Week 33 in Japan: Freshmen English camp, Japanese Striped Snake

       It seems to me that with it being spring and the weather getting warm the nature of Japan is also coming to life. On my way to school I like to bike down this one way street that isn't super often traveled. I think the street might cut the distance to school slightly but mostly I just like how pretty the route is. When I was biking to school on Wednesday I came to a quick stop when I saw a snake on the road. The snake was a tan-ish color with black stripes going down it the long way. It was about 4 feet long and I found out later by checking online that it is called the "Japanese Striped Snake" and is not dangerous. It was pretty exciting to see the snake though, it was the biggest snake I've ever seen out in the wild. I've actually kinda liked snakes since I was real young so I spent a little time checking this one out and getting a little closer.. it was totally worth being late for class.
       On the weekend starting on Saturday I went to an English camp that was for the freshmen of the International Resources major. The camp was mainly to help the students get used to speaking English and I was invited to join the camp to help out. On my way to the bus I actually met a cool dog. I talked to the dog's owner lady a little bit as we were waiting for the light to change and she said her name was Momo which means peach in Japanese. She was really friendly and so was Momo. I actually see a lot of really cool dogs and want to take pictures of them but I don't want to be annoying so I usually don't. But lately I've been thinking is somebody is out for a walk with their dog they probably won't be bothered by their dog getting attention. Plus I think people love to hear their dog get praised cause everybody thinks their dog is the best dog anyways. Moving on we took buses to a building that was a mix between a hotel and a community center. The room I was in was nicer than the ones the students got so that was cool. I helped out with various activities on Saturday and Sunday and had a great time meeting a lot of new people. The camp was supposed to be for the students to use English only but they ended up speaking strictly Japanese. I guess it kind of couldn't be helped but I tried my best to have people use Engish. For example if somebody said something to me in Japanese I would reply in English. Then in most cases repeat it and rephrase it over and over til they understood. These students are better than average with English but they are still very far from being able to have a normal conversation with. All in all I think everybody had fun and that's most important haha. Also the food was good and although I didn't get paid the cost of everything was covered for me so that was nice.

 Kazuha and I at the camp in front of a stellar painting (see the cows?). I actually knew Kazuha before the camp because she is one of the managers on the football team.

 Here is a picture of the snake. I actually ended up getting pretty close to it. I felt like a super mild version of the crocodile hunter.

Here is Momo and her Master.

 Kind of an awesome dog. That's just the vibe I got.

 Some down time during the camp.

 <---- My Russian friend Sasha. Sunday night there was a fun barbecue outside because the weather was nice. This picture I realize isn't outside but it was from the party.

Week 32 in Japan: Japanese Magician, and Let it Go

      On Tuesday the 29th of April we had class off so lots of people went to enjoy viewing the Cherry Blossom trees one last time, including me. The two clubs i'm in Borderless which is an international club that doesn't really do much of anything usually had a meeting in Senshyu park for hanami. So I started out with the Borderless club and we ate and drank starting at about 12. I ended up leaving that group a little early and at around 4 o clock I joined up with my football team that was once again going to enjoy the Cherry Blossoms and drink together. Since there were lots of people there I actually ran into some other friends later in the night on Tuesday. Shuto, Yuta, Daichi, and Ryouta. Those guys are fun to hang around cause they are sometimes a little crazy. We were doing some sumo matches and climbing trees haha. One last thing about Tuesday that was cool was that there was a magician in the park who I watched. He travels around in the spring time following the blooming of the sakura trees and does his magic shows in places where people view hanami like Senshyu park. So he started in south Japan maybe a month or two ago and he finally made it to Akita. He also said it was his first time ever doing a magic show in Akita. Wednesday I woke up at 6:00am which is of course unusually early for me so I decided to go for a bike ride to McDonalds. I had class at 10:30am and needed to study for a Kanji test so I brought along my stuff and studied at McDonalds. I actually ordered food, ate, and then studied for about an hour. Then because I don't get to eat McDonalds breakfast very often I ordered another meal (a number 8 this time I think) and ate again. I then proceeded to explore around the city on my bike because the weather was great and I was feeling energetic.

