Study time!

First off, fuck those numbers, I won't be putting them anymore since it doesn't make any sense anyway (as I won't use this blog as some kind of diary as I originally planned). Well what's there to say, Golden Week is over (ended last Wednesday), the mid-term exams are getting close and it's getting more and more HOT every day. I guess I don't have to explain that Golden Week is a kind of combo-style batch of 4 holidays that just happened to follow each other plus weekend, actually making it the longest time of the year the average Japanese work-a-holic has off without feeling the guilt of taking a day off by himself. What I found quite interesting is the origin of its name, being based on "Golden Time", which is the period where radio listener ratios are at their highest. Uhh, anyway. What did it I spend this glorious tempus of freedom doing? Well, I went to Tôkyô with Okâ-san and Ryôsan. Originally my host mum's younger brother got a new Mansion there, so he invited her to come and take a look at it, giving her the chance to finally show me a bit of that city I spend 5 days with YFU in but wasn't allowed out of that Olymp Memorial thing. Ah, right, maybe I should note that the Japanese word マンション (manshon) is 和製英語(wasei-eigo, meaning English words with a "Made in Japan" sticker on them), thus the meaning doesn't actually translate into "mansion" but rather "luxurious but still hella small apartment", something I doubt you'll find anywhere outside Japan, where everyone is focused on building as much as possible on as little ground as possible, especially in cities like Tôkyô. That being said, if you didn't know you'd be entering an apartment building you'd probably expect it to be a four-star hotel judging from the architecture (at least that's what I thought on entering my host-relatives manshon). After having some tea we left for 浅草 (asakusa), probably most famous for its 雷門 (kaminarimon), the big gate guarded by the God of Wind 風神 (fûjin) and the god of thunder 雷神 (raijin), leading to the 浅草寺 (sensô-ji, actually simply the on-reading of the kanji of "asakusa" plus the temple "-ji"). Just in front of it, there was some kind of incense kettle with people around it fanning the incense against their head. On asking my host mum, I got to know that you fan it to the parts of your body which you wish some kind of improvement for, so I guess these people all wished to get smarter. What I was planning to do was fanning it against my legs making them a bit shorter (fucking 1,9m stand out waaaaay to much, it never sucked so much before), but then I realized people might get the idea I was fanning towards my crotch or something (guess what that'd mean) so I just fanned my hair in hope for a better hairstyle. In the temple, I finally got to do お御籤 (o-mikuji), a kind of lottery (the word itself means "sacred lottery" lol) which foretells your luck; people watching anime should be quite familiar with it (; . Ironically, the one I drew said 凶 (kyô), which is bad luck (at least it wasn't dai-kyô, "absolutely bad luck"). But after knotting it to a somewhat pine-tree substitute, the bad luck is said to go away (maybe I'll get cursed anyway for doing it in a sluggish way lol). From there on it was my turn to decide where to go. To be honest, I wasn't in the best mood because I didn't really want to go to Tôkyô in the first place, because of the heat and that stupid cold I just had to catch one day earlier, so I decided to stroll the places I heard most of without entering any shops, just to "have seen it once". First station was of course Akihabara. Umm, so what can I say? Tons of young people, anime ads everywhere and cute girls dressed up as maids handing out pamphlets. Unfortunately all the maids had "no photos"-shields ready, and even their anti-gaijin lock was on so they totally ignored me. After walking around a bit, we decided to check out my host-onii-san's apartment (he goes to university here, actually he was with us all the time kinda guiding us through the city, forgot to mention that, sorry). Just what you'd expect: one small room, something that doesn't even deserve to be called kitchen, a 4m² bath and... lots of dust everywhere. All that for roughly 400€. Dust not included. Wow...
It gradually got darker, so we decided to call it a day, me and Ryôsan heading to "Villa Fountain", a hotel where my host mum paid one night for us while she went home on the same day. But since it was still way to early to sleep (around 8 pm) and I've been quite hungry (actually we did go to an Italian restaurant for dinner before with my hostmum, but the pizza I ordered was probably the thinnest I had ever eaten in my life, and because it was friggin expensive as well (1200円) I didn't want my mum to order another one), we went out to eat at an underground McDonalds I had seen on the way to the hotel. Somehow we couldn't find it, and strangely it didn't appear on any single guide displaying the nearest restaurants. After 10 minutes of running around Ryôsan suddenly started asking me if I had been dreaming, but I was dead sure I had seen it. But we still couldn't find it, so we went out into the city to look for another one. This was Tôkyô after all, it shouldn't take you even 3 minutes of walking into any direction to run into a fast food restaurant. Just like that, we found another Mc quickly. After having eaten we decided to stroll the city surrounding us and enjoy the 夜景 (yakei, "night scenery"). We didn't even know what the place we were in was called, but after some time we spotted signs saying "Ginza". No wonder there were so many deadly expensive designer shops around! At some point we even started getting invited into so called "clubs" by men standing around the streets, which my brother briefly described as "drinking with a lot of women, but no ecchi involved". He didn't need to say anything more, since that very moment thousands of scenes from anime popped up in my head, haha. Later that nigh, back at the hotel, I didn't get a lot of sleep because my cold kept annoying me, plus it was damn hot and you couldn't even open the only window. One thing that really surprised me was the "room key", which wasn't really a key but a key card. I don't know if that's already in use over the whole world, but it was pretty new to me. Also, as soon as you slipped it into the designated card holder inside the room, the lights as well as the TV turned themselves on.
