First Weekend, First Day of Class

We're past the break-in period, and there's so much to talk about. I'll try to recount the particularly cool parts.

Let's start with Friday: the B-level placement test, which was NOT as easy as I was expecting, didn't cover just Genki 1 material, and also included a speaking interview, so I was caught off guard. It wasn't of any consequence though, because I still placed into the B level class. Becky also elected to enter the B level class to solidify her basics. I like this, because it means we are in the same class! Anyway, after the placement test, we met our APU "buddies", APU students who speak English and Japanese that have elected to help out us newcomers on a 1 on 1 basis. My buddy Kotaro is a pretty sweet dude. Someone was turning 20, so we all went out to downtown Beppu to have some fun. He hit a few bars, and I bought a supremely delicious drink called Chuuhai. It's a rice alcohol with tonic soda, flavoured with various fruits. I got the grapefruit flavour, and hot damn, it was one of the best drinks I've ever tasted. Kotaro and a few others decided that the bar was a little too expensive, so they brought a small group of us to a little park next to a beach. Across the street was a 7-Eleven, which sold remarkably cheap, pre-mixed cocktails in tall cans. He bought me a highball (among other things) and we hung out at the beach, while slowly being joined by more and more APU students.

Fun fact about Japan: you can drink alcohol anywhere outside. It's not a problem at all.

APU has been really fascinating so far partly because of how many different countries are represented. I've met and made friends with students from Thailand, India, Korea, the Phillipines, China, Japan, Norway, and other U.S. states, and I've only been here for three days. Everyone's got a story, and it's great to listen to them.

The rest of the weekend was spent with preliminary studying, and a shopping trip through Beppu, where we stopped at a 100yen store (like a 1dollar store), and, among other places, the You Me Town shopping center, which was an odd hybrid of a mall and a department store. Very cool - check out the pics on Facebook.

Today, we had nearly 5 hours of Japanese class. It was all a high-speed crash-course that covered review from Genki chapters 6 through 10. We had three of the four teachers we will be having this semester, and one of them is a Japanese emo-punk-rock band singer, and taught a review of short form vs. polite form using a chibi character from Hetalia Axis Powers Total badass. The review was thoroughly appreciated, and it looks like we'll be beginning truly new material on Wednesday.

After class, I pulled out the horn to flex my lips out of entropy with Bitsch and Ravel. Luck would have it, after a little bit, I was approached by a few brass musicians in the APU wind ensemble. They were impressed, and wanted me to come play with them in their rehearsal tonight. They didn't speak English, so I got to flex my developing translation muscles, which while only 3 days old, are getting some serious workouts. I ended up playing a sectional with the trumpet section, where we played two Japanese wind ensemble pieces, and was then recruited to be their principal trumpeter.

Wait, what!?

Yeah. So now I am principal trumpet of the APU Wind Orchestra. They rehearse a ton, but I convinced them it was okay for me to just show up twice a week, since I need to be studying Japanese as often as possible. As for the group - the music wasn't particularly difficult (it had it's moments), but over all the compositions were beautiful, and I've never played in a more in-tune band. When the conductor had sections play by themselves, it always sounded like one instrument playing out of many bells. I was seriously impressed. The band isn't very big, but it definitely sounds good. I'm going to play a concert with them in Oita in July, where they will be judged in what sounds like a College Solo and Ensemble event. Through a sectional and an ensemble rehearsal conducted in Japanese, and with a few new buddies to help me out, I learned a lot of new Japanese, as well as the added embarrassment of introducing myself in Japanese to a room full of 40 Nihonjin students. For those of you who don't know, a Japanese introduction tends to provide a little bit of background information on a person, usually that which is pertinent to the meeting, as well as several formalities. Mine went a little like this:

"Hajimemashite. Watakushi wa Adam to moshimasu."
"This is our first time meeting. Respectfully, my name is Adam."

"Shusshin wa Michigan desu. Ima, Grand Valley Daigaku ni itteimasu."
"My home region is Michigan. Right now, I attend Grand Valley State University."

"Ryuugakusei no yonensei desu. Kodomo no toki kara Trumpet of fuiteimasu."
"I am a foreign exchange student in my fourth year of college. I have been playing the trumpet since I was a kid".

"Yoroshiku onegaishimasu."
"Nice to meet you; please be kind to me."

All in all the wind ensemble was really fun, and I'm beat. It's time for bed before I get up giga-early again to make some studying happen. I'm going to check out the Taiko (Japanese traditional drumming ensemble) club on Saturday, and eventually also check out the Traditional instruments club, while definitely bringing my recorder. I'm not leaving Japan without some serious audio samples of local sounds!

Until next time~