Bending the rules

I had a lot of questions for Keiko-sensei when I saw her for lunch on Wednesday. She came all the way from UTS to visit Kylie and I as well as the other ICS Japan students to make sure we stayed mostly out of mischief. Heh heh…

Anyway, one of the more important things I wanted to ask was about my flight home next year. Just so you know, Japanese universities finish term in March but UTS usually starts at the end of February. As you can see, there is a clash of schedules. The problem is further aggravated by the compulsory 80% attendance rate to Japanese classes in Gifu University for all international students. So it will be impossible to attend that many classes during my second semester here.

Luckily Keiko-sensei understood our situation and she said that it is more important to be back in Sydney to attend UTS than worry about our classes here. After all our attendance is not credited against our UTS degree and so we don’t have to worry about getting a poor mark. Knowing that was a relief considering I need to return by the first week of February because I’m moving houses and want to be settled in properly before university starts again.

Other things she let us know included being careful about panty-thieves filching our tighty-whities (Japanese perverts have an underwear fetish), not getting into potentially dangerous or embarrassing situations because she doesn’t want to have to bail us out of it and to enjoy our time here because we might not get the same chance ever again. I totally agree with the last bit – the last time I talked to my Japanese adviser I told her if I had to choose between class study experience or learning life experience, I would always choose the latter. It is a no-brainer. I can learn Japanese language anywhere but I can’t learn about the tiny, wonderful things that come with living in a country for a length of time.

Note: Please excuse my English! I’ve noticed that since I’ve been here for some time now, my English skills have deteriorated as my Japanese has improved. I hope I will still be able to converse properly in English by the time I finish here. Uh…emphasis on the ‘hope’. Gomen nasai!

The first song I learnt to play on the ukulele…

This is the song that made me want to learn how to play the the ukulele. It took me a little bit longer than the others because there were quite a few different chords to memorize.

I am playing my version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole so please excuse my silliness! (*^_^*)

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My ukulele

Updated 28/05/08 – I’ve changed the video source from Google Video to YouTube because there were some problems with the former. Sorry about that!

I thought it would be pretty cool to learn how to play the ukulele after Peter introduced me to his instrument so I went out and bought one for myself. It was pretty cheap; just about AU$20 but the sound isn’t as good as a slightly more expensive one.

After practicing for around a month and a half, I’ve learnt about five songs or so. I know it isn’t that many but hey, I’m still learning! I’m not very good yet but I thought you’d might like to hear some of my progress. Please excuse my voice, my playing skills and my poor ol’ ukulele that sounds a little bit funny. I couldn’t really get the tuning right.

I’m playing the first verse from ‘Will You Still Love Me’ by The Shirelles.

Anyway if my interest is still going strong in a couple months, I might consider upgrading my ukulele to a much better one. The price rises exponentially to about AU$100 for the next one up so I will definitely think hard about it!

I’m warning you, don’t make me break your teacup!

Today we learned how to conduct ourselves in a tea ceremony. All I have to say about that experience is: if you make me sit on my knees any longer, I will be forced to break your legs. And most likely your arms too. And your nose for good measure.

Kylie and I had to participate in learning about the tea ceremony as part of our cultural learning program. I think it is a seven week program where you have class once a week to study the basics of the tea ceremony. The university brings in an actual tea teacher person from a tea school. Sounds hunky dory, right? Well you’d change your mind after the tedious one hour lecture about the history and process of tea, which I might add is conducted in crazy-hard-to-understand Japanese, and a further three hours on your knees in a tea room.

Besides that, there are all sorts of rules and gestures for the ceremony and it is different for guys and girls. They include the proper way to sit, the proper way to enter and leave a room, the proper way to open and close the sliding door, the proper way to bow, the proper way to receive and give a tea cup, the proper way to stand, so on and so forth. It makes your head spin! I go through all of that and I’m not even a fan of green tea.

But I guess it was pretty interesting if a bit long and tedious. The tea teacher said that a tea ceremony usually takes about four hours if not longer! It is about the experience and the appreciation of the ceremony, not about the tea which sort of makes sense in a Japanese context.

Note: I am fairly certain all of the future UTS students will have to take part in this as well.

Chronic laziness

I have this problem – when it comes to studying I am chronically lazy to such a point that even if there was an exam the next day, I wouldn’t really do any revision. Needless to say, my recent test results were less than stellar…oh dear.

When my test results were returned last week, I wasn’t really surprised to find out that I only got *bleep bleep (actual scores have been changed to protect their identity). It didn’t really bother me because I knew my results were a reflection of the lack of studying I didn’t do; I was busy shopping instead. LOL! But obviously my test scores worried some of my teachers and so I got called in to talk to my teacher adviser because she thought that Japanese class B was perhaps a bit too difficult for me.

Well I set her straight from the get go (I didn’t want her to worry overly much about my dismal test scores); I told her right out that I am basically a person that doesn’t really like to study or in other words, lazy. Ha ha, I think she was a bit surprised that I was so blunt and forthcoming. I usually don’t mince words; why bother when the message gets across more efficiently if you tell the honest truth?

Another thing she was worried about was that I wasn’t understanding what the teachers were saying in class when they spoke Japanese. That’s fairly true; so far I only understand about 60% of what is being said but I thought that was an improvement over the 50% that I used to understand during the first few weeks of class! I usually get the gist of things after a while…sort of.

One last thing we discussed before I left was my lack of Japanese speaking in class. The reasons for this:

1. Firstly, my Japanese is pretty crap. I tend to speak in words and not sentences; I leave it to the Japanese to piece my words together because I usually don’t know the correct grammar form to join them.

2. My first classes are early in the morning and I am so not a morning person. I would prefer if no one spoke to me and I to them; even better if I was still in bed until about 9.30am. Generally, I’m pretty sleepy and unresponsive during first period but I do tend to wake enough to learn things during second period. Hey, that is better than nothing!

3. Please feed me to make me work. Brain + food = occasional insights into the Japanese language. You’d think that would be simple enough…oh, so so wrong. Sleep is more important to me than food but without food, I will become sleepy. What a vicious cycle! It is a lose-lose situation, sigh!

Our meeting ended with her advising me to study next time I have a test, speak more Japanese in class and keep on practicing all my skills. Hmm…

P.S. Dad, if you are reading this please disregard everything I have said. Instead, I have been studying really hard and learning heaps of new things. I will be an old pro in a matter of months so please don’t worry about me. Everything is fine and dandy!