SPEAKING HAPPY FUN TIMES:
“Tanaka-san is a sexist”
To your host mum: “I’m sorry for kissing otousan [host father]“
convo between Okawa Sensei and a classmate: “Tanaka wants an international GF, but is shy, what should he do?” “”…become cool?” “How?” “I don’t know.” “Plastic Surgery?”
Longest day of classes today, Speaking at 10, writing at 12, then Religion in japan and Death in East asian thought in the afternoon. Speaking was good as ever, reading was fun, and religion was really interesting, dealing with Butsudans and Ihais, ways of carrying out ancestor worship – especially interesting because there is a big butsudan in my homestay house’s living room. In the break went and repeated yesterday with India, looking around a couple more shops and getting some Baskin and Robbin’s Ice Cream (omnomnom) before heading back to classes.
Death in East Asian Thought started with a video about different types of death, different experiences of it, and looking at the ‘good death’ and the ‘bad death’. It was really interesting, but I get the idea that this module is going to be really depressing xD
After the class spoke to Kenney-sensei a bit about a podcast on death that I adore on National Public radio – in fact, I’ll link it here. It’s an hour long, looking at 11 meditations on death, and it’s a real eye-opener/a good listen, definitely check it out.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/18
Also discussed the class with her and another classmate, talking of our own personal experiences of suicide, either as a doer, in my case, or a viewer, with my classmate’s case, and that was a really interesting talk about things. Just quite sobering xD Oh, also in the video was Derbyshire! aww yeah england 
Began cycling back home, but as I was now running late after the talk with Kenney-sensei, I stopped just by the bridge to Makino to text her, letting her know I’d be 15 mins late.
At which point, I was stopped by the police.
The guy was lovely. Started off being a conversation about my light, which I’d forgotten to turn on when I left the Uni, but then he asked me who owned the bike, etc etc. Now in Japan, you regiister bikes when you buy then, and if you’re not the owner when you’re riding it, it will be considered stolen. And this was my homestay family’s bike – slightly different situation, obviously, but I wasn’t sure if he’d understand about homestay and all. So I discussed this with him, in japanese. Seriously, this was a test, and it was great. I told him about homestay, that I was a Gaidai student, and how I’d stopped here to text my okasan about being late. Had a nice chat with him, then he told me to take care and went back to where he was patroling. what a dude, amirite. But still, crazy situation, and I managed to handle it in a foreign language. I’m kinda proud.
Ended up home, ate dinner, watching some cool Japanese TV, the ofuro’d and bed, chatting and homeworking into the night.
