SUPER JAPANESE

oyakodon turned out MUCH better tonite :D i made the sauce from scratch this time, bonito flakes and all :D i felt like a grandma...cuz who makes soup stock from scratch ne? (i asked amy this and she said grandmas LOL "or really...cool...college students who...like Japanese stuff...") ;D

and wow Acts of Reading was much more interesting today. The last chapter I read was a bit over my head, being about neuroscience and all...the important part we learned was that it is better to work on kanji in the words they come in rather than just know the individual ones...which i guess i sort of knew already but now have attempted to understand the underlying neurological reason why...lol today tho it was more about how to set up a program. the author advocates about a hundred hours of class time just speaking and listening before introducing FIRST katakana and then hiragana and then starting kanji. he also made the good point that it really depends on what type of goals students have in mind. i guess back in the day before the business interest in japan grew it was mainly very "self-select" students who were self-motivated because they were actually interested in Japan and reading literature and stuff. I wonder if the anime/manga trend is helping steer more people into self-motivated areas like these rather than just adding Japanese as a help for your business career...

so last night was Kyôgen at the MCJP!!! how AWESOME!!! traditional Japanese comedy. Three short plays. It was sooooo good! The supertitles were more summaries of the story than translations, which for some reason once I saw them I went "oh yeah that's how it goes" but I dunno where I learned that that's how they do that. I was sort of hoping for translation so I could maybe pick out more of the Japanese. Also it was almost like studying cuz (another thing that triggered an "oh yeah" for no reason in memory) they spoke all in extra modest form which, for those who haven't been following, is what I am working on right now. Still tho I really didn't understand a whole lot. : / Reading the book that I am though realizes that it would be uncommon for me to understand any more than I did. I don't think I even have three hundred class hours! Japanese is a class IV language which means it takes WAY longer to learn than French or Spanish which is level I. it takes over a thousand hours to get what a French learner can get in 480 hours. This would be really easy to use as an excuse for laziness but I refuse lol I'm bringing my textbooks to the beach!!! oh...i'm digressing...the play...so the first story

the FIRST story: it was about a man with a melon patch and a thief who tried to steal them. eventually the man took the place of a scarecrow that he built in the field and ended up chasing the thief away.

the SECOND story: was an adaption of an act of another play. a man has guests coming for dinner and his wife makes him clean while she cooks. then he is starving and eats all the food while waiting for the guests, who are late, and the wife gets mad and chases him

the THIRD story: a wife and g-ma treat the husband like a slave because he is naïve. they write a list of things to do for him and he is doing laundry and stuff and loses a robe in the water. When his wife falls in trying to get it the grandma says he has to save her but he says hey it's not on the list!!! lol he saves her on the condition that they treat him with the respect the master of the house deserves. then the wife chases him and is mad...

these are pretty basic synopsi...ses??? si? i dunno lol

anyhow so one thing you will notice even from the summaries (hahaha...summaries :D) is that they all ended with people getting chased off the stage. it's funny and everyone yells lol

other things...there were three actors, all male. japanese theater is really expressive. they use specific voice techniques and their faces very well. also all the movements of their bodies are extremely specific and are really an art form in themselves. they stand a certain way and walk a certain way. it was so cool to see in real life! it's the type of thing you see on exotic culture tv shows lol but it was real Japanese theater RIGHT in front of me!!! how sweet :D

one thing i was wondering about was when people laughed. i know i caught myself laughing a couple times after reading the titles (hence not necessarily when the joke came). i know other people did this as well. then there was always a lot of laughter when the phsyical comedy was going on...but i wonder if maybe some of it was due to the sound effects. Japanese sound effects are pretty cool! For instance if I remember correctly, zuru zuru is the sound the saw made when the theif cut the bamboo fence. They have sound effects for EVERYTHING. You see them in manga all the time. Sound effects for mah jong tiles, rain, slicing vegetables lol but so my point was I wonder if the sound effects are their specifically for comedy or if they are their as just part of the play that seems funny to foreigners (of which many were present that evening) it wasn't a big deal tho cuz it was VERY funny. such good facial expressions too...in fact this smily ^_^ is usually associated with anime but i think it may go back even further to this traditional theater o_o because their eyes really do look like that o_o i was surprised!

on a final note about the play: the old man did a really awesome job playing the grandma! it was hilarious!!! he had this special walk that cracked everyone up! i wonder if his back hurt when he was done...in fact i wonder if all of their backs hurt when they were done...because the posture they take is kind of bent...it was weird to see them standing up all the way when they took their bows...

ok not final note...this is the final note...not only facial expressions were familiar. I recognized other things like the way the characters yelled or certain laughs they did too. It's cool. You feel like you know a little something about a culture when you can make connections like that! :D It's a good confidence boost and gives you endurance to continue your studies even tho kanji is scary!!! ^_^ *justice glimmer*

whoo in other news it is REALLY hot here lol also there was a scary drunk guy on the metro bugging amy. i told her to kick him lol but of course i was kidding. we just ignored him and i taught amy how to say something mean in japanese lol he thought he was very suave cuz he heard us speaking english and thought that if he could just mumble some english back at us he could pick us up!!! so handy that the train stops! you can switch cars XD

gosh tho it really is nice out. unfortunately there is a large population of gnats by the residence cuz of our nice hedge i think...a very nice hedge...but it attracts the bugs. also we have a tree that flowered but now is just sort of green...

hmmm well i should get going...dunno what i'm going to get up to tomorrow besides making miso soup. now that my dashi base is tasty it shouldn't be too hard tho :D of course i will study. unfortuntely the MCJP is closed ;_; i will only be able to go on Tuesday this week cuz i will be gone the rest of the time...and i only have four chapters left in my book! if i had ONE more day i could've finished it x_x i dunno if i'll get through the rest in one afternoon...

oh and the pool I FOUND IT! it's really close to my house...right across from the big huge flea market. it has been closed for a bit to empty it but i guess it opens up again on monday. maybe tho i will save the swimming for the mediterranean and wait till i get back and can go with amy to the pool. it's funny that the pool intimidates me but the japanese center doesn't lol

whoo! that was a pretty informational blog there...i promise that if we can find bonito flakes and the kelp and stuff that i will make tasty oyakodon for everyone when i get back! :D

oh which reminds me....does my grandma read this? i really want to learn to cook stuff this summer! lol i should ask her! i want to learn how to cut and use the right knife and stuff. lol my grandma is groovy and should be very helpful with things like this!! :D my food sometimes ends up tasty but it always looks a bit ragged. maybe i should ask my aunt too! man my family is cool XD

hey and shiitake mushrooms have NO calories!! (according to my easy japanese recipes cookbook) so it is a taste we should all acquire! (they really aren't that bad!!) XD mmm i bought a fresh bag...the texture is interesting but that is one of the fun parts about food ne...

the enlightening moment that accompanies this is that it is much better to obsess about cooking food and finding new types of food than how much of it you are eating! lol

ok it's too hot in here! gotta head out! i should've brought some water @_@ THIRSTY!!! lol