1998.06.15 MON

If the television were any indication of current events in Japan, there's only three things going on here now: the yen dropping to 144 yen per dollar, stirred-up panic over nuclear winter, and the World Cup tournaments in soccer. Every night, people gather in the lounge of our dorm and watch soccer, ever since Wednesday or so. Soccer's pretty big here, way bigger than basketball or baseball or any other sport in the States - it seems that the entire Foreign Students dormitory is watching when the games are going on. Granted, everyone here has someone else to cheer for, considering most of us are from different countries. Japan lost, though, in their first game against Argentina (which no one here comes from).

Oh, another little tidbit in local news is that some travel agencies here overbooked the tickets - they sold 13,000 or so tickets altogether, but they only actually HAD 2,000 or so. Oops. So there's a lot of people who are sitting in France right now without tickets that they paid for ahead of time. The travel agencies agreed to pay back twice the price of the tickets, but still... xb

Cris went back to Chile today. He was born Canadian but then his parents moved to Chile - he knows four languages now (English, French, Spanish, and Japanese). James, Adam, Cris and I usually hung out together, so we were kinda sad to see him go. I didn't know him as well as James and Adam did, so I wasn't quite as emotionally affected as they were, but still - things won't be quite the same without him.

A lot of people are going to be going back home soon, like Cris. In another month or so is summer vacation - here in Japan summer vacation for college lasts almost two months! So I'm going to see if I can find somewhere else in Japan to stay for a little bit, maybe visit different parts of the country if I can. James is going to Hiroshima to visit one of his closest friends, and just about everyone's leaving here as well. Adam heads back to the States in another month, also; some of the foreign students won't be returning. Cris will be back in September when classes start back up.

Oh, right, forgot about Friday. Friday was REAL busy. First I went to class as usual - conversation practice class was pretty interesting. Then I went to the manga circle to hang out for a bit - they're going to be printing that name-list thing this coming Thursday. From Friday night till Monday morning they're going to be in a room just downstairs - doing SOMETHING all weekend, I haven't figured out just WHAT yet, but it should be interesting. A little problem with the times though - it starts at 5 on Friday, the exact time that me and James are eating dinner with Dr. Spence (one of the many people who helped me get here!), and... well, I wouldn't miss either. I didn't know the manga club thing was gonna be all weekend long, but since it is, I suppose I can go to both now ;b

After the manga circle on Friday we went to go play at the basketball circle - pretty fun. They divide us up into teams of five and each team gets to play twice. Afterwards we went out to dinner - I still get amused by all the attention me and James get. The restaurant didn't have enough space for all of us from the circle to sit together, so we were spread out all over the restaurant. At one of the other tables across the room, some other circle members were just dying to know about the 'new foreigner' so they sent an ambassador out to ask what my name was and where I came from.

Poor girl; she asked me what my name was, in English, while the rest of the people from her table were in tears laughing. I asked her if she was embarassed (in Japanese), and she nodded enthusiastically. So then she asked me where I came from, and I told her America, and then the guys from the table called out the same question. Once I gave them the answer too, one of the guys threw up his hand, like he won a bet or something ;b The little ambassador trotted back off to her table with a shy grin, I don't think she said anything else ;b It was pretty amusing, altogether.

But that's what happens, around here - most of my conversations are half in English, half in Japanese - sometimes the Japanese ask questions in their best English (which is better than they admit, usually ;b ), and I try my best Japanese the rest of the time. I'm afraid that once people get to know me that I won't have anything to talk about, since all they have asked me about so far is America, and once they run out of the simple questions... where to? ;b

Anyways, I'm meeting tons of people here (only a fourth of which I remember the names of), and most if not all of them are friendly, once they speak to me. It's a very educational experience - I remember speaking to foreign students in America and remember their struggles with the language; all I can think of is that I'm in the exact same position as them, now. Learning the language, one word at a time...

Speaking of one word at a time, I've got a HUGE vocabulary test on Wednesday that I should probably go study for. Later!