Next day we woke up at 8, took a shower and went for breakfast in the entrance hall of the hotel. It wasn't too bad, the fresh pastries they offered were quite delicious but my brother still hated it, he's just really really picky when it comes to food. Later we had to wait a whole hour for onii-san because we found the train station immediately, in spite of Ryôsuke's perception we'd get lost again (that's why we left early). Finally meeting "our" elder brother, we went off to our first stop, 渋谷 (shibuya). The only building we entered was the famous 109 (read "ichi-zero-kyû") building, a department store that serves as the mecca for young Japanese women. Indeed I've never seen so many heavily styled up girls in my life, although I only spotted 2 or 3 visual ones. Me and Ryôsan started playing the game we already did on the way to Tôkyô, searching for Gaijins and guessing their nationality.
The next and last stop was 原宿 (harajuku), which again didn't really offer any special views to me except for the mass of people blocking every pathway. Luckly our onii-san led us to a district a bit remote from the center, with tons of Gothic Lolitas and -shops everywhere. There was even a strange shop selling human dolls about 30 cm tall, all clothed in gothloli/visu style. I didn't even know there were people with that kind of hobby; it was really fascinating how detailed they were worked out. After that we strolled around a bit more and ate lunch at a burger restaurant that must have been quite popular since there was a list you had to write your name on and then waited till a table got free. When we were called, the big shock came: Burgers were priced around 1000~1500円 (about 12€). I told myself "Ok just screw it, you don't eat out often anyways" and bought a set which equaled to an usual fast food one, but cost me 2000円. After eating, Ryôsan went to some special British style shop and bought himself a new purse (he'd lost his old one some days ago with 8000円 inside), we wandered around some more and finally decided to head back home. Man, this was really the first time I missed my "new home", and I was happy to be back to Toyokawa. The next 3 days I did practically nothing. I don't consider Golden Week a holiday anyway, only an extended weekend which I have plenty back in Germany.
The next Saturday I had weekend club training for the first time (skipped all the ones before, lol), and it was friggin' tiring, nothing compared to the usual ones. I almost had to puke at some point, but luckily I hadn't eaten anything the whole day.
This week is the so called "week before exams", on which all club activities are canceled so the students have time to study all day after school. Additionally , on Monday and Wednesday we had to stay an extra hour after the lessons to do 自習, "self-study". Seriously, what's the point of studying at school if you can do so at home. The teacher who was present wasn't even from any subject we have. The club ban lasts till Thursday next week, when most of the exams are over, which I appreciate really much considering the time I have left now to study Japanese. Besides English, the exams I decided to take are Modern Japanese Literature and Japanese History. Lately they've been the ones I've understood most of, and I am trying to score at least 20% on both of them, which is still gonna be a lot of work. Since our Japanese lessons are conducted by 4 different (English) teachers who all do completely different (and mostly pointless) stuff with us, we'll be writing 4 completely different Japanese tests as well. Cool. Instead of studying vocabulary/grammar I'll be making up children's songs about Hiragana. Seriously, I understand that fact that Ari-san isn't very stable at Japanese yet, but why do I have to waste my time when the teachers could concentrate on her alone while I am enjoying Japanese Classical Literature? Actually some of the stuff they teach us is quite useful at times, I admit, but that's not the usual case.
Since it's getting hotter and hotter every day I was really happy when my summer uniform arrived. Although officially the change from winter to summer clothes is June 1st, everyone started wearing their summer uniform already (except for the 1st graders who're still nervous about everything), and the teachers seem to tolerate it. Also, I am not sticking out that much with a long-sleeve shirt anymore.
Before I came to Japan, I read countless times that clubs are essential if you want to make good friends because most of the students recruit their friends from clubs rather than their class. Although the 2nd graders and senpais in my club are really nice and friendly, we still don't talk much outside of the training, and most of the first graders (my kôhais) are being total dicks, always acting interested in me and being polite, but completely ignoring me outside of training. I really hope that'll change in the future.
That's all for now, I thought I might try to do updates more often in the future, so please forgive me if I should write boring everyday-crap sometime^^" (sometimes my life here seems just way to normal..)