School, Kanji, Tests & Speeches!

こんにちは！

As you all know, I've started in school again. It was hard getting started, but nice to be going again! We started out with a tons of tests! I swear that Japanese school students have it hard compared to Danish students, I will not be able to complain as much about school when I come home again haha, everybody hear says that the Danish high school somehow resemble the Japanese university and like that, because of the computers in class and freedom etc. But yea, tests. I started out with a kanji test that had about 40 kanji or something in it. I did well though, I only got about three mistakes and they were very small, something like forgetting one half of a kanji or putting one too many strokes or one too little. So I'm completely satisfied with the result. Then we had a Duo test - we have them every week and I always only know about them on the day, which is fine every other day than this one haha. The duo test is a test were you translate sentences from Japanese into English, we have a book with all the sentences in and she just tells us which one we'll be tested in. What I do is, I remember the sentences by heart. It's pretty easy, I learn them on the same day and it's only 4 sentences, they have some pretty difficult English words as well, but it's nothing I can't overcome. I never got any mistakes in these, until that day. We had about 15-20 sentences and I will have to remember them word for word, some of them a pretty long. So it didn't really go that well haha, I ended up answering half and half on some of them and answered maybe 4 whole sentences, but at least - all the answers I gave were correct haha. That was fun. Then came the Maths test yesterday. Japanese high schoolers level of Maths is just insane, I mean, the things as sin, con & tan etc. that we learn on a calculator - because our teachers says it's too complicated to learn in head - they learn it in head. It's insane, I just took one look at the test and then kind of gave up haha, this resulted in the teacher coming over to me handing me the answers on a paper and saying that it would be good for studying. We simply have the sweetest, but also confused & funny Maths teacher here. So that was nice. I can say as much as I learned NOTHING from him handing it to me though, the answers were nothing like I thought, they way they were written etc. it was amazingly hard. I just wrote some of the answers down and tried to figure out how the hell he got there, with no luck.

Here's some random pictures from school and my kanji studying, because, well, I take waaay too many pictures haha;

This actually means kanji and I wrote it because I apparently can't study if it doesn't have a pretty front page. I think I'm getting more perfectionistic haha.

Me showing of my double chin while wearing my friends glasses and not being able to see a thing haha.

I enjoy doing things like this waaaay too much!

And everybody here loves my sunglasses haha!

I have no idea what I did to her hair, but it does look kind of cool, doesn't it? I like it at least haha! First time, but definitely not the last that I'll do THAT.

I have also been staying late in school these days because of debate preparation. It's interesting, but you really can find close to nothing about the debate about Japanese universities (Todai and some others) who wants to change to fall enrollment, in English. It's just close to impossible to find something really good. I'm trying though and glad that my team mates are extremely good at this whole debating thing haha, because, well, if you know me you could NEVER imagine me going to a debate competition. Just saying, that is SUPER rare and not at all like me haha. My teacher will be so disappointed, but on the other hand - it's good training so I'm kind of looking forward to it.
Same with the speech contest that I HAVE to participate in and win first, second or third place, out of maybe 20 no pressure at all, no no. It's only for foreign people, so they luckily for me put a lot of points in the pronunciation! That's one thing I know I have right, since everybody always says that if they didn't see me, but just heard me - then they would think I was Japanese besides the grammatical mistakes that I make, of course. Now, a lot of people would say that they only say it, because they're that polite, which they are, but I know they don't. My family takes pronunciation seriously and they were the first once to say it haha, I've even seen them giving one of the girls I have to compete against some pronunciation training, so it's really nice to know. As soon as yesterday, someone asked me if I was half - everybody does it because of my name, but now I found out that it's also because I sound like I grew up speaking Japanese apparently, so that makes me super happy. The guy from the store also asked me haha.

Yesterday I went out with Mikko again, after school. We went to Odori and she had to straighten her hair, before going to shop really, so I stood outside the toilet and waited for her. In the meantime I helped a girl with a super heavy package and almost got hit in the head by a door by another girl haha. The first girl was very grateful, as Japanese people is, and said thanks a million times and I was just like, no no, it's okay! I mean, help the people around you, right? It doesn't do any good to just stand there and glance at people struggling. The second girl who almost smashed me in the head with a door, said sorry in English and I answered in Japanese that it was okay, and she was all like OMG are you fluent in Japanese?! All I could say to that was, not really haha, then she said sorry again and went to the toilet. A little while later my friend comes out, I heard her talk a little with the girl who I just talked to, when she came to me she was like, you did just talk to that girl right?! I heard it - you know, she's here for an event, she's famous and in this band!! Then she took me to the CD store next door and showed me the paper where it said that was an event with this band there today and, well, of course she was right there on the picture, haha. That was amazingly cool anyway!

Then we went back to that store and I saw him again haha. He waved in the way I do, which was just amazing. I mean, that he remembered that that is my way of saying hi and bye to people. It's like taking to fingers to your forehead and then out - I guess you know it, I mean, it's not exactly invented by me - I just use it a lot. Another guy we talked to told me that it was fun seeing me do these things, because no one really does them in Japan, apparently, and he liked observing it. Amazing haha. So he waved at me in that way and I did it back, obviously, but I didn't get to do more than that and send him a smile, because the guy Mikko likes a lot was there and she went straight to talk to him. So we talked with him and some girls a little and then she asked if we should go to a book store, because she needed a book for her English writing class and I was just like yea... Sadface. 

Tomorrow I'll be seeing my super sweet friend from Asahikawa again, Mirai. She loves dancing, like super much, and will have a dance performance here in Sapporo, which I have tickets to, tomorrow. I can't wait, it'll be super fun!! I will go to the CD store as well, because I really want an UVERworld CD, I have no money though, so I will just look at the prices until next month, oh well. It'll be fun!

UVERworld - LOVE THEM <3 <3 <3

And here is a picture of a package of some meat we ate some time ago, it's cool because it's says that the meat is from Denmark! Oh yea, I actually ate Danish meat in Japan! When they told me I was like OMFG! Haha, I overreact waaay too much all the time!

Today I've just been relaxing and then my sweet host father brought me some hot cakes, wuuhuu! Super nice, they tasted amaaaaazing!

I'm sorry that my post might be a little booooring lately, I'll try and keep them more... Interesting and fun haha. Thanks for reading!!

Take care!