On Festivals and Aircons

Kinou was the World Festival. It was absolutely tanoshikatta! I didn't expect it to be, but I had a great time! The World Festival is a festival that APHouse holds every year, where each floor of the two dormitory houses has a performance, cooks food, or hosts some kind of event. Suz's floor made green curry, the Jojis' floor made spicy shrimps, Mylène's floor danced, Morten's all guys floor dressed up as girls and danced, Nika and Yogie's floor held a wedding ceremony!! One of the floors made a short movie about the ghosts at APHouse (there are a few, and I have heard that they are the reason for why there is no mirror in one of the elevators. The story goes that late at night, when you were alone in the elevator, you could see a girl in the mirror. As if elevators aren't scary enough as they are, closing you inside this tiny box, moving you up and down and you never really know where you are in the building... Anyway, the they had to get a shinto priest to come and exorcise the ghost with some paper strings on a stick. And they removed the mirror to be on the safe side.) My floor offered people to win prizes by bowling, using a volley ball and water bottles. The girls used an inflatable beach ball and got smaller bottles with less water in them. I had nothing to do with that decision. I find it offensive to all girls who do sports, and most others as well. But then again, when I think of the Asian girls, they are too sweet to bowl with force. :-O It's strange but it's true. (that is what I mean when I say that people (me) get more racist by going on an an exchange programme like this) So it is for them. It was girls who made the decision by the way (along with the boys).
By the end of the festival, prizes were handed out to the floors that ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each of the three categories; food, performance, and event. And guess what, my floor, R3, won the number 1 prize for the best event! :D We got 3000 yen to use int Tokiwa, the department store, and a shopping bag full of snack and candy! :D :D
I wonder what happened to that bag...
After the festival, people who were in party mood went down to par-tey! I somehow convinced Nika at the last moment to skip her kitchen duty and come with me to dance. She used her immense powers of persuasion to find someone to clean the whole communal kitchen in her place, changed into shorts and net stockings, and we ran out to catch the last blue bus at 22:32 from campus. We went to a place where we had to pay a thousand yen to get into the tiny, extremely loud and non-airconditioned smoky little thing that played bad music, called Roots, a favorite of APU students. I found out that the music didn't really matter when I was in a mood for dancing. you just wave your hands up in the air when everybody else does, and jump jump jump when the DJ shouts "Jump! Jump! Jump!"
And then you go outside after an hour because a room this small, with that many people, way too many of whom are smoking, just makes you call for fresh air. And my ears were numb from the noise. But it was fun. And the day after, I slept the whole day, was awake half the night, and fell asleep, just in time to miss my first class. And I kindof feel like the day before yesterday was yesterday. I mean, that yesterday was the day before yesterday. I mean.... ah, I feel like yesterday was the day with all the fun!

Oh, but I cannot forget the greatest news of all! We have got the aircon! They turned the aircon on! Hurray!! We've been waiting for that. In APU, as in all of Japan, they like to preserve energy, recycle trash, and save money (and children). One of the great ideas to save energy is to only have the airconditioner available to APHouse residents during certain periods of time, so that we do not overuse them. What that means, is that after I came here, sometime in October, when the heat was still waaaay above 20, (and never got so low as 20), they turned the aircon off, so we could not cool ourselves down in our own rooms. Then the weather got cooler and bearable. And then the weather got cooler and cold. And then we were shivering in our rooms, because winter had arrived, and the temperature was only about 14 degrees, which is fine outside, but inside the house, it feels like freezing! We didn't get the aircon/heater turned on until sometime in November, if I remember correctly.
When spring came, we went through the whole thing again. One day, the aircon was turned off. They had even put up signs that said that they were going to turn it off, and that we should "enjoy the heater while you can". Bastards. And everyone was freezing again. Then the weather got better. Then it got hotter. Lately, we have had about 25 degrees every day, and for some people, who's rooms face a certain direction, the sun shines into their rooms all day long, and they have had no way of cooling them down. I don't know how they could sleep in there. We could all hear them complain, and I once visited one of those rooms. All I can say is that I am glad that my window doesn't face the sun. Yet I keep my window wide open almost all the time.
Windows in Japan are different from windows in Iceland. They're bigger. They are much much bigger. 131x85 is the part you can open. Two people can easily go through it side by side (on the first floor, hopefully).
But of course on the day they turned the aircon on, it was rainy and cold. Cold meaning anything below 20 degrees, in this case, 17. I am pretty sure it is the coldest day we've had for over a month.
Oh, and before I forget, the 40 points I talked about in my post before last, it was out of 40! ;) I got a 100% score on the midterm! But since then, the term has ended and I have written a final report/exam for the same course, and I think I did well on that one as well, but I won't know for a fact until September. September is when I get all my grades and my credits for this semester. This semester is divided into two terms calles Quarters, and the courses are quarter based. That is why I have taken final exams, but am still in school. The first week just finished. This quarter, I am taking Intermediate Japanese, Introduction to Programming, and Urban and Rural Studies in the Asia Pacific. I am thinking of attending Progler's Peoples and Religions of the Asia Pacific as well, even though I couldn't register for it. The topic is interesting and the teacher is great. And even though all the seats are taken, half of the students don't show up, so I can easily find a seat anyway.
I also finally joined the Tea Ceremony circle. And my Japanese teacher said to me "you are pretty good at Japanese, aren't you?" to which I couldn't really reply, because that came eins og skrattinn úr sauðaleggnum. How could she possibly think that when I have failed more than half of the chapter quizzes? Then I realized it might have something to do with the fact that I got over 90% correct on the reading part of the midterm, and I got a 100% on the listening part. On the other hand, my grammar and kanji was not so good. But now my teacher thinks I can understand Japanese. I do know a lot more Japanese now than when I first entered her class, svo ég tali nú ekki um síðan ég kom til Japans en fyrr má nú aldeilis vera. I'm still only getting barely 70% on the chapter quizzes. I have one tomorrow, and I'm not sure I'll even get that much. We'll see.
I want to go to the yoga class, but it will only be twice a week for me +weekends, if I feel like it, and I have to buy a yoga mat. Is it worth it, for such a short time?

