A day of Celebrations (Part 2)
February 3, 2015

After the graduation ceremony for the students who were leaving, I had to head over to my judo practice. But once that was done, I rushed over back to my dorm, changed my clothes, and headed down the hill to meet my class at the "yaki-niku" (BBQ style meat) restaurant.

When I entered the room, they had already started eating! We had all ordered the all-you-can-eat style meal, as well as the all-you-can-drink... But the best part was that our teacher, Taoda sensei, was also game with it all. I have to say she is pretty young, which only made things better.

The food was delicious and can I ever say that I ate. Since I was late, I had technically half an hour less to eat and drink, but I'm fairly certain that I ate more that anyone in that room that day. I mostly likely drank more than anyone as well haha, but not all on my fault. During the meal, I was introduced for the first time I believe to "nihon shu", which is the japanese rice wine. It was served to us hot, and boy was I ever surprised at how good it was. But my teacher kept pouring me more and more, which ended up making me a little dizzy by the end of the meal. 

With our stomachs full we left the restaurant as a group only to end up at the kareoke place nearby. Our teacher also came along. It was the second time I had been to kareoke since my stay in Japan, but my first time as a group. We sang our hearts out, and I ended up singing a lot since I knew almost every song played. I'm glad no one recorded anything that evening because I believe all our voices were quite off that night.

After that night, the Thai students and me walked Taoda back to her apartment, since her walk had become quite hesitant.

Quite a good way to finish the semester if you ask me.

(Most of my classmates from the Bekka program)

(Our teacher had fun too!)

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A Day of Celebrations (Part 1)
February 2, 2015

On the last day of January, we had the graduation ceremony for the students who are leaving this semester. This included most of the Koreans, the Hawaiians, and some others as well. Our teacher had asked us to go (even the ones not graduating yet like myself), just to support our classmates who were. The whole ceremony was taking place in the Comsquare building, the same one where the International Friday Night had taken place, and where most celebrations take place here in Tokai.

All the students were called one by one to receive their certificate, which is quite normal, but what differed from Canadian ceremonies, was that each one of them had to bow to the crowd, to the officials, then, again once they received their certificate. With about 30 students graduating, that makes for a lot of bows...

After the ceremony, there was a buffet served and we were allowed to talk and enjoy what would probably be our last time together. I had to leave a little early, since there is apparently no rest for the judo club.

(Taoda sensei, myself, and Tonosaki sensei.)

(Celebration!)

(Food...)

(More food...)

(... and more.)

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Kitchen Construction
February 1, 2015

Now we have about two months of holidays until the next semester starts, which is different from the Canadian semesters. From February to March, we basically have no classes. On the other hand, I still have judo practices, of course, but I was planning on trying to start cooking a lot so that once the next semester comes, I would be used to it, and maybe I will have found little tricks to make it go faster?

But no. It happens that throughout most of our break, our kitchen will be under construction. They are completely re-doing everything, which means that if you want to cook, you must head over to the girls dorm and cook. One would think that that's not a problem, but let me explain why it destroyed all hopes of cooking regularly throughout this break.

First, we have to carry all these things over to their dorm. This includes not only the groceries for our meal, but also all the equipment such as pans, knifes, cutting boards, etc. There is no place we can just store it over there, so we would also have to bring it all back. We also have to purchase and bring our own soap, because the L-Kan doesn't provide any. Lastly, we are only allowed to be in one of the kitchens, which would mean an extra crammed environment.

Thus, I decided to postpone that plan for now...
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Hair Cuts in the Kaikan
I got my third haircut about a week ago, and once again, it was performed in the dorm, by Jaeyun, my Korean friend. To give you an idea of how it goes, here’s a little video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyQ0zXftRGc

I also cut my friend's hair that day to help him fix the mistakes made while cutting his own hair.

(Hejae going nuts about his hair.)

I must say cutting hair here in the Kaikan (our dorm) is quite a fun time!
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A dinner with Koreans!
December 29, 2015

 This past Saturday, I was invited by my Korean friends to share a dinner with them. They had bought the groceries, and they planned to cook, and eat together. At the time I got the invitation, I was just about to put my noodles on the stove, so I quickly put them back in the cupboard, threw out bowling water and oil, took a quick shower and rushed back to the kitchen. I paid 1,000 yen for my share of the meal.

I helped cook the meat in a frying pan, as well as cut the green onions into REALLY thin slices. Once everything was ready, one of the girls showed me how to make… whatever they call it and shoved one in my mouth. They took a piece of lettuce, threw in the green onions, a piece of meat and some sauce, and wrapped it all in the lettuce. I had fun making some and then pushing them into other people’s mouths. 

(Haha... We had fun!)

(Cooking, cutting, talking.)

They also had made Korean soup, which was spicy, but really good. I didn’t really do this much during the semester even though this was not their first communal meal. Now this was probably the last time, but I must say that I really enjoyed it. I made new Korean friends, ate great food and had a good time just dancing while we ate and chatting about out lives. One of the many things that make this trip priceless.


