三日後で海岸にいる。。。

First things first! Congratulations to Cathy Biddle for correctly identifying Evgeni Nabokov of the San Jose Sharks, my favorite goalie!

The past couple days have alternated between being eventful and extremely uneventful. On Wednesday my friends and I wanted to do something after class but we couldn't think of anything to do so we ended up just going home. I haven't been sleeping the greatest lately so I took a nice nap.

Thursday I went to see Drop again because it's just that good! It was really neat because this time I picked up a lot of things that I didn't the first time, and probably understood more than 75% of the words. It's really cool and exciting when I understand things! Most of the tv shows that I watch are variety/comedy shows where they talk really fast so I don't pick up much, but movies and dramas are a lot easier- so if anyone wants to watch Drop in Japanese when I come home, I'll be happy to translate for you ;)

My host family has been saying for a while now that I should have friends over, so on Friday night I invited over some of my friends from school. We made Okonomiyaki, Kimchee Nabe, made Chu-Hi, watched Shaolin Soccer, and chatted. It was lots of fun! The neighbors came over too, and I think that the Yurikusas had a really good time as well.

Today it was pouring down rain all day so I was stuck inside. I probably slept way too much today and won't be able to sleep tonight. That's ok though I'm going to watch some Japanese dramas online and read Dragonball. Dragonball is a comic that was made in the 80's and is probably the most famous/popular comic in Japan ever. There are references to it all the time in pop-culture, so I figure I should read it. I think I read some of it before but I don't remember much and I never finished.

Tonight on TV there were some typical hilarious Japanese variety shows on. On one in a hallway they set up a pit filled with scalding hot water and then covered it up to make it look normal. Then, one at a time they filmed two comedians from a really popular comedy group walking down the hallway and falling into the pit. It was hilarious! After they got out they brought them ice, but it looked like the water was painfully hot! In the second part of the show they had a challenge set up in video game format where contestants would come in and they would show a screen with their stats (HP, Power, etc.) and played ridiculous old video game music. I think it was set up like a traditional funeral and the contestants had to one by one do all of the correct things in order. If they didn't do it right someone would run out and paint a big X on their face! Only one person got it right, so it was pretty funny. Gotta love Japanese TV!

Tomorrow I'm going to go see another Japanese movie- Crows Zero II. I don't think it's going to be as good as drop, but it will be good Japanese practice. We were going to have barbeque tomorrow night, but I think it's going to rain all day again, so some of Mrs. Yurikusa's family will be coming to the house for dinner.

Well, I'm leaving for Okinawa in just 2.5 days and I can't wait! I'm not sure if there will be anything worth blogging about before then, so I might not post until I get back. I'll have lots of pics of my beach vacation though!

Meg

Fact of the Day: I'm going to try to dispell a myth or two about reading/writing in Japanese. It is FALSE (in a way) that Japanese is read from right to left. In fact there are two ways of writing Japanese. On is typical left to right, from the top down to the bottom of the page. This way is used mostly in textbooks and essays (that I've seen). The other way is from top to bottom, from the right to left of a page. So vertically, from the right side to the left side. This is used in most normal books and comics. So while it is kind of right to left, you never read or write anything horizontally from right to left, and it always starts at the top of the page.