#7 First Impressions

When I look back to the past few (school) days, I absolutely cannot imagine how I would have mastered hundreds of situations without my basic Japanese skills. Thinking about that, I often wonder how the other YFU students are getting along at home and school, and if they have any difficulties. On the other side, there's Alynn (I think that's her correct name), the girl from Chile who sits behind me, doesn't know any Japanese (I think she first started learning it when she came here), and has a more or less communicative level of English. And she seems to be all fine. I kinda admire her for that, because I'd feel really lost if I were her.
Although I can more or less follow the teachers' lectures, there are times when the lessons are plainly boring, mostly because they were already boring back in Germany. But since I'm still a somewhat special student, I can't sleep like everyone else, because it'd catch the teacher's attention immediately.

Subjects in general are very different from what I am used from home. First, they don't simply have "English" class. There are three different English subjects, "General English", "English Expression" and "Current English", and I am yet to spot the difference except for different teachers. But it's still pretty much fun. Oh yeah, btw. I did get the highest score on that English test. lulz. Today in "Current English" I was the only one to laugh all the time, because the Japanese teacher always said "neighborfood" insead of "neighborhood", plus the topic was fast food. Most people know about the Japanese language not differing between the European consonants "r" and "l", but few are aware of the "fu" "hu" phenomenon, which works the same way. The first time you'll probably notice it when you look at the kana chart, where 「は-ひ-へ-ほ」 are transcribed as "ha-hi-he-ho", but 「ふ」 is as "fu". I've always wondered why that one sticked out, and eventually stumbled on older transcription systems which did put it as "hu", but the reason is simply that "fu" mirrors the sound a little bit better than "hu". The first time I was confronted with this was when I talked with my brother about an album I wanted to buy, and at some point he said "well let's look it up at yafû later". My brain immediately started to dash through my whole Japanese vocabulary, in vain. Well, I guess you already know what he meant. And today was the second time.
Err, sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, subjects. Well anyway, then there's the division of old and modern literature, general and Japanese history, and biology and "Health Education", in which we just started the topic "adolescence". I asked my brother about it, and this was actually the first time that topic has been discussed at school. Isn't it a bit irresponsible to leave all the early work to ecchi manga? Apart from all that there's the "Home Economics" class which most already know from anime I guess. It includes cooking, general knowledge of food, origami, sewing and other things. And I really hate the teacher, a pretty conservative one (yuck).
Today I also had P.E. for the first time. The class before had just ended, and all boys were leaving the room, except for me of course, since I had no idea what was going on. But something was wrong, I felt it. But it wasn't until I looked up (had been packing my notes) that I noticed the girls had started to change clothes, in a little bit hesitant way. Damn, I thought, why the hell does nobody tell me straight what's going on. Of course I immediately left the room, and on asking Shunta, found out the boys always changed in the room next (which is never used except for different lessons at the same time). Later then, meeting in the gym, one girl was (imo) heavily scolded for wearing a dark top under her sports clothing. The teacher talked about how we always come to school in our uniforms, and that just because it isn't the usual uniform this doesn't mean it isn't a uniform at all. He even went as far as saying "You know when you go to the doctor for a check-up, and nothing seems wrong with you, they write "normal" behind your name, but if there's something not all right, they put an "abnormal" there instead. Just like that, you would be stamped off as "abnormal" right now, you got that?". I really felt bad for her. I had never expected to get confronted with the "the nail that sticks out gets hammered back in" dogma so abruptly (didn't happen at all till today). The lesson itself was kinda weird. Well, at least to me it seemed like one of those TV aerobics; everyone else was used to it.
After school my first bukatsu (club) training began, and although a senpai told me badminton wasn't really popular in Japan, around 15 first graders signed up, so I guess they made us do push ups for 2 hours and are further going to continue this to see who's really willed to stay and who isn't. Even though I want to play real Badminton. That's not fair~