So Friday was my first official day of school... And somehow I forgot that it was Sports Day. For anyone that doesn't know, Sports Day is a day that most Japanese schools will have where you basically just play.... you guessed it! Sports! All. Day. Not only is it hot as a beast here, but you're playing dodgeball, soccer, volleyball and basketball outside in the heat. Sweatsweatsweatsweatsweat. All of it was so much fun but I felt disgusting by the end of it.
I have friends! (Really?) Japanese-speaking friends. As if. 4 years ago that was my dream. There's about four or five that I talk to on a regular basis. One of them lived in America for four years so she's pretty decent at English and she tends to play the translator when there's something that I really need to say but don't know how. Eventually I'm hoping I'll rarely need translations but for now it's nice...
There's a definite difference between Japanese and American students. Maybe it's the uniforms but it seems to me that everyone here is 20x nicer. It also might help that I'm an exchange student, but everyone seems much more... unified? That's probably the wrong word for it, but there's not as much separation between people's groups, whereas in America it's clique city. Considering the fact that my school has had plenty of exchanges in the past, I'm surprised at how interested a lot of the students are in me. And I know that doesn't sound very humble at all but I'm not even joking. Random people will come up to me in the hallway, smile and say "Hello", to which I always respond, "こんいちは！" And then they look at each other with super wide eyes and act very impressed. This is all girls, by the way. They boys at school could care less that they have an exchange student.
Monday was my first day of real classes, which went well and was pretty uneventful.
Today, however, I had my first Japanese gym class. Anyone from Homewood-Flossmoor High School reading this knows from at least Freshman and Sophomore year about gym. It's a total blow off, most of the gym teachers could care less about the class, and pretty much 3/4 of the class spend the entire period laying down on the dirty gym floor talking about anything but gym. Be glad that you don't have it in Japan. I would compare it to a military training session. They have you line up (and everyone gets in a PERFECTLY straight line...), and today, one of the teachers (there's two) came up and down the rows to check to see that our hair was up and out of our face. If it wasn't, she would point and mutter something, and that person would quickly tie it up in a ponytail. Even if you had pieces of hair hanging down the sides of your face she would motion towards them and mutter something else. Honestly, I've never actually been afraid of a teacher but this woman did. And NO ONE spoke while she was talking. At one point, I had my legs crossed and the other teacher told me I had to sit with my legs up against my chest in front of me. AAAAAAHHHHH. So. Stressful.
Not much else has happened recently, so I'll briefly talk about my room (more precisely my bed)... because I'm boring like that.
Basically my room is half of one big room, split down the middle with a blanket. The other half belongs to one of my host sisters, however she never sleeps in there. Since I didn't bring much (darn you, weight limit), the room is pretty spacious. Now the bed... it's not really a bed. More like a very thin mattress. Before you start judging it, I would just like to say that it's not that uncomfortable.
Did I mention that the Japanese seem to always have two separate bathrooms? At the hotel in Tokyo that I stayed at and at my host home, there is one room for a toilet and another for showering and a sink. When I walked into the shower room in my hotel room in Tokyo I was really lost for a good hour because I had no idea where I was supposed to 'go' if I needed to. I heard my two roommates each go to the bathroom and flush the toilet (awkward?) so I knew it must be somewhere... and then I realized that there was a whole other room.
A quick note on bathrooms here. At least, at my house. The toilets are INSANE. There's no handle to flush; it senses when you get up off the toilet and flushes automatically. It's like I'm at the mall or the airport or something. PLUS, there's a whole slew of buttons you can press for things like a bidet feature. Teehee at the stick figure pictures... What all of the buttons say I can't tell you. All I know is that I'M LIVING IN THE FUTURE. This is what you have to look forward to, U.S.! High-tech toilets!That's all for me today. I rode my bike to school for the first time today and I'm beat. 30 minutes there and back. And lots of hills. Lots. (Illinois, people!)
-Ellie
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