Time flies when you are having fun in a foreign land. I am not sure when the last time I posted was, or what I talked about, so I am going to go ahead and assume that it was at least a week ago, cause I am pretty sure it was (I can't tell for sure because I am at school, and it has a firewall that doesn't let me on blogger, so I am emailing this onto the blog. For that same reason, there will be no pictures).
The last week, I went to "language camp" which was kind of like going to a really easy college and living in residence. All of the first year jets from prefecture came to the University in our town. It was a good time, and I got a nice base to start my Nihongo (Japanese) learning off, basic stuff � like taking the bus, shopping and ordering food.
A highlight of the camp included, using the gym at the university to have 3 on 3 basketball games, where "Team Commomwealth" remained undefeated against "Team USA" (Diefenbaker would have been proud). Another highlight saw me give my first speech in Nihongo, at the closing ceremonies. It was pretty simple but the crowd enjoyed it.
The Japanese really seem to like their ceremonies everything has a formal start and finish, and there is always formal speeches and introductions.
Also this week, we made some Japanese friends, students from the uni where we had language camp. A few of the Jets from the area went out on Friday night and our new Japanese friends joined us for an epic three hours of Kareoke. In Japan you can bring in your own food and drink to Kareoke (most places actually), so by the time we got there, the huge backpack of beer I was carrying for everyone was getting pretty heavy. We had a lot of fun, there was not a huge selection of English songs at this particular karaoke, so I resorted to singing an Oasis song � I dedicated it to Brad and Paul (I don't know what song it was, but I still knew all the words some how "you said the brains I had went to my head"). Those that have access to Spacebook, I think Tessa may have some pictures of the event posted.
To finish off the week, I went and saw San Frecce Hiroshima FC play soccer in Hiroshima city. It was awesome. San Frecce plays in Division 2 of the J-league, they lost a playoff to be relegated last year. Despite there div 2 position they are a talented squad and have been dominating their league. This played out in the game we went to, where they defeated Fukoka Avispa 4-0 in a really exciting match. Way more entertaining then watching the baseball game (go carps!). The stadium they play at is pretty sweet, it looks like a giant spaceship, it holds 50 thousand people, and is quite new (I am assuming it was built for the World Cup).
I am going to go plan some lessons, or try to figure out how to use the photocopier or something to make it look like I am busy. Looking busy seems to be pretty important in Japanese culture, even if you have nothing to do, and everyone knows you still need to appear hard at work (I have been hitting the keys extra hard so everyone can tell I am typing something very important).
Speaking of keyboards, I figured out how to use my Japanese one this morning. This is my name in Katakana (well close, I have keyboard figured out but the language I still have some work to do) ベンデグ カ�テス
I have finished editing a video tour of Tessa and my apartment; I just have to figure out how to get a 14 min video online. Any ideas?
じゃまった
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