Kids' Shows

So for the past couple of days I've been in the mood to turn my TV on in the mornings, with the best stuff on being kids shows. Since kids' shows are designed to impart language and cultural stuff into kids' brains and everyone talks slowly and clearly, they are great for me to watch.

Yesterday, I got to see a short, claymation cartoon. After a chicken fell down the chimney of one of three houses on the screen, it was revealed that it was about these housnails -- snails with houses on their backs instead of shells. I never cought the main character's name, but he appears to be about 8-9 in terms of maturity, and the show is about him and his parents and stuff going on with them.

There was a tiny housnail, too, named Pipe (pee-peh). He was apparently a stray they picked up somewhere along the way, because they came across his grandpa, and then there was some sad farewellage, since the family and Pipe had gotten to like each other a lot. In the middle of the sad farewellage, a bird came along and took Pipe (which was how he had gotten separated from his grandpa in the first place). The grandpa housnail apparently has an oil drilling platform on his back instead of a house (How awesome is that?) and was working when Pipe got stolen the first time, so there was nothing he could do. This time, he fired a cannon at the bird, making him pretty well officially the coolest old man in a kids' cartoon ever -- or at least up there.

EDIT: I guess the housnail cartoon's main character's name is Jam. Since this is available on DVD, I may end up having to get it. It's tempting.



This morning, I got to see a kids show where they were introducing the concept of a part-time job through a guy in a big-butted bear costume and a juice shop. Naturally, when the bear was going through training he was taught how to make the juices. The store sells pineapple, orange, grape, strawberry, melon, and some other juice I have already forgotten. Whatever, doesn't matter -- they were teaching the kids fraud. They were making the juices by mixing combinations of yellow, dark pink, blue, and white to make the different juices. I know they were illustrating color mixing, but you don't do it by saying that mixing pink with milk and adding water makes strawberry juice.

My classes are also finalized. Here's the list:

Japanese History
Harmonics
Martial Arts (Not a practice class; I think it's history and way of thinking and stuff)
Choir
Group Voice Lessons
Japanese Language
Japanese Conversation

The history class... is gonna be a pain. Watch videos in class, write reports. Well, the videos are generic educational videos that have a lot of big words and show you like pieces of art and pottery that are only halfway related to the subject in question. Not easy for me to follow. The martial arts class will also be a bit difficult, but when I was talking to the teacher yesterday, he said that while he couldn't give me much in the way of special attention in class that after class I was welcome to ask him any questions I had to make things clearer. :D Yay!

I am looking forward to this semester.

Realizations of the Period

1) One thing I wasn't thinking about when packing for coming to Japan was the possibility of being invited to a funeral. I now really, really wish I had brought a black formal shirt. (Japanese funerals are naturally different than American ones, with definite emphasis on comforting the family -- respecting the dead is also involved, but that is more the responsibility of the family. Ikushima-sensei's [tea ceremony teacher] mother died a couple of days ago. I was invited to the wake, but there ended up not being room for another person in the car. Wake was a long ways off from here. Still, I wouldn't have had really appropriate clothes to wear.)