Day 2

Today was a pretty relaxing day, which was really nice. Well, it started off really insane because of the SPOT test we had to take in the morning. The format of this test is pretty interesting: there are 45(ish) sentences, each missing a single hiragana (the Japanese phonetic writing system). The teachers then played audio clips of native speed readings of each sentence. Listening comprehension in Japan is NOTHING like it is in the U.S. – we heard each sentence one time, full speed, and had to fill in the missing hiragana. I think it went alright, but I ended up relying more on a sort of cheat system I developed – I read only the word before the missing hiragana and just listened intently for that word and the following sound. It worked pretty well for the most part, but there were a few kanji I couldn’t read, but what can you do? Anyway, after the really intense 15 minutes, we had a brief orientation with the different teachers, where they told us about the different parts of the program that we could participate in. Once again, they spoke completely in Japanese, so I only understood a small part of what they said, but it (in conjunction with what some of my friends understood) was enough to get the general gist. So after that, we were done for the day – we walked to this gelato place by our school to try out some Japanese gelato. On the way, these little Japanese schoolkids said hello (in English) to us, so we started a conversation with them. It felt really cool being able to talk to regular Japanese people (even just 10 year olds) and actually use the language in a non-academic setting. It made me feel pretty damn accomplished. Of course, this was quickly crushed. As we were eating our gelato (amazing, by the way – tried mango, which actually tasted like mango, and had tiramisu, which had actual tiramisu rolled into the ice cream, Cold Stone style), a man came up to us to ask us a favor. It took us a few minutes to get what he was saying, but he was doing a really interesting project to see about people’s dreams in different parts of Japan. He asked us to write our dream on a pad of paper, then took a picture of us with it. His friend was doing the same thing in Kyushu so that they could compare. So anyway, after we took the picture, we tried talking to him for a little bit (still on the high of being able to talk to 10 year olds), but we made virtually no sense whatsoever. We attempted to ask him about what he thought the results of his experiment would show, but it definitely got lost in translation. Oh well. Can’t win them all. After finishing our gelatos, we decided to go to one of the famous hot water baths in Hokkaido, called おんせん (onsen). We started out talking to the lady at the reception desk (again, making me feel awesome about being able to communicate) for the best way of getting to the one we had looked up, finding out prices, etc., eventually deciding on taking the bus. The bus is pretty cool, and very different from those in the U.S. When you get on, you take a ticket that lists your stop number (our bus had 24 stops, ours being stop 1). At the front of the bus, there’s a giant electronic board that has each number, as well as the fare people who got on at the corresponding stop would have to pay (if they got off at the next stop). As you travel to more and more stops, your fare increases. You pay when you get off. It’s pretty crazy. Anyway, the actual onsen was really nice too. It was set up like kind of a hot tub, but definitely much bigger and without jets. The way it works: Before getting in, you have to take off all your clothing and wash yourself off in one of the small showers there. Then you just simmer, naked, in the onsen. I didn’t actually go in, because I didn’t want to take my clothes off (and it’s considered very disrespectful, one of the kids told me, to be in the onsen with clothes on), but it was still a really cool thing to see. Plus, while we were all hanging out, an old Japanese man came to talk to us. Granted, I didn’t understand much of what he said (he spoke really quickly, my Japanese is terrible, and he didn’t have any teeth so his accent was sort of weird), but it was still cool getting to interact with more native Japanese people. He also told usa bout a cheap ramen place close to the onsen, which was nice. For about 750 yen, we got really filling bowls full of ramen noodles (which isn’t as… college student-y as it is in America). But yeah, after that we just took the bus back. I don’t know what’s planned for the rest of the night, but I think I’m going to upload some pictures from the first half week. I don’t have many of Hokkaido yet, but I’ll work on it.