A Kind Sadist

I went in for my second session of sensei's Second language experiment today, which started off with her asking me my views on semi-autonomous city-states. Needless to say this was a quick discussion... Continuing the theme started by Yume last week of accidentally committing criticism of Japan to video tape, I somehow found myself having a go at leopard print (really popular here), Crocs and hairstyles (I see a new one every day...). Adding this to sensei's little game of "ask-terrified-exchange-students-odd-questions-all-the-time", I'm coming to think of her as a sadist, albeit a very kind and personable one...

Speaking of odd questions, I think I might have accidentally crushed Fujinami sensei's little dream of finding some interesting English examples... As I mentioned before, I'm the class English speaking monkey (Alexis had his turn as the French one today as well, Markus will probably get his turn at German next week), so I read out some random spiel about butterflies, at the end of which sensei asks me if it was interesting, to which I reply "Not especially", thinking she mean the content. Turns out she meant the little idioms and set phrases at the start of it (this being a linguistics class that should maybe have been a bit more obvious...).

Moral of the story, just say yes to any questions in class...

Oh, and here's a video we were shown in International communication class (I also put this on Facebook so you might have seen it already)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmanjsjp4AU

This one is also great, though the voice-over is japanese only, though you should still get the funny bits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j28Rz2P9LXA&feature=related

I actually tried Dynamite in a little restaurant in Kyoto. I don't recommend trying this in front of the owner unless you are willing to put the "Stupid Foreigner" defense to it's very limit.

Speaking of Kyoto, we had another little national holiday on Monday so Mayuko and I (Along with pretty much half of the Kinki region, the other half of whom went to Nara. No joke about the name btw) , went to Kyoto, which was the ancient capitol of Japan. We only got to spend a day there, but I'm not kidding when I say I've fallen in love with it, seriously, if you every get a chance to go don't let anything stop you. I'm seriously considering going straight back this weekend. The temples there are just amazing and they light up the gardens at night. I'll put up my (mostly rather blurry) photos soon...

Oh, and Japanese compliments... these take a little while to get used to... apparently having a small face and big nose is considered good. I was honestly not sure how to take this when told it rather directly in the middle of an otherwise perfectly normal conversation. Talking of odd conversation points, Japanese people are quite keen to know what you're blood-type is.... It seems this is seen to control you're personality. Either that or we were lured here in order to be harvested and replenish Japan's supply...

Still havn't made it to Osaka...