Lots of things

Today I made 中華料理 for my host family! I made shrimp, pork with green peppers, and what I think was spinach, or something close to that. The dishes turned out to be alright, although I sprayed way too much soy sauce on the pork, and avoided a near disaster with the spinach when I realize mid-way through that I should have cut up the long stalks before throwing everything into the pot.

It was also quite sad that when I finished cooking, no one was there to eat the meal – my roommate David was out for a Jazz concert, Jii-chan was in the garden, and Nei-chan had a late lunch. When everybody came around to eat, the dishes were already kind of lukewarm. :/ Anyway, they claimed to love the cooking, which made me very proud! We finished everything, and all ate two bowls of rice. Having my host family say ごちそさまでした to me was very satisfying indeed.

The