茶道/tea ceremony

茶道
Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

The women's group and college group at my church had a tea ceremony after service today. It was nice because it wasn't super formal, but everyone still did all the parts of the tea ceremony. They explained everything to me (half in English, half in Japanese ^^;), and then they let me try it. There are so many little things involved, but it was fun to whisk the tea ^_^ You're supposed to whisk like you're writing "M" in the tea really really fast, and then at the end, write a の to get the powder off the sides of the cup. They packed up the leftover snacks for me to take home, but I don't think they meant for me to eat them all right when I got back... I've been slowly working my way through them while I was uploading pictures and typing this, though...

Also, I actually understood parts of the main service today. It's interesting to see how my listening and reading comprehension improve each month because the youth pastor (who is way easier to understand than the head pastor) does a sermon once a month, and I can understand more of the actual sermon each time. They also write a summary of the sermon in the program every week, and surprisingly, I was able to read and understand the topic without help. He also likes to compare the Japanese translation of the Biblical text to the English translation, which makes things easier for me. It's still practically impossible for me to understand more than the title and pick out words I know when the head pastor speaks, though...

updating

Someone said he would update as much as I did, so I'm going to hold him to it. Anyone else wanna join in the fun? It's sad, but I think I've posted more in Japanese than I have in this blog in the past few months (which isn't much). I'd link to the Japanese one, but you need to join to read it, and the instructions are all in Japanese... I did start (and stop) updating Nita's Nihongo in wordpress because I wanted to try their layouts. There's a fun article about Doraemon in my Japanese textbook that I've been meaning to translate for that. I could probably make a short list of my entries in my mixi blog and start cross-posting them to my Japanese site...
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I actually just went through my old lists of words and kanji that I wanted to remember from last year. I was counting the kanji I'd been studying in my notebook over the last few months (the ones I couldn't really write in my book, which was a lot of them), and there were about a hundred. I guess since I'm actually trying to learn them now (instead of just trying to keep track of them like I was before), it takes too much time to make the list and post it online... ^^;

hibernation

Originally uploaded by nitaspitas.

Winter was really busy, both with work and my mom and Jo coming to visit. I actually took a bunch of pictures then, but I haven't had time to go through and post them... I also knit a lot, but I think I'm mostly done with that for now. It's actually starting to get warmer here. It was a pretty warm winter to begin with, I think. I barely even snowed...

In a burst of creativity last week, I came up with a character for my nanowrimo novel this year a whole eight months in advance. So instead of pictures, you get my attempt at drawing her in Illustrator.

I've been enjoying life in Japan a lot. I thought I would come and do all the touristy cultural festivals and things, but I'm really much happier just trying to live like an everyday resident of Japan. Things like being able to get my watch battery changed by myself make me happier than going to visit the temples in Kyoto (although that was fun, too). I did a lot of touristy stuff over the New Year break, with my mom and Jo, so that's where most of my pictures of Japan will come from, probably. I don't take as many pictures when I'm not being touristy...

I spend most of my life working >< But on the weekends, I go to church and hang out with my host family from there, and I go to my Japanese lesson, where my Japanese is improving slowly, but steadily. I hang out with my Japanese coworkers more than my native English-speaking one sometimes... Which is good, I guess, because starting April, we're moving schools, and she's moving to the other school in the area where more than half of our students are going, so I'll be the only foreign teacher at our school...

I can feel my Japanese getting better, though. I can still barely speak it, but I can understand a whole lot more of what people are saying. My church is Japanese, so all the sermons and everything are in Japanese, but I can usually understand the anecdotes of the younger pastor now (because the head pastor doesn't actually use any, as far as I can tell...). I've also been joining the youth group services every week (before church at 8:30am every week. and kids show up for this.) For the first few months, we were practicing the dance for Christmas, so I was in their Christmas program, and there was very little Japanese I needed to try and understand. But after the New Year, they went back to their regular services, which also involve short bible studies every other week (and games every week :) I was really happy when I was actually able to understand enough of what was going on to participate in one. The weeks without bible study, they join the Sunday School service, and those sermons I can usually understand because they're directed towards little kids.

I've also started trying to read in Japanese. Banana Yoshimoto actually writes in pretty easy Japanese, so my coworker lent me one of her books because we were going to see the play. I got through about 25 pages before we went to see the play, but I haven't read much since... but it is fairly understandable, even with my level of Japanese. The DS kanji dictionary really helps, too, because I can just write in the characters I don't know. I learned a few kanji that way, too.

I think I want to come back to Okayama after I finish working so I can study Japanese full-time for a few months. That's what I get for not paying attention in high school Japanese and getting so burned out I couldn't study it in college ^^;

Hope you all are doing well wherever and whenever you end up reading this :)