The following Monday, my first week of classes at TCU began. I take five classes here: Japanese language, Japanese art and aesthetics, Survey of Japan, Asia and the west, and intercultural communications. I started out with my survey class and learned that it would be a solely discussion based class, we would meet off campus at various mall food courts, and that we would be learning in the liberal arts style. My professor is in his seventies and is an American with highly apparent Scandinavian descent. He has acquired a wealth of general knowledge over his many years of teaching and can simply recall the majority of the history discussed in class. What I enjoy is that he ties Japanese history not only into Western history, but world history. Around this time all the words I began in Japanese started to come together in a more logical manner. Supai, amai, karai, shiokarai. These words all look very similar, correct? Well that's because they are all adjectives for food! Sour, sweet, hot, and salty! Or for instance, Ookii means big, while tooi means far. Chisai means small, chikai means near. Similar words sound the same and feel the same within context and you will notice a fluid pattern such as this displayed within the Japanese language. It is a highly encouraging discovery to come across upon learning. I also began to realize throughout this week the endings I was hearing on words repeatedly were conjugations and honorifics. The 'mashita' or 'masendemashita' to conjugate to past tense and the negation of past tense. The te form which can be used in many instances, but is most commonly used in the present progressive form. I also began to differentiate instances where the particle 'wa' was replaced with 'no'. Wa serves solely as a subject marker and 'no' as a possessive object particle. On Tuesday I met my incredibly kind language teacher, Yanagisawa Sensei. I love her and her class dearly. She is patient, helpful, and one of the sweetest people I have met here thus far! Yanagisawa Sensei knows I have a slight background in Japanese language due to personal studying prior to the trip; so she always challenges me in class before bringing up a new subject to test my recollection. One of my best experiences during this week was visiting a Japanese thrift store in the area. The thrift store itself was actually a combination of three different companies, and there were three counters for items purchased inside each division. I was already a bargain shopper and super cheapo sans Japan trip so coming here was a lot of fun for me. Japanese thrift shops are not as cheap as you may think. They are generally much pricier than American stores such as Goodwill and I would say they are more comparable to Plato's closet. This is because you will find mostly designer brands and the clothes are always in mint to perfect condition. Inside of the division I perused, I spotted chanel, ralph lauren and burberry, to name a few. I purchased a dress and a cardigan from the Off House division. While in the changing rooms, I forgot to hook the curtain on one side and had an awkward encounter. I pulled my shirt back over my head and immediately afterward made dead eye contact through the mirror in front of me with a middle aged man within the store. It goes without saying why he would be looking directly in a slit in the curtain of a women's dressing room while walking by.. Anyhow, I got away with only spending just below nisen yen (2,000 yen)! Later in the week I went back into Inzai and shopped at a popular clothing store called GU. GU is comparable to a cross between forever 21, pacsun, and old navy. The prices are low and the fashion is in style and geared towards the younger generation. In GU I got a little more ahead of myself and spent 5,000 yen on some new black kicks, a pair of incredibly comfy long, flowy shorts, and a graphic tee. I have since refused to buy clothes because I feel I spent too much in GU, even though I frequently wear the clothes I purchased. During this week I also tried one of my new favorite Japanese snacks, Dango! Dango is flavored mochi; mochi is basically rice that has been smushed in a butter churn among manner other processes until the consistency is sticky and gummy. Emily brought matcha dango to dinner one day. Nana brought the dango to our table. It's appearance is highly questionable and I was doubting that I would enjoy this experience, so i asked Nana, "what is this?- is it sour?- so it's sweet?". It looked like little waxy balls of play-doh. After discovering that it was edible and a dessert item, I had enough information to encourage me to shut up and eat some already. It was "oishii!" (delicious) and the consistency was unlike anything i have had before. I liked it so much that later that week when we went to the supermarket in Aeon mall I bought some more, but this time in a variety of flavors. I tried lemon, coffee, strawberry, mochi, and chocolate dango. I went and had takoyaki again during the week in Aeon's food court. It was delicious, but there are lots of ocassions where you will be creeped on in Japan. Nothing dangerous, just enough to make you uncomfortable. I sat down with my takoyaki by myself and from the corner of my eye I saw a japanese businessman standing a few feet off from my table. I could sense that he was staring at me so I did my best to appear inept in my phone, which had no internet, so it was quite the daunting task..>.