      On Friday night I went out with some friends. Lately how it has gone is that me and my friend Sasha who is from Russia go to the dormitories and rally as many people as we can to go hangout or go on some kind of andventure. Friday night we played pool and later on when everybody else disbanded Sasha and I went to Omachi which is the most lively part of town with bars, restaurants, etc open throughout the night. The night we went we were surprised to see lots of police cars. I think I counted a total of eight. It seemed to be that somebody got into a fight or something. We actually saw somebody with blood running down his head in more than one spot. Of course it's not fun to see that somebody got hurt but it was a bit of excitement. We didn't end up drinking more in Omachi because the bars are expensive there and we thought ramen was a better choice :).
      The next day which was the 3rd I had a football game. This time I ended up playing kick offs, and quite a bit as running back. I had a couple good runs and it was a lot of fun but our team lost 0-7. Later that night I went with Sasha and 4 Mongolians; Maral, Temuleen, Dugmur, and Nayaka to karaoke. I think the favorite song for people to sing was the song "Let it Go" from the Disney movie Frozen. I hear that song fairly often so although I've never seen the movie I know it pretty well. That movie is sooo popular in Japan that it is STILL in the movie theatres. Let it go is definitely a song you'll here if somebody is just acting funny or is drunk haha. Then if I join in and they are Japanese friends they are a lot of times aww'd by my pronounciation haha. On Sunday I had football practice at 9am that lasted until around 3pm. It was extra long because we watched all the game footage.
       That's all for this week, thanks for reading~!

 More and more people came throught the performance. Look at how pretty everything is though :).

Week 31 in Japan: Hanami and a movie trailer festival

This past week has been really spectacular especially because I got to experience hanami which means flower viewing for the first time. Hanami is a big part of Japanese culture so it was fun to do it. Before I get to the cherry blossom tree viewing I want to mention what I did on Wednesday. Wednesday I went with Gal, Alina, and Yasuko, who are friends from my part time job to go to a movie trailer festival. Esentially it was at a cool bar and at the place they had a projector set up and they played movie trailers. Just 4 trailers were played and there was somebody who talked about the movie and kinda gave an in depth movie review of it. The movies were Inception, Zoolander, The Return of the Living Dead, Kids, and an old Japanese film that I can't remember the name of. I didn't understand a lot of what they were talking about with the movie reviews but I understood some so it was pretty enjoyable. Plus after they were done there was a couple guys who had a little concert that was pretty fun to watch. It was interesting because the people at the event were all super artsy people. An artistic group of Japanese from the Akita City area I guess.
      On Sunday I had football practice from nine AM til about one thirty. After that I met up with the football team again at 230 and we went to senshyu park to have a big picnic party. Lots of drinks and snacks and fun. Also the positions of the 1st year students were announced. Lots and lots of Japanese people go out to the park with a big tarp, bring food and drinks, and just hangout and enjoy the beautiful trees. It's really something that almost everybody does at least once while the Cherry Blossom trees are blooming. Overall it was a great time. I think we were in the park from about 3pm - 9pm. At night there are a lights so you can still view the sakura trees which is called Yozakura. I took a couple videos during some of the fun on Sunday so I'll cut my expanation short and you can check out the video if you are interested.
     Thanks for reading again this week. I'll post 2 videos this week. One of the videos has captions that I added so be sure to turn them on! Bye!
   

 Hana, Me, Natsuki, and Mari, 3 of the new managers of the football team. This was Sunday night.

 Found this picture from the Movie Trailer Festival on Facebook.

 Picture from Sunday night. So much Pink!

 This is a message for you guys from my friends. Also it has captions you should turn on. They took so long to add (-_-)

 This one doesn't have any captions because they take too long to add, but it's still interesting. The conversation was mainly about eating goldfish. Which Japanese don't do but I was saying I wanted to try it because there was a place you could get some at the festival.