Ok, so the topic is a lie. Nothing much has been happening this week at JCMU. On Wednesday, I had my weekly Japanese Religions in Architecture, Film, and Modernization class, where we talked for 4 hours about…..thermoses. Yes, thermoses. I’m totally not kidding or being sarcastic. We actually talked about the evolution of the hot water thermos, from prewar Japan (40’s) to today’s electric thermoses. We also talked about cooking pots and cooking tools and how they evolved since the 40’s. How this relates to Japanese religion in any way is beyond me, since even the teacher told us that it was “our responsibility” to figure out the connection. Yes, it was mind-numbingly boring, but after 4 hours I left the class with a desire to buy an electronic thermos…..

The rest of the week went as it usually does, with the Thursday night cramming for the test, which went fairly well this time. I’m hoping this test will be my best grade yet on a test. Then again, last week’s test I thought I totally bombed, and it turned out to be my highest yet, so who knows. After the test, we had our “Friday Project”, which this week consisted of us ‘interviewing’ some local people from Hikone. Most of the group turned out to be older women, and soon I was paired off with someone who I was supposed to ask some questions to. At first I was kind of sitting there…..stuttering out some “ums” in Japanese, thinking up some horribly boring questions like “Where do you live?” “What is your favorite food?”, until someone handed me a sheet of paper with some suggested questions. Then I actually got along pretty well talking in only Japanese (however, communicating the concept of daylight-savings time, which Japan does not have, was rather difficult). After a while one of the teachers came over and got me to switch with someone else, so I headed over to talk to a younger Japanese woman, and this time I found out that I got to ask questions in English. From having to talk to people who don’t speak English well, I’ve found out how much we really slur our words together. English also has a lot of silly rules that don’t make any logical sense. Like the words phone or knife. I mean, if you didn’t know much English, you would be reading these as pa-ho-neh and ka-nai-feh. Its stilly. I often generally slow down my speaking speed (since I know when someone talks to me in Japanese at their normal speaking speed I generally have no clue what they are saying), and use lots of hand gestures in order to explain certain words that they may not understand. I’m sure, however, that people that I speak English to still do exactly the same thing that I do when people speak to me in Japanese: smile and nod a lot and pretend that I know whats going on.

After the Friday Project was over, I chilled in my room a while and enjoyed some apple cinnamon pancakes and Law & Order: SVU (thank god for the internet), and after a while connected with Cassidy and a couple other people to go to the post office, AL Plaza (a department store/grocery store next to Hikone Station), and to a store called Bookoff which supposedly had an “awesome” arcade. It took us about 20 minutes to get there from the post office in Hikone, and it was located on a street called Route 8 (your basic busy 4-lane shopping street). On the way there we passed such illustrious locations as a store called Liquor Mountain, a 2-story McDonalds, 6534 car dealerships, and an interesting onsen/public bath/I’m not sure place. We did eventually reach the Bookoff, despite the many hills and roadways we had to ride on to get there. Bookoff is basically a used book/CD/DVD store, which happens to have a TON of manga (Japanese comics). If you can imagine an American comic book store, take that mental image and multiply by probably 4 and that would be just the amount of used manga that this store carried. Its a shame really that I can’t really read Japanese that well (too many kanji that I don’t know), because manga is so incredibly cheap here that I would be infinitely entertained. I did however pick up several volumes of the “God of Manga”, Osamu Tezuka’s masterpiece, Hi no Tori (Phoenix). I have every volume that has come out translated in the US, so I picked up a few that I didn’t have yet. I’d like to make a stab at reading them at some point, but it will take much effort and dedication. At the very least, I can look at the pictures.

Unfortunately the arcade turned out to be not so stellar. They did luckily have one incarnation of my favorite game, Guitar Freaks, and luckily it happened to be the one that had my very favorite song to play (You Give Love A Bad Name by Bon Jovi), which I then played at least 4 times. Later I turned to this a game that I had only seen before in pictures, yes, a TYPING game. Only the Japanese would think up something like this. It was called The Typing of the Dead (which was a take off of The House of the Dead, and indeed it was House of the Dead II, only with keyboards instead of guns). It turned out to be a very enjoyable game, and typing out Japanese words that you don’t know is really hard to do. Cassidy pretty much beat the pants off me with her typing skills. Then again, the B key on my keyboard didn’t work very well, oh well. After wandering around a while, we left the Bookoff, and Cassidy and I took off to head to Viva City, a mall pretty close to us, since my first trip there we had found it to be closed (on a Tuesday, I still don’t know why). After wandering around there for a while, stopping at a really good bakery, as well as a store with a ton of Totoro stuff (I refrained and didn’t buy anything), we headed back to JCMU where I have been being lazy since. Here are a few random pictures for you:

Some random pictures of Hikone, including the central post office:

Playing Guitar Freaks, and typing away to kill those demons!! Type, Cassidy, Type!!!!:

At the Totoro store:

This weekend will be spent studying hard (gotta work on those kanji), and on Sunday Cassidy and I will be heading to Nara, to go to Todai-ji Temple, Kasuga Shrine, and hopefully to see some deer (and maybe some getting their antlers cut off), so stay tuned for my write up and pictures on this week’s adventure.