< After he grabbed some food he decided to plop down at the table directly in front of me so that we were facing one another. He continued to just watch me eat and every time we made eye contact he would have a huge smile on his face..It made my dining experience slightly unenjoyable to say the least. Now once more, in my defense of the Japanese people, there was an elderly man who saw how uncomfortable I was as he was dining with his wife and he actually made the effort to turn around in his seat a few times and give the businessman some pretty legitimate mean mugs until he left the table. I explored a children's store that was ridiculously over priced for the junk it was selling, and that brings me to my next point. You will see pot leaves and playboy bunnies EVERYWHERE. I saw them in this children's store, for instance. How it has been explained to me is that the Japanese don't fully realize it to be drug related paraphernalia and instead see it as a symbol of the west. I really hope that this is the case because if not, there are some twisted individuals running the children's stores in Japan. I came across some buttons that had a rasta pot leaf as well as a playboy bunny. You would normally find these types of items in Spencer's in America, but here they were brightly displayed as the little ones scoured the store..Another difference I have noticed in my time here in Japan is that you will not find any cases of small bottles. Instead, you will see HUGE singular bottles of liquids. After talking with one of my friends we came to the conclusion that this is probably another way of them preserving the environment by using less plastic. Something that quickly became a pet peeve for me here in japan, you will have a hard time finding napkins! There aren't napkins in our cafeteria at school. It most restaurants all you get is one tiny wet nap, and in smaller shops there won't be anything at all! What do you expect me to do Japan? Wipe the food debris on my (newish) thrift shop dress? Or should I carry a small plastic bag for my napkins in addition to my trash bag? So one more minor irritation for this week. As we were heading to a Japanese dollar store we biked over a crosswalk. I was almost to the other side when this lady CUTS ME OFF then veers off to the right, and does so slowly, to where I almost t-bone her on a bike! I was in too much shock to ring my high pitched bell at her and alert her that she almost made me kill her. I slammed my hand brake immediately and still scuffed her back wheel. How rude. This is SUCH a common occurrence. The people here are so nice, but at the same time, they ALWAYS have somewhere to be; and they aren't gonna let anybody get in the way of their end goal. So many times you will be pushed past, nudged out of the way, slightly shoved, and cut off. This occurs when walking and on the bike. Just get used to it, eventually you will be doing the same trying to catch your last train, or risk being late the entire way as a consequence. On Friday I had my art class. In this class we watch movies, review them in paper form, then come to class the following week to discuss them. For our first class we watched a classic samurai movie from the 80's called 'The hidden blade". I really enjoyed this movie! It was about a samurai that saves his family maid from the abusive family she marries into. He later marries her himself, but only after having to kill his best friend, who he trained with under the same master growing up, for being caught working against the Edo empire. It has a great blend of comedy, action, and romance and taught me a lot about the Tokugawa shogunate as well as how technology from the west affected their society. After the movie I went with my friends to meet up with Emily at Starbucks. I got this awesome bakery item called marron espresso coffee cake. Marron is candied chestnut and the flavor is highly popular here in the fall. Let me brag on the customer service once more and explain that if you eat within the starbucks they won't shout your name but instead will bring your food/beverages to where you are seated on a tray with incredibly cute and fancy dining utensils. They also like to draw adorable photos on your cup, and sometimes cute messages. For instance, the C for my caramel macchiato was transformed into a cute little bear's head. After hanging out in Starbucks, we met up with Kyle to eat some udon at a local restaurant. This was one of my favorite dining experiences. I got the most popular menu item, fish roe udon, for about 500 yen. I also got some tempura sweet potato for 150 yen. You can watch the cook behind the counter use a big wire net in boiling water to cook the udon noodles then lift it out and drain it. The meal was cheap, filling, and delicious. The best part about this restaurant is the traditional seating areas that we ate at. You take off your shoes and step up onto the wooden platform where your table is. There are seat cushions and cute little clay mugs you drink out of. I got some hot green tea and almost burnt my hand off by using the machine the wrong way. You press it once and it fills your cup, I didn't realize this and pressed mine twice causing it to overflow with piping hot green tea. Udon is a good test of your chopstick abilities because the noodles are thick, slippery, and heavy! I will definitely be visiting this shop again soon. I was really stressed this night about the trouble I was having writing hiragana, but now that I have the symbols down pat I feel much more encouraged to continue working on the language. Only a week ago I felt like I would never be able to recall how to write them all properly! Sometimes I worry more than I should about the minor things and make the learning process more challenging on myself. So this was my second week in Japan leading up to my big weekend adventure through Akihabara and Ginza! There is so much more to elaborate on in that day that it needs it's own section; so I'm gonna leave my adventure hanging on this note for now. Mata atto de ne! (See you later!) Side note for the day: Matcha means green tea flavored, and it is definitely the most popular flavoring in Japan; if you don't like green tea flavored items, I bet a trip to Japan will force your taste buds to change their opinion!