flameraven | Mystery Kanji Hour and Ohanami

We did indeed get bikes yesterday. Not a moment too soon, either. We had the medical exams at eleven, which was a rather frantic hour or so of following Ijima-san around the one building and guessing from the kanji on the doors what the tests were. We had basics like getting our blood pressure taken, and then the weirder ones like a chest x-ray and even an electrocardiogram. （心電図）Afterwards Ijima-san was nice enough to treat us to lunch, although I felt rather terrible since the chicken tempura I got was rather huge and I couldn’t eat nearly all of it.

Later around two we went to go apply for our gaijin cards, which was fairly straightforward, mostly just filling out some simple paperwork. It’ll still be a few weeks before we get the cards, though, which is still a bit of a pain, as we can’t sign up for proper ketai contracts until we have them.

We went exploring a bit on our new bikes, and managed to find the konbini down the street. At last! It’s right on the way to school, really, so it’s a good place for grabbing a quick breakfast.

Later in the evening (after some confusion about meeting), we rode over to the koen for hanami. It was very pretty, although the night was turning cold, and I was disappointed because my camera really is quite terrible. There was some gorgeous lighting, with the soft pink light from the paper lanterns glowing through the sakura blossoms, and my camera absolutely failed to capture it.

Eventually we headed out and went over to Manekineko, the karaoke place, and spent a few hours there. I didn’t do as well as I wanted; I had a hard time singing Houkiboushi and Starry Heavens because the high notes were hard to hit over the loud background music, and honestly my voice was a bit hoarse as it was. We left around ten-thirty, probably, after we all ended up singing just one more song. (Note to self: no matter how well you can sing along with Ichirin no Hana on a CD, it just doesn’t work for karaoke.)

Today we got up early, and after a quick raid of the 7-11 for snacks, headed to campus and got on the buses to head to the onsen. We did jikoushoukai on the bus, which was no biggie, (I am definitely the most skilled speaker among the Americans) although I got slightly thrown for a loop when as an extra question they asked me something like “what is your first memory of Japan?” Thankfully once I understood the question I was able to tell my story about the youkozo jishin. The rest of the time I sat and read Dragon’s Winter.

We had lunch, which consisted of some very tiny tonkatsu and the requisite unidentifiable squishy things. (I think I’m going to start calling them fushigi na pishapisha mono.) Then we drove all of five minutes away for… what amounted to a rather expansive talent show-esque showcase of the Hakuoh clubs. It was… interesting. Parts of it were extremely surreal, mainly a six-man comic group dressed all in black spandex (who were apparently hilarious if you’re Japanese; none of us got the joke), but the rest was fairly cool. The theatre group was first, doing what looked like a rendition of the big silhouette scene from Kill Bill Vol. 1 (and who were apparently the ones we saw practicing when we jumped the fence and cut across campus the other night), and now I’m rather undecided about what club I want to join. I was thinking about Kyuudo, and possibly Koto since they have shamisen as well as koto, but the street dancing club looks really cool as well, and I’m leaning towards that. I need to double-check when they meet, but that seems like it might be the best option, even though kyuudo would be really cool.

And now, dinner calls.