How things are going

So I'm really on a roll today with blog posts.  First I post something relatively pointless, then I post something I've been meaning to post for a while, and now I'm posting about my mundane, everyday activities, which are getting more exciting as time goes on.

As of yesterday, I am currently on spring break, which for most college students in Japan is like summer break in the US, meaning that it's long.  Most of the time I've been here the rest of the world around me has been on spring break.  My spring break on the other hand will be about two weeks.

Because I am on spring break, we will be going to Kyoto.  This is likely to be our only large trip while in Japan (large meaning that we'll be staying a few nights and riding the shinkansen.)  Tina has already decided on many places that she would like to visit. I will look at a few tomorrow.

Since the intensive portion of the course is over, upon coming back from break we will both be choosing classes for spring semester.  Not many classes are really up to us, mind you, but it's exciting all the same.  I've run into the problem of wanting to take more than I'll be able to, which I think I can resolve by telling myself how much I've been wanting to study independently and reminding myself that I'd also like to set aside some time for computer science before my college plans go sour from my lack of doing so.

I'm also looking forward to warmer weather.  I've decided that once it gets just a little bit warmer, I'm going to walk up to a mountain and just climb it.  I've already picked out a couple peaks I want to reach.  If you think that's nuts I'll remind you that although the mountains around me definitely qualify as being such, they aren't very big.  I anticipate being able to go up and down one easily in a day.  One the other hand, I also think that it will give me some excellent exercise and fulfill the video game oriented part of my brain that likes clearly defined challenges set out before me that I can achieve with a little bit of effort.

More things to be excited about.  I've decided to make some trail mix for myself, because I love trail mix, and have purchased supplies to do so.  I am, however, missing MM's, which I will undoubtedly have to find a substitute for.  I have not seen them.  Tina says I ought to toast the almonds I bought to get a little bit more flavor out of them, so I will try to do that tomorrow.

I don't know if you knew this, but K-pop (Korean Pop) is amazingly popular in Japan right now.  A lot of artists sing in a combination of Korean, Japanese and English.  To give a few examples:  2NE1, Girls Generation, 4Minute, and the group I recently discovered through my host family, Kara.  In fact the song Go Go Summer has been stuck in my head a lot in the past week or so.

There's also a song called Itsudatte Bokurawa that I heard at the local bookstore and got hooked on.  (And before anyone notices and comments on it (or to clarify in advance for other people currently studying Japanese), that last "wa" is は and no I won't romanjinize it any other way.)  I'm afraid a literal translation doesn't really make sense in English, but itsudatte means "always" or "at any time" and bokura is a softer sounding male pronoun that means "we."  The "wa" tacked on the end indicates that the previous word, in this case "bokura" is the subject of... well this isn't a sentence, but if it were the "we" would be the subject.
(EDIT:  I originally posted a link to the video on youtube, but it didn't work from America and has since been taken down.  It seems Sony Music never intended to leave it up for long, and does a good job of monitoring reuploads.)

Yeah, I don't know if that made any sense at all, but I thought I would give it a shot.

Right now I'm reading though the children's manga, Chi's Sweet Home.  It's a combination of easy and difficult.  Easy for obvious reasons, but also hard because the speech is so casual that it can be hard to know what I should be searching. And in the case that I do find it but it presents me with several meanings of one word and the context does not make it obvious enough, I'm still screwed.  Furthermore, the cat speaks in "kid language," which often forces me to take a stab at what it's trying to say before I can even figure out whether or not I already know the word it's using.

It helps that now Tina has the English translations, which I've found to be generally pretty reliable, though they already killed one of the jokes involving parallel speech between the (human) mother and the cat over the course of her trying to bathe it.  I would read harder manga, but the pace ends up being so ridiculously slow and although I can understand the meaning in the end (usually), I don't absorb enough of the vocabulary that I just had to look up to do so.  One of my major goals is to get better at reading manga though, and I think if I can read it out loud to myself (plus other things of course) I can keep in relatively good practice with Japanese after I leave the country.

Well, it's getting pretty late, and I think I've said most of what I wanted to say.  Soon(ish... sort of) I'll post my next interesting facts entry, which I have a steadily growing list for.  I think it'll have twice as many interesting facts with a little bit less ramble than last time, so please read it when it comes out.  Please and thank you very much!

Oh!  And I don't mind receiving contact from any of you!  Please feel free to let me know how you are doing or if you have any questions for me I would be happy to answer them.  Last I saw, this blog was about to hit 1,000 page views.  I am very happy!  Thank you all very much!  I hope you continue to stick with me and read my blog.  じゃあね～