We Are Strong / Engekibu

Some days are good. Yesterday and today both qualify.

Yesterday, I had the first Japanese Language class of the semester. Now that my ability to hear what exactly people are saying has improved, Kitamei-sensei's accent isn't as impossible and I can fully enjoy the fact that he's a really nice old man. I have also learned a lot more in the way of kanji and vocabulary over break than I first thought, I think. I got to meet the second Australian exchange student, Tom, and actually spend a few minutes talking to the first, Matt. It seems like every time I see Matt around, I am rushing off to a class.

After that was sadoubu; with the death of Ikushima-sensei's mother last weekend, she did not join us this week. I ended up helping both Yumi (the first-year whose mother was in sadoubu when she came to this college) and Tolia with their tea ceremony-ing. :P There were a lot of jokes about me being a sensei. I'm proud of how well I did with explaining things in Japanese, though.

After sadoubu, there was a Gaiken party. Let's go drinking and get to know the first years! The basic format (one party at Aquaveil with a stage and microphones that are great for presenting people and everyone getting lubricated enough to relax, one party at Umi E [E is pronounced eh; means To The Sea] where everyone is hanging out and doing lots of drinking and snacks on some good food for drinking with, one party at a karaoke place) was the same as the post-gakusai one, but this time the Aquaveil party was less "Yay! That's over and done with! Good job guys!" and more "Tell us about yourselves, O first years, and let us introduce ourselves as well." The first years (Lina agreed with me on this one) were pretty boring. However, I figure that by the time they hit third year they'll liven up, given their company in the department.

I was glad I got to go to the karaoke this time... it was a lot of fun. By that time, it was down to a little under 20 people, including three members of the soft rock club, so there was a good mix of fun singing and downright good singing, and most of the people who made it to the karaoke place were the people I like most in the department. I also looked at the people I have gotten closest to and realized that we either started talking more because we find the same kind of differences between our two cultures and languages interesting (Kana, Jack, etc) or because we have similar senses of humor (Arima, Yuuj, etc). Somehow, the guys whose sense of humor fall in line with mine are all smokers. This normally doesn't bother me at all, but the smoke got fairly thick in the karaoke place by the time we left at 3 AM, and since I haven't been around a lot of smoking in a long time, it bothered my eyes. But oh well.

Also, Asa challenged me to a drinking contest last night at Umi E. *shakes head* I dunno what he was thinking, but with the way he presented the challenge, I had no choice but to accept even though I knew he was doomed. Since he goes drinking a lot more than I do, we actually threw up after the same amount of alcohol. (We finished off five 1-litre bottles of beer and three pitchers of a kalua mixed drink in one hour, with our drinking toast being "We are strong!" in English.) Thing is, my body is smart enough to be like, "OK, bitch, you've drunk too much, too fast, with no water. Go throw up now," so after I threw up, I was fine. I never even had any motor control loss. Asa, however, had a rather ruddy complexion, passed out for a bit, and still felt sick after he woke up. I was regarded the victor by Asa, as well as several spectators.

And Asa wants a rematch.

Moving on to today...

Today, I joined the drama club -- engekibu in Japanese. Yuuji of the Gaiken is also in it, which is how I came to find out about its existence. I am soooooo glad I did. :D Except for the Renn fair last summer and a student film in my first or second year of college, I haven't been part of an acting group in a long time -- and those two exceptions were both a getting together whenever we had time to practice thing, then showing the final project. Not much in the way of theatre games and just excercising the physical and mental muscles that go into acting.

So today was fun. We spent some time just excercising our bodies, then moved on to games. One game was about pretending to pass a ball. That was interesting for me because Japanese onomatopoeia was involved... and I don't actually know much of that. I learned some very quickly, though, and I already know the sound effect for something rolling (from sadoubu, how about that?), so it worked out pretty well. We also did the Mirror, Mirror game I grew up playing, though Yuuji didn't give it a name when he explained it. It's an excercise in working in concert with a partner; you face each other and try to move in mirrored movements with neither person leading or following. It's always been one of my favorite excercises, actually.

We also did some Japanese tongue twisters. That was awesome. I taught a couple of English ones to Yuuji, too, but we didn't do those as a group -- doesn't make sense to, really, since the other four guys don't really speak any English. Yuuji thought "The sixth shiek's sixth sheep is sick," was a particularly horrible one. Anyway, have some Japanese tongue twisters (and here is a link to a guide on pronouncing Japanese, in case you don't know how):


赤巻き紙
青巻き紙
黄巻き紙

Aka maki gami
Ao maki gami
Ki maki gami

Red roll of paper
Blue roll of paper
Yellow roll of paper

(Interesting note about this one; in English, blue and red are one syllable to yellow's two; in Japanese, it's the exact opposite. When I was trying to say this earlier, the fact that the word for yellow is one syllable kept throwing me off.)


生麦
生米
生卵

Nama mugi
Nama gome
Nama tamago

Raw barley
Raw rice
Raw egg


京都来たなら一度はおいで
姉三六角蛸錦

Kyouto kita nara ichi do ha oide
Nee-san-rok-kaku-tako-nishiki

If you came to Kyouto, once you went outside,
Nee-san-rok-kaku-tako-nishiki

(This one is a song that describes the order of the streets you cross as you head away from the Kyouto train station. The kanji on the second line are the first kanji in each road's name.)


After that, Hirokawa and Higasiyama had to leave. Yuuji went for a smoke break, and after he came back, I got to sit through a run-through of what has so far been written of a one-man play that the club is gonna put on at the end of June. Yuuji is the actor. (I guess one-man is a bit misleading as used here; he's the only one on stage, but there is also a voice that interacts with him after a certain point.) I was given a script to read over while it went on. :D Joyous me, I could not only read the better part of it on my own, but was able to still follow along with the parts I couldn't read on my own. HUZZAH! And happy happy joy joy for me picking up slang really well -- I didn't have any problems with the slangy grammar. The play is also quite funny.

The play is called Hako. Hako is japanese for box. The play starts, and Yuuji's first line is (translated), "I'm home! ... No one to hear that, though." It's about a guy who lives alone, has no real friends, and has nothing to occupy his time at home. He's bored off his ass, and looking for something to do (in a very humorously dramatic fashion), and remembers that he has an unopened box. He's monologuing about this box and what could possibly be in it ("Maybe it's gas. Gas? POISON GAS! And there's a hole in the box!" *falls over strangling*). He eventually decides to try sleeping for a second time, only to have the box start talking to him.

The play is written as far as him accepting the talking box (which has a great personality; it talks in clipped phrases that make it sound cynical in a funny way). Why he has an unopened box, I didn't catch exactly. This was partly due to me going off in gales of laughter over a specific line. Before the box starts talking to him, he tries making food, but that only takes up so much time. He tries singing and dancing to some music, but gets tired of it quickly. He tries sleeping, but can't. When he gives up on sleeping, he starts going on about how it's boring and he has nothing to do -- boringboringboringBORING! Nothing to DO! ARGH! ARGH! Is there NOTHING interesting?! *pulling at his own hair* No crying children?! *reach for the sky* WINE VINEGAR! *pose* Blizzaga! *bigger pose* Thundaga!! *yet bigger pose* FIRAGA!!!

...

I'm sure it's not nearly as funny written here as it is in my memory.

Realizations of the Period

1) I'm able to crtically analyze a play in another language. Not to the extent that I can do with an English one, but still... I feel like a crazy mofo.
2) While it's fun to be a laughing drunk, it's about three times as fun to be so if you have another laughing drunk to laugh with. :D