More frisbee

Yeah, I forgot to mention in the last freewrite that we were practicing our lefty forehands, none of us lefties, and the Japanese guys pretty much figured out how to do it right away. I tried again today and I still can't do it. I just added basically this little bit to the last freewrite, er, blog entry, so, it's there now. Complete.

And I'm completely exhausted. My breath is short right now because I'm exercising too much. Also, the tap water tastes as though it were mixed with perfume, which isn't good. If it's not cold enough, it tastes like tobacco. Oh, and there goes my right ear, starting to hurt. This is the first time in a while one of my ears has started to hurt. I think I need to go back to relaxing again. Hopefully I won't be walking amok all across Kyoto tomorrow. The four of us Tufts-Kansai people are getting together with the Tufts-Columbia people (Columbia has a program in Kyoto) in Kyoto, and the last time I was in Kyoto, I was walking around way too much led by three female tour guides, two of whom were wearing high-heels. Geez.

The last three days, this has been my routine: Wake up at 7:30 (today, 8:30), bike vehemently to school and get there in 15 minutes, which is more than early enough to get to my first class at 9:00 (today, 10:00), in which time I ascend a hill ridiculously steep and basically run out of breath before I reach the top (and the point at which I run out of breath has gotten earlier and earlier), cross the street, and bike a straight shot to the South Gate, and then huff it up two slight inclines, continuing to pedal faster so that I can coast into the bike parking lot, go to classes, sit around in the lounge sometimes, sometimes bored, sometimes conversing with a lively group of people, go to 7-Eleven at least once (if you had told me I'd be going to 7-eleven every day in Japan to eat delicious bread products I would've never believed you), eat usually the same カツ丼(katsu don) lunch every time, play frisbee for 50 minutes with an awesome group of people, including both 日本人 and 外人 (Japanese people and foreigners), toss for another 50 minutes, and leave on my bike, pedaling faster and faster until I get to the hill where eventually I don't have to pedal anymore, hand on the brake to make sure I don't fall into the traffic coming up behind me, balance steady to make sure I don't flip over onto the sidewalk, another smaller hill, the downtown area, and home, where I eat dinner, saying いただきます (itadakimasu, humble form of "I receive") at the beginning and ごちそうさまでした (gochisousamadeshita, it was delicious) once I'm done, do stomach crunches on the floor of the room where the washing machine is (I think this is why I'm sneezing a lot), take as cold of a shower as possible (regrettably 35ºC, as displayed by the water temperature control panel, is not cold enough, and that's as low as it goes), and go to bed, maybe sneezing beforehand, and sleep through the night (except for last night when I woke up and had to sneeze a LOT). Hopefully tonight the sneezing will change, because I intend on cleaning my room.

Tomorrow, it's 京都(Kyoto) time.

Penultimate frisbee

I've learned about a gajillion new words recently in Japanese, and I don't know how many of them I'm going to actually use. One of them, however, is ほこり (hokori), which means dust, and I had to use that word this morning to explain to my host mother how my room is waaaay too dusty and I need to clean it tonight. I woke up at 4 AM this morning and had to sneeze for about 20 minutes. That wasn't good. Fortunately I fell asleep at like 9:30, but then I went back to sleep at like 5, woke up at 8:30 and the effect is I'm tired. Why???

Hopefully, also, I'll be able to continue in Japanese at the level I got to through the placement test. The "review test" (another test to make sure they placed you at the right level) was extremely difficult and I don't know how well I did. I know I misunderstood "coffee" as "copy" and "sugar" as someone's name. Oops.

I have sociology in less than an hour, so I need to go eat lunch. It seems like I allow an hour for almost everything here, including getting to school but excluding homework. But first let me discuss how awesome the frisbee here is.

I play with both international and Japanese guys and girls, and the Japanese guys have really beautiful throws. One of them (whose name I've already forgotten, argh) can throw a behind-the-back forehand for a touchdown no problem. He did it twice in one game. And when I was tossing with them, they were taking about making their フォーム(form) きれい(kirei), which means beautiful. And they probably have the smoothest throws I've ever seen.

And, lunch.

Edit: Oh, yes, I forgot what throws we were practicing. We were practicing our lefty forehands, none of us lefties, of course. And guess what? The two Japanese guys got it pretty much right away. And today, I tried again and came nowhere close to accomplishing it. Imagine if ultimate became an olympic sport dominated by Japan! They'll have to lower the price of frisbees from 2100円 first, though... because that's just about 20 dollars. (You could probably buy a frisbee online and get it shipped from the US for less.)
Alex