(I got to make some new friends.)

(Mmmm....)

(Hejae cooking it up.)


(This...)



(The soup.)


(They will be leaving this semester, therefore maybe I'll see them in Korea? *hint, hint*)
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2nd Tournament at Tokai
On January 11th, there was a second judo tournament within the club. I think this one was to determine those who would compete in a certain tournament later on. I still had my cast during that time, so it was quite difficult to move around without being noticed that day.

It was pretty much the same thing as the last one, except they fought over three fighting areas, and they only fought those from their one weight class. It lasted about 7 hours in total, and I ended up eating lunch and supper as one meal. 

Not much to say here, but one thing that was good about that is that the other members and the coaches could see me, and thus they could see that I didn’t just give up after getting injured.
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Bekka Speech Contest (6th and 7th Classes)
January 26, 2015

 Before the end of classes in December last year, we had already started to prepare our speech with our teachers. Now throughout the holidays, I finished mine, and sent it over to my teacher to have it checked. After that began the memorization. 

It was meant to be a 3-5 minutes speech but I believe mine was more around the 3 minutes mark, since my previous speech had been much longer. This time, I did ALL the translations myself and, as I anticipated, it was much easier to memorize the whole thing. Another thing I did this time: I didn’t stress myself over it. I didn’t even completely perfectly memorize the whole thing to be honest. I just smiled and decided to see how it would go if I just relaxed.

So the first performance was on January 15th, and it went fairly well. Everyone from my class presented that day in front of our class as well as some Japanese students that usually come for our culture class. I performed pretty well, and although it wasn’t perfect, I was one of the few who had memorized most of it. Tonosaki sensei picked out the top three performances: two that tied for the 2nd place (Jaeyun, Korean and Kara, America/Hawaii, probably the two other most serious students besides me), then me as the winner. Tonosaki sensei gave us all little gifts; I got a blue towel from Tokai! 

First performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDP_c3ueK0

I was happy of course that I had one, but most importantly that the nerves hadn’t gotten to me that day. I was able to “redeem” myself from last time, and it felt good. I also now had the chance to compete with class 7, one below mine, next week. 

(Kara, me, and Jaeyun, ready to take on the 7th class.)


After showing my family and my grandmother Masako my speech, they all gave me a few pointers which really helped me I believe for the second round.

The competition took place one week later. Now going into this next “competition”, I had the upper hand since I was the first place winner of the higher of both classes, and therefore I knew I had good chances to win. I practiced a little bit throughout the week, and somewhat more the night before. This time I felt more nerves probably because there was more pressure: my Japanese would be judged not only by all those in the class below us, but also by Nishiyama sensei, my sister’s favourite teacher during her time at Tokai.

My performance went well. I had brought my text up front with me, but I didn’t even look at it. It wasn’t perfect unfortunately, but apparently it was good enough. 

Final performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNVUJ-J1YCY

My roommate, Cho was the 2nd last to perform and I was very happy that he started with confidence professionalism. Even though he made a few mistakes, he was much better than all those from the 7th class. Usually, he doesn’t talk much and he is kind of shy, so it took me a little off guard. But like I said, I was glad to see that from him.

Last was Kara, and her speech was the longest out of us all, written down. Therefore memorizing it all was quite a task. Now Kara and I have this thing in common: Our fathers are Japanese. Therefore, our thinking pattern is usually pretty close, and when it comes to pressure, I can understand how she felt. But I think she really put too much on herself that day. During her performance in class, she had used her paper a lot when she forgot her words. But this time, she left her paper next to me, since we were sitting next to each other, and stepped up in front of everyone and started talking.  It went well at first, but eventually, she started forgetting. At one point I could tell she wasn’t going to remember on her own, so I quickly looked at her paper, and thanks to me being able to read Japanese well, I quickly found her spot, and called out a few words of the beginning of the next sentence. She looked at me surprised, then recalled the rest of it and kept going. After that, she stumbled many times, and I had to read out to her many parts. She finished and sat down embarrassed next to me.

The teachers had once again picked out two 2nd place winners, and one first place. My roommate Cho and Jaeyun were called up for the second place winners. I was glad for Cho, he really deserved it. Jaeyun, well he’s just crazy haha. 

I got called up to receive the first place certificate. I had done it. I was proud, and this only proved the efforts I put in class. I helped Kara get back on her feet after that, because I think she was pretty rattled. She expected so much out of herself, and “losing” to someone from a lower class isn’t the funniest thing. But I also learned something from that whole situation. Even though pressure is good, too much only kills you. Now I wonder if I can perform properly in front of a big crowd...

(Jaeyun, myself, and my roommate: The finalist for the speech competition.)

*Room 304 really rocked the place that day! 304 is my roommate and I's room.*



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