Japanese Whiskers

Well, not so much live, but still on NHK, Japanese Public TV... local Akita branch... They sent a crack team of TV specialists *cough* to AIU to do a report on, something I guess. They shot us doing all kinds of things. I was dressed up in my Dōgi (martial arts outfit) as the Shorinji Kempo club had a short show. To my great surprise (though I should've seen it coming), they also wanted to interview a couple of us and I'm sure you can guess who they picked. Aye, yours truly was on Japanese TV speaking Japanese. And it actually went pretty well. I only answered one question, but it wasn't just a "hello, where are you from?". Looked a little silly though, and hearing your own voice is never nice. We do it every week here, but I'm still not used to it. Maybe I should start doing singing practice and get to know my voice better. Or maybe I should just shut up and stop whining, since almost everyone feels the same way.

Yesterday Abe-sensei took the Japanese Culture class (all four of us) to a local elementary school for lunch and a couple of hours tour. Kids are always nice, and these were pretty darn cute. And surprisingly open and, erm, unafraid. Some of them came right up and started to hug us! And though Ramon had warned me about a certain obsession among Japanese children of hitting male adults in the family jewels, I had no such ufortunate experience. It was definitely too short a time to really get to know anyone or even see the entire school. Too bad. They do have a sort of part time job opportunity I would love to take part in (both because of the nice experience but also because of the 7000 Yen per 3-4 hour day salery). I'm not sure if I can though, they prefer us to come before lunch, in which case I'd have to skip class or arrange something else with the teacher. Which would probably not work as I'm not the only student in the class.

Haven't had time to fix the photos yet. If I haven't put them up by Sunday... well, shame on me. I will try my best.