On Saturday I ventured to the Japanese equiavalent of Ikea. Got myself some more blankets because it has gotten awfully cold here, awfully quickly. It will likely snow soon if the temperature stays this low. My Ikea trip was a long jaunt but a success as you can see in the picture. Yes, I carried all of that stuff home on my bike. I was weaving all over the road and innocent pedestrians were having a good laugh as the dove out of the way. I have to say that it was a personal victory for me to take on that kind of a bike ride loaded down with the packages – any of you who has seen me on a bike knows what I am talking about.
That night I went for dinner with Paul. My current neighbour and a PhD student in anthropology from Alberta. We ate nabe which is a soup that is cooked at the table in front of you. Paul, who has spent more than his share of time in rural Japan, tells me that nabe is typically a dish that is made at home and the family or guests gather around and make a social evening of the meal. Our nabe had piles of seafood in it; crab, clams, squid, tuna, snapper, salmon – it was really great! The photo here shows the nabe (we are getting to the bottom of it here). It is cooked in a heavy clay pot with handles on the side and they bring a small single burner gas stove to your table.
On Sunday I went shopping with another neighbour, Sara, a PhD student from Maine who is working on protein chemistry. I showed her some of the fun shops and markets that I have found and she did likewise. We managed to stumble on a few other gems in the meantime like a yarn shop (she crochets so we were both pretty stoked about that one!), a cheap clothing store, and a killer food market kinda like Granville Island market. We even found an authentic bagel shop that definitely tastes like it uses real flour (bread just doesn't taste right when it is made with rice flour).
Monday morning began my first Japanese language lesson. Whew! I am in for it! It is only a beginner lesson but I am already behind (it didn't help that I missed the first lesson on Friday because I thought that it started today). The course outline shows that we have quizzes every two days on vocabulary and writing and I spent 3 hours today doing my homework (WHAT!).
So from what I understand I can expect a couple hours of homework a night, midterms and final exams – and they have an attendance component to the grading system. Crap, when did I revert back into undergrad??? The photo below shows the homework that I had today. It is all hirigana (one of the three writing systems in Japan) characters and I just had to write them over and over again to try to learn them. Some of them sunk in, but not many. I have conversation lessons on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and kanji (that is another more complicated writing system) on Tuesday/Thursday.
