Sunday - Japanese presentation at Next21, one of the tallest buildings in Niigata city. It went pretty well, I must say. Much thanks to my supportive friends who showed up and asked me questions that I gave them beforehand, heh. Even though I planted my own questions, I didn't expect the audience to laugh at my answers. Oh well, at least I entertained them.
Monday - joined the people at Grace Chapel for a picnic at the beach in Uchino. It was mainly the guys from my cellgroup (Emiko, Gene, Rey, Hiro, Nobu) and Akiko who cooked excellent Sri Lankan curry. After the stress of preparing for the speech, the outing at the beach was a well deserved rest. We ended up lying on the beach gazing at stars while we tried to come up with poems about the sea in Japanese.
Tuesday - Niigata Matsuri. Joined the throngs of people in doing the Jinku dance over the Bandai bridge. There's always some sort of festival or reason to celebrate at any one of the prefectures in Japan. During summer, it's common to see Japanese wear the yukata, summer kimono. It's less elaborate than the traditional kimono which has multiple layers and more intricate designs on gorgeous material. I got some help wearing the yukata and later joined everyone in practicing this simple traditional Niigata dance.
Wednesday & Thursday - Class trip around the Niigata prefecture. We were quite disappointed that it was only the Luckywood silver cutlery factory (official supplier for the Nobel Prize Ceremony dinner), Kashiwazaki Nuclear Power Plant, Yukidaruma Zaidan where we learnt about snow energy, and the artistic looking Nagaoka History Museum.
Some of the previous batches got to go to Hiroshima on the 6th atomic bomb memorial day. Apparently budgets were tight and we could only afford to have educational trips around the prefecture. But I personally liked the stay at the Inakaya inn, which was formerly a school in this hilly area. The dinner was so elaborate it felt like we were having a buffet spread (The pic below is of the breakfast tho). I must've gained another kg from all that stuffing. Speaking of which, I've gained about 5kg since coming to Japan!
Friday - Final exams. It's strange how they arranged our schedule in such a way that we have a class trip just before the finals. Maybe they don't want us to feel stressed out before the paper. Either that or my senseis have a wicked sense of humour. I could've done better, but after the trip I was just too tired to really study. But all in all, I'm just glad it's over. Still, can't believe we've already done 5 months of Japanese. So fast already?
That's probably the reason why I'm still up at 3:40am typing this. The sky will start getting bright in about half an hour's time. Hmm, I'm quite tempted to walk to the beach to watch the sun rise...
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