Here`s what I do on a usual weekday.
I wake up around 6:45 am, re-set my alarm and sleep until 7, eat breakfast, get dressed, stuff my backpack with textbooks and homework and head out the door to catch an 8 oclock train.
Often the train is too crowded in the morning to do anything but stand and listen to my iPod. Or "human watch," as my host father calls it. But really, watching salarymen, office ladies, high school girls in short pleated skirts and old ladies in kimonos doze off in their seats gets old after a few weeks. And everybody dozes off, including me. I'm lucky I've never missed my station. Occasionally I also study and memorize kanji while riding the train. I have nearly an hour on it, after all.
After the long uphill walk to school I buy my lunch at the convenience store because it gets totally swarmed during the afternoon, and the line of students waiting to buy their lunches reaches out the door. Usually my lunch consists of two rice balls, tea, and a dessert. Then I go in the bathroom and try to make myself look presentable and less like I just walked up a hill to school wearing a heavy backpack and sweating like crazy.
Next I have a three or four 45-minute periods of Japanese language class/doodling session. This is very, very taxing on my attention span. By the time I get out of class I`m usually starving too. On most days I also have other classes after a lunch break. The professors who teach us Japanese have code names among the exchange students. Only one is known by her proper name, Yamada Sensei. The others are known as Blazer Sensei, Super Genki Sensei, and Spazzy Sensei.
Blazer Sensei got her name by wearing blazers and t-shirts about three sizes too big. Personally I also think of her as "The Claw" because her hands are often stretched into sort of a claw-like position. Yeah, we`re not too nice to poor Blazer Sensei. It`s `cause she`s so boring. But despite her mild-mannered appearance she can be truly scary if you stretch her patience too much. Anger not The Claw.
Super Genki Sensei got her name by being hyper and cheerful every. Single. Morning. I don't know how she does it. She is also the only professor with any sort of fashion sense.
Spazzy Sensei, less widely known as "Crack Sensei," is probably the least popular of the professors because he's so crazy. Seriously. He waves his arms around and wiggles his hands while he talks. Also, his face is like rubber and he is constantly constricting it into new and disturbing expressions. While you're attempting to speak a sentence in Japanese, he will mouth the words along with you while staring at you intensely and waving his arms. If you get a word wrong, his entire body spasms like you just twisted his arm behind his back. When class is over he bows so low that his forehead nearly touches the desk. He also has a habit of wiping the white chalk dust off his hands onto the back of his black pants. I just know he was a problem child once upon a time. Spazzy Sensei's craziness makes some classmates nervous, but I like him because you can't possibly fall asleep while he's teaching.
Yamada Sensei is spared a nickname because she's pretty normal. She also has the sweetest voice, and no matter what she's saying she sounds like she's reading a bedtime story. The only weird thing she does are these drawings she makes. In class we do drills this way: when the teacher holds up a drawing of, say, someone eating, we say taberu (to eat), changing the verb form to tabekatta, tabenakatta, tabetakunai, taberareru, taberarenai, whatever the lesson calls for. Yamada Sensei has a lot of drawings, but they look like she scribbled them out in five minutes before class. Sometimes she holds up a drawing and my classmates look at each other wondering what the heck is that supposed to be. It looks like an umbrella wearing a sock. There's one that looks like the guy from the "Scream" painting, and somehow we're supposed to figure out that this represents the noun "free time."
Sometimes after class I go exploring or shopping with friends or alone. I take my time returning home because there's pretty much nothing to do there. Once I do return home, I do homework, take a shower, eat dinner with my host family, play some video games, write blogs, and listen to the washer chime a happy little song when it's done with the laundry.
Super Genki Sensei got her name by being hyper and cheerful every. Single. Morning. I don't know how she does it. She is also the only professor with any sort of fashion sense.
Spazzy Sensei, less widely known as "Crack Sensei," is probably the least popular of the professors because he's so crazy. Seriously. He waves his arms around and wiggles his hands while he talks. Also, his face is like rubber and he is constantly constricting it into new and disturbing expressions. While you're attempting to speak a sentence in Japanese, he will mouth the words along with you while staring at you intensely and waving his arms. If you get a word wrong, his entire body spasms like you just twisted his arm behind his back. When class is over he bows so low that his forehead nearly touches the desk. He also has a habit of wiping the white chalk dust off his hands onto the back of his black pants. I just know he was a problem child once upon a time. Spazzy Sensei's craziness makes some classmates nervous, but I like him because you can't possibly fall asleep while he's teaching.
Yamada Sensei is spared a nickname because she's pretty normal. She also has the sweetest voice, and no matter what she's saying she sounds like she's reading a bedtime story. The only weird thing she does are these drawings she makes. In class we do drills this way: when the teacher holds up a drawing of, say, someone eating, we say taberu (to eat), changing the verb form to tabekatta, tabenakatta, tabetakunai, taberareru, taberarenai, whatever the lesson calls for. Yamada Sensei has a lot of drawings, but they look like she scribbled them out in five minutes before class. Sometimes she holds up a drawing and my classmates look at each other wondering what the heck is that supposed to be. It looks like an umbrella wearing a sock. There's one that looks like the guy from the "Scream" painting, and somehow we're supposed to figure out that this represents the noun "free time."
Sometimes after class I go exploring or shopping with friends or alone. I take my time returning home because there's pretty much nothing to do there. Once I do return home, I do homework, take a shower, eat dinner with my host family, play some video games, write blogs, and listen to the washer chime a happy little song when it's done with the laundry.
3 comments:
I've always wondered what your days are like. My curiosity is now satisfied.
I guess lectures are boring all over the world. Its what unites us.
Ah, the life of an American foreign exchange student in Japan, sounds very intriguing.
I used to fall asleep and miss my stop on a regular basis when I rode the train from Mt. View to San Bruno.
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