Week 12 in Japan: Snow, Sitting on the floor, Work dinner

Week 12 finally brought real winter to Akita but I don't mind :). It snows everyday but the weather is still hovering around 0 degrees so lots of it melts too. This makes it really icy and slushy but there it snows so much that even though some melts it won't be going away now. On Tuesday I went to an Oden restraunt with some friends for a birthday party, lots of fun. Oden is a Japanese dish that is known best to be eaten in the winter but I think is eaten all year round. There is basically a big warm plate/stew and you pick different things from it and make your own dish. Things like eggs, tofu, eggs, radishes, fish cakes and much more to choose from. One thing I've learned since I've been in Japan is that if Tofu is made right it is actually not so bad. Besides the Oden we had kimuchi and sashimi. Some Korean foods because it was a birthday party for two Korean friends who have a birthday on the same day. After a couple hours eating and chatting there we went to the International dormitory where some of my friends live and hung out. The style of the lounge rooms in Japan are maybe different from what you would expect. It is a tatami mat style floor. Tatami is like a soft wood flooring kind of hard to explain but you can google it. So you have to take your shoes off and you sit of the floor and there is a table that is low to the ground. If you come to Japan it is best to be good at sitting on the ground for long periods of time. My back gets sore or my feet but the asian people I know can sit cross-legged with a straight back for looong periods of time. Really good posture. Because I was out so late I skipped class Wednesday morning :/. My Wednesday morning class is at 8:50 so it was just too early for me to want to go. Plus it was a Kanji class so it can be really boring. Thursday I went to a place called Murasaki as a work party. In Japan employees are usually good friends with their bosses and often see eachother outside of or after work. My boss is really young and cool and speaks the best English of any Japanese person I know. He's an Englsih professor at the University and is in charge of the English learning center where I work. Again Thursday night the dinner was from 8pm to almost midnight and we sat on the floor the whole time. When I say dinner I mean Nomihodai which as I said previously is a drink buffet. We ate some food but because of the time it was at you were not supposed to come super hungry. Sunday there was an event at the University where international students made posters and Japanese could come and learn about differnent countries and talk to people from those countries. So some people came and checked it out and I talked to them about the USA (in Japanese). I've been really busy so I've been falling behind on my homework and studying a lot less. The flip side to this is that I'm not studying because I'm going out with friends and during that time I'm speaking Japanese so it is kind like studying. The problem is that even if my conversation and listening gets better, I still need to sit down and learn certain grammar and study vocab. I find it hard to believe that people can learn gramatically complex language by simply being "immersed in the language" unfortunately I think you still need to study. Now for the pictures. Thanks for reading!

 Here is a picture I found on Facebook from the museum we went to in class last week. I'm actually in the picture too. The thing with the samurais is a float for a massive parade. Pretty awesome.

 This is a picture from Thursday night when we went to Murasaki. person in the middle is Alina from Romania. She said she wanted a picture of the food we were cooking so I said I'd take a picture, guess she didn't want to be in it. The one on the left is Hikaru (Japanese) who is kind of like my tutor and helps me out (especially when I first got to Japan when I was getting my bank account etc setup). On the right is Kana (Japanese) who I work with on Tuesday night for the English conversation night.

 Several different students from different countries made posters with things about their country on them. We then introduced our county to people who visited. Here Hakusetuhi from China and I.

 We went out to lunch on Sunday during the international event I mentioned. We did a "selfie" style picture that the guy in the back left took. His name is Ginwook and he is from Korea. We had him take it because apparently Koreans are masters at selfies. There was a ledge on the wall so I said we should do a timed-capture picture too. It's pretty good but I don't think 10 seconds was quite enough. Also I'll mention that we sat on the floor here too. Real seats are too mainstream.