I'm really short on time.

Do I need a Title?

I'm alive, I'm alive. I'm still here.
(I just read my blog over and realized that my sentence structure is weird.)

We were learning very interesting things today. We were learning how to ask for things, like 'could you please open the window?', and 'please do your homework', and 'please die'. Then we learned sentence structures like 'after I had brushed my teeth, I went to bed', and 'after they put the baby to sleep, they drank alcohol'.

The 5th Tenku Festival was held this weekend, here at APU. It's a two-day festival organized by students where you can try out cooking from all over the world (read: Asia), listen to school bands, go to lectures about approximately everything, go to a haunted house, there's a flea market, Fair-Trade Café, face-paint, and much more. It was great.. The campus was filled with tourists from all over. Not only from Beppu, but Oita and Fukuoka as well. At the end, they had fireworks (they were an hour and a half late). Fireworks with background music. And the Lilies, the cheer-leading club had a performance below... Now that was just weird. What would you focus on, if you had the choice; amateur cheer-leaders in the dark, or the coloured lights of fireworks in the sky?
This was the first time that I have ever heard 'oooooooh!'s, and 'aaaaaaaah!'s, and cries of wonder during a show like this.

My stomach is full of Pocky.... But that's ok, because I can finally go to the gym! Yatta! ^_^ Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a boy and a girl who were on their way to the Gym Guidance Session in F building at APU. When they reached F tou (building), they couldn't quite remember if it was on first or second floor, so they took a quick round of the first floor (helping a lost fellow student on their way to find her way) before they went up the stairs to the second floor. What greeted them there was not a happy sight. A small group of students had gathered in front of the (closed) doors of the Gym Guidance Session Room, pleading a very strict looking young woman to grant them the honor of entrance. But a shaking of the head was all they got. The boy and girl were too late. They would not be allowed to enter the Guidance Room under any circumstances now. They were, after all, three minutes late.
And thus, my dear children, the boy and girl learned how to be punctual, because now, they had to wait another two weeks before they could go to the Guidance Session to get permission to enter the holy building of G tou (more commonly known as the gym). Since then, Bart and Solveig, because those were their names, have been going every day to G tou to exercise and work out. Hontou. Really. *cough and crickets*
I even bought shoes for the thing, and a toul. Because you're not allowed in the gym unless you have indoor-shoes and a toul. You know, a toul, to dry yourself with... Reminds me of the erectric pot they have at the Coop...

I'm having a test in half an hour. Then I'm thinking of actually going to the gym. For real. It's a pop-quiz by the way.
I had a midterm exam in Social Theory last Monday. I was so scared of it because I couldn't answer but one or two of the fifty questions the teacher, Progler-sensei, gave us to study for the test, and I had no idea where to look for the answers. One question bothered me in particular, because I could only remember half of the answer, and of course that question came up on the test. The question was What was so controversial about Galileo's theory about floating ice? All I could (can) remember is that because his theory was against Aristotle's theory, the Church was angry, but I just can't remember why.
Well, the midterm was a multiple choice, so I could guess. Or more than that, because the other options were just silly jokes, really. And the answer was this: Because his theory went against Aristotle's theory.
...
I personally don't think that that is an answer, but ok... I got equivalent of 8.8 out of the test. 35 out of 40. Yatta! again.
Then I had midterm in Japanese on Thursday and Friday, and we got the results today. I only made one mistake in the reading kanji part, but that wasn't because I didn't understand the kanji, it was because I tend to mess kokonoka and nanoka up. That was the only mistake in the kanji quiz. But then we had this reading about a girl from Thailand going to Japan and trying to read a history book for 6th graders in Japanese but there were too many kanji and it was difficult so she couldn't do it on her own. We got the question Why was she not able to read the book? and I said it was because she didn't understand the kanji, because she was from Thailand. But no, that was wrong, the answer was because there were many kanji and it was difficult. Am I thinking too far here? The kanji were difficult because she was Thai, right? But the teacher doesn't agree with me, boo hoo :( I only got 6.5 out of 8. That's 80%, but still. And just the sight of a red 6.5 on my test paper makes me think that I have failed. I'm used to the number being out of 10, and not 8, so it makes me feel bad to see it. I can't control it. And I only made two mistakes in the grammar part. Go me!