火曜日, 5月 23, 2006
Today was awesome but reeeealy long. I got up at 5 to finish the readings on shintoism for my japanese culture class and then I left at 7 (for my 8:30 class!!!) because today was our first fieldtrip fopr metropolitan tokyo.
The theme for today's lecture/fieldtrip was Minato Ward: Old and New. Minato is one of the 23 wards within Tokyo. It's the one that Akasaka as well as TUJ are located. We met at the city ward office, which I hadn't been to before, so I gave myself a lot of time. Around 8, and after 2 metro transfrers, i thought i had some time so i stopped at a place inside the subway to get a muffin and a newspaper. I ate/read for about 15 min and then headed to the Minato Ward Office/Town Hall.
I'll talk more about it later, but it was really cool, and I got to take a lot of pictures...which seems to be a bad habit.
Any who, it was a long day- class from 8:30am-9:30pm and i actually got back around 10:30 because i had a question about the occupation of the philippines in my US and East Asia course and stayed after class to ask about it.
when I'm not incredibly sleepy, I'll update and post.
Tomorrow I don't have school so i think i might sleep in and then in the afternoon visit the emperial palace or something that's not far away and just have a chill day.
Thursday is a temple student holiday and i'm going on another temple sponsored field trip, like the sumo outing, and we're going to learn about japanese art and there's the possiblilty we're going to an onsen(that is if i'm not to tired to go at like 8pm!)
oh, and yesterday I broke down and went to starbucks. i jsut saw the ad for the banana frappachino and coulnd't resist. then i went to the book store and bought 2 books of postcards, a kanji book, and a book that is made for japanese people who want to be able to understand the major US news stories of the past year so it takes a few hundred articles, gives you the gist of them in english and translates them into japanese and points out key vocab and gives translations. incidently, it works backwards (except there's no furigana so i'll be doing a lot of kanji look-ups) so i think that's pretty cool that i'll have a more relevant japanese vocabulary.
ok. sleep.
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Monday (yesterday) I didn't do much.
I went to school around 11 to go to tutoring orientation I'll be tutoring Biology, Writing, and Reading. It was pretty much a waste of time.
I took the metro to school because my feet hurt so much from Sunday.
And now, more subway art: Lobster
I'm not really sure what's in this building. I thought it was an office building but in the window on the first floor they have disney thermoses(sp?) and rice cookers and toasters and other random appliances. but i doubt it's a store.It has a fun elephant.
I bought some cool books- one was for japanese people- so they could translate the top news stories in english(american) newspapers into japanese, but basically it works backwards too...only no furigana so i'll have to use my kanji dictionary. but i thoguht it was cool. Then i bought another kanji book and some postcards.
Then i broke down and went to starbucks. I couldn't help it. They had this new thing called a banana cream frappachino. And they mark thier drinks with roman letters. crazy! (it's really good. if it's available in the states you shoudl try it!)
The theme for today's lecture/fieldtrip was Minato Ward: Old and New. Minato is one of the 23 wards within Tokyo. It's the one that Akasaka as well as TUJ are located. We met at the city ward office, which I hadn't been to before, so I gave myself a lot of time. Around 8, and after 2 metro transfrers, i thought i had some time so i stopped at a place inside the subway to get a muffin and a newspaper. I ate/read for about 15 min and then headed to the Minato Ward Office/Town Hall.
I'll talk more about it later, but it was really cool, and I got to take a lot of pictures...which seems to be a bad habit.
Any who, it was a long day- class from 8:30am-9:30pm and i actually got back around 10:30 because i had a question about the occupation of the philippines in my US and East Asia course and stayed after class to ask about it.
when I'm not incredibly sleepy, I'll update and post.
Tomorrow I don't have school so i think i might sleep in and then in the afternoon visit the emperial palace or something that's not far away and just have a chill day.
Thursday is a temple student holiday and i'm going on another temple sponsored field trip, like the sumo outing, and we're going to learn about japanese art and there's the possiblilty we're going to an onsen(that is if i'm not to tired to go at like 8pm!)
oh, and yesterday I broke down and went to starbucks. i jsut saw the ad for the banana frappachino and coulnd't resist. then i went to the book store and bought 2 books of postcards, a kanji book, and a book that is made for japanese people who want to be able to understand the major US news stories of the past year so it takes a few hundred articles, gives you the gist of them in english and translates them into japanese and points out key vocab and gives translations. incidently, it works backwards (except there's no furigana so i'll be doing a lot of kanji look-ups) so i think that's pretty cool that i'll have a more relevant japanese vocabulary.
ok. sleep.
-----
Monday (yesterday) I didn't do much.
I went to school around 11 to go to tutoring orientation I'll be tutoring Biology, Writing, and Reading. It was pretty much a waste of time.
I took the metro to school because my feet hurt so much from Sunday.
And now, more subway art: Lobster
Look! A funny little truck on the way to school (it could have been the way home, actually... I don't remember.) But it was cute.
I'm not really sure what's in this building. I thought it was an office building but in the window on the first floor they have disney thermoses(sp?) and rice cookers and toasters and other random appliances. but i doubt it's a store.It has a fun elephant.
After I got off the subway on the way back I went to a book store. They had Final Fantasy guides.
I bought some cool books- one was for japanese people- so they could translate the top news stories in english(american) newspapers into japanese, but basically it works backwards too...only no furigana so i'll have to use my kanji dictionary. but i thoguht it was cool. Then i bought another kanji book and some postcards.
Then i broke down and went to starbucks. I couldn't help it. They had this new thing called a banana cream frappachino. And they mark thier drinks with roman letters. crazy! (it's really good. if it's available in the states you shoudl try it!)
and then I bummed around my room and went to bed early because I was sooo tired.
[fin.]
