Campus has exploded with student life these past few weeks! Miranda and I are on the international student school year cycle, with a spring semester from January to May. The local students, however, have classes from April to June. Anyway, we got back from spring break and witnessed an increase of on-campus presence by about 500%. Long cafeteria lines and crowded student rooms aside, it's been great to meet new people.
Actually, it's been a little bit too easy to meet new people. In the international student lounge, if Miranda or I are sitting alone, it's a safe bet that a local student will approach and ask if it's okay for them to sit down. The first few times this happened, I thought 'oh, the rooms just crowded and they need a spot to sit and study.' After two conversations for around an hour with random local students, I realized they ask to sit because they want to speak English with me! I've met a lot of new people, and made some new friends too. I like talking with the local students, and it gives me a chance to practice my Japanese with them. But I do have to find a new study spot.
It's Miranda now! It has been really fun to meet so many new Japanese students, and their desire to practice English has helped me out. It was raining the other day, and I was getting soaked. A Japanese student ran up and shared his umbrella with me, told me that I was the first international student he had ever talked to, and he wanted to practice English.
Back to Nick: we invited some of our old and new friends to go to karaoke this past weekend. It was a lot of fun. We sang pop songs, anime songs, Disney songs. I tried to sing "A Whole New World" in Japanese (umm...yeah). Yuna-san, our friend from culinary tourism, and her friend Sean came, as well as Koichi-san and Kei-san, two freshman we met in the cafeteria a few weeks ago. Another upperclassman, whose name I cannot remember joined us a bit later (umbrella-guy! --Miranda), and it was great. We got some yaki-tori afterwards, and called it a night.
Miranda again, I took some great videos! All our friends have such amazing voices! Yuna-san convinced me to sing "Beauty and the Beast" with her. The room we were in featured a raised platform many of us sat on and a low bench. We all left our shoes by the door, so it got a little stinky.
I had to try this pistachio ice cream, for obvious reasons.
This spider was so cute with his little eyes looking up at me <3
The other day, Nick and I (it's Miranda) saw a cart full of tiny standing toddlers being pushed along the sidewalk. We later learned that it's a common way to transport very small children to daycare or preschool. The caretakers push a cart between houses picking up the children. They were all wearing matching hats, and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen. As they bumped across the street, one of the tiny kids shouted out, "はやい!” Hayai means fast in Japanese. We did not take a picture of the cart at the time (that would have been a bit inappropriate), but I found this stock image online that looks exactly like what we saw.
I made some yummy omelets for dinner one night. They were cheesy and warm and delicious. --Nick
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