JLPT is in 2 days!!

Time for a brief blog update before I settle in for a day of studying.

Last weekend I visited a matsuri, or festival held by my friend's club. It can be described as a fundraiser, with several different stands selling food such as hashimaki (various types of pancakes wrapped around chopsticks), flying ice (fried ice cream), various flavors of cheese, parfaits, other typical fair food.  The effort put into creating these events is always astonishing.  It's also a little awkward to be coaxed to buy products from someone in a cardboard hashimaki costume.

Even the garbage sorting system was decorated (the box on the lower left-hand corner is for containers with fluid in them, by the way)

After that on Saturday, I went to my first ever baby shower (not mine, by the way).
I got to venture to Oojima and enjoying a fine array of activities (such as a folding socks game, pin the diaper on the baby and guessing the size of a pregnant belly).  Having not had children, I did not fare very well in any of these games.  Or it's a sign that I should avoid that route altogether.

On Sunday I planned to go to Makuhari for another beach cleanup, which I somehow managed to end up very late to and missed altogether.  Nevertheless, cleaning up beaches shouldn't be contingent on having a group, so having spent the time and money to make it to Makuhari, I began picking up trash alone.  At one point, a man walking his dog stopped by, smiling and asking "why..?"  My explanation in Japanese didn't really make sense, but I got the feeling he was more interested in speaking English anyways.
That day there was a beach athletic event, so many of the roads were blockaded for runners.  And I started pondering, in accordance with the Japanese characteristic of striving to improve (even though I've seen beaches in worse condition)  about measures to make the beach cleaner.  I began devising a plot in my mind about having a beach-clean-up competition, with two categories for quantity and weight of articles of trash.  The winners could receive a prize like a trip to Okinawa while it's still a nice, remote tropical island (I learned in my kanji class today that it moves about 5 cm closer to mainland Japan every year).

So perhaps I will tell my teacher about this plan.  I don't have much confidence that it will be well received, especially after I've defaulted on all of my attempts to go to beach cleanups up until now.  I guess I don't have much to lose anyways.

This week in farming class I discovered that Japanese people put nets over corn to keep birds from eating the ears.  Very intriguing, as the corn is now at least 4 feet tall.  It was quite a spectacle; ladders were used to pound tall metal poles into the group, and a net was suspended from the top of the poles, covering the corn field completely.  After the fact, the net ended up having several large holes in it, which we patched up later with string.

Today I attended a musical performance with Japanese high schooler who I have English sessions with.  Her mother was singing opera at a hotel lounge in Chiba, backed up by violin and piano.  It was incredibly surprising to hear her sing with such a strong voice.  The selections included Amazing Grace, The Banjo and Fiddle, Japanese songs including one about Tanabata, and Under the Sea (she played a drum from South Africa instead of singing this one).  Afterwards I took PURIKURA and had dinner with my student.  I found out that she wakes up around 5 every morning before school to study, bikes about a half hour to school, and wakes up early on Saturday mornings for soccer club at 7:30.
And I find myself wondering, how come I was never this しっかり？  Maybe by now I could be a fabulous opera singer or piano player too.

Well, hopefully my study habits will suffice to help me get a good score on the JLPT the day after tomorrow.  Once again, on a whim I signed up for something without knowing what I was getting myself into, or strategizing ways of preparing for it.  I will be taking level 2, which is too bad (considering a lot of people in my level are taking Level 1, which is the hardest).  I don't know if measuring Japanese competency by this sort of test even makes sense, but I don't think it would hurt to take it, since the locations to do so in the States are few.  So I will become しっかり and study all day tomorrow (I should have been studying all along, but what do I call the time spent doing homework for my Japanese courses) :)

Next weekend I will be taking a bus trip to Mito, so hopefully I will have more exciting tidbits relevant to Japanese culture to present then.