so let's pick this letter!' then I raised my hand and got test D.  Took one look at it and handed back.  There was no point in me even trying because it would have just been me picking random letters the entire way through.

The kanji portion was a joke really.  It was "circle the kanji you recognize" .... I wish the entire thing had been that simple!!

Tomorrow is the worst part: the interview.  I'm extremely intimidated by that one, but since that isn't until tomorrow I'm not going to stress it today.

After the test was over, Molly and I were going to go see one of our new friend's band play at the school, but we got lost and by the time we found the place he had already played haha But we had a good laugh at ourselves getting lost and now we know a little bit more of our school :P

Right now I'm going to go meet Meg and we are going to go see if we can find some good food for lunch.  Maybe try a new restaurant! YAY ADVENTURE! YAY JAPAN!! haha