Finals Week in Japan

My last week of Japan consisted of taking final tests and writing out the last of my essays for class. Studying for tests were hard, but I'm glad that they are over now.

Friday night, I went with three others from the seminar house and two more from Kansai Gaidai and sang some more karaoke. After doing that for about an hour, we met up with some more people, did a little bit of shopping, and then getting a really good dinner.

The food was really good.

Festival Time!

On Tuesday, I went to Kendo with a few others. This was the most boring of the clubs I went to. In the other clubs, we interacted and, in karate, we even participated in one of the meetings and did many different things. For Kendo, they had us sit down and watch as well as give us a manual to read over. When they say third time's the charm, I felt I was better off stopping after two tries.

However, the weekend was a lot of fun for me.

Saturday morning I went to Kyoto. I tried finding the Gion Matsuri, but I had no luck doing so. Instead, I did a little shopping in the area and went inside the Kennin-ji Temple. I went back to the Pokemon Center to buy another Pikachu for my sister and some keychains for people back at home. I also hit up a bookstore while I was there and managed to find a couple of manga that I was looking for.

Week 5 Dress Up

During this week, I went to another club on campus. This one was calligraphy. I went once on Monday and again that Thursday. I found a short video on Youtube that has a professional doing it (I didn't do nearly as well as he did).

Going to Clubs During Week 4

During Week 4, I tried out some of the different clubs. Now, as some of you are probably thinking, no, I did not go out to an establishment and decided to have some drinks while dancing the night away; I'm not that kind of person. What I mean by clubs is school clubs.

There are many different types of clubs that are here on campus: boxing, dancing, social groups, etc. The ICE Office allowed us to sign up for six different clubs to try out.  Aikido, Karate, Calligraphy, Sado, Koto, and Kendo. Since the two Aikido meetings we could've gone to conflicted with field trips (I don't know who planned that out), nobody signed up for them. I did, however, sign up for the other five and I did three this week.

On Monday was Koto. Koto is, what I was told, the Japanese harp. The one I played had 11 strings, although it can go all the way up to 25. You wear three picks on your right hand (thumb, pointer, and middle fingers) and use your left to hold down the strings to change the pitch of them. Many of us from the summer program got to try out to Koto.