May 13 - Language Partners

Today I got all my pictures renamed and my blog entries for last week finished. The only problem is that the wireless is not working at the moment. Ugh. I do not have access to the thing so I need to wait until Mariko gets home. We are looking at midnight here folks.

In other news, I went to class for the first time in a week. Of course, I was late getting there but luckily Ito had not started yet. For some reason the 3 hour class felt like an eternity. Was it because I was having so much fun and then went back to this boring environment? Yeah I think that is it actually... For lunch I ran into the rest of the exchange students once again. It sucks running into these people because they always want to stand around and talk all lunch hour. I finally got them going 20 minutes later when they decided to go to Mos Burger. Gah! Sonja and I went by ourselves and eventually bought Original Bento and ate it on some steps inside a random building.

The rest of the afternoon I spent in the ICC (International Communication Center) lounge area meeting my new language exchange partners. A couple of weeks back I signed up to become one. It is a program put together so that for 45 minutes you talk one language, and for another 45 minutes you talk the other. Today was just an introduction, but I spent the entire time talking with 2 different people. The first one was not too keen on speaking English as soon as he found out that I could communicate in Japanese. Whenever I tried to revert to English, he would say a few sentences and then immediately revert back to Japanese. I got lots of speaking and listening practice but I can’t say that he did... My other partner was really fluent in English. I felt like he could understand everything I was saying at full speed, which is pretty impressive given that he has never studied abroad. We spoke in half-half, reverting as needed. It was a good experience, but talking for 3 hours puts a strain on me. I don’t know why, but I was starting to lose attention near the end. In any case, I think it will be a good way to at least kill some time when I have it.

After that I met up with Nick and crew to talk about our Anthropology Movie. It seems that Nick is taking control of the group by giving out orders and coming up with a plan of attack on Shimokitazawa. We got everything nailed down and should be good to go.

Finally before heading home I went to Igo. The guys were happy to see me. The first game I played with a four stone handicap and managed to win with a little advice from my opponent. The second game I played with a new member who I gave a 2 stone handicap to. He would have won but made a couple crucial mistakes protecting his stones. I told him not to worry because I was making those same mistakes a few weeks back. I do feel like I am getting better at the game. I have more common sense that tells me good moves from bad moves, and I’m not losing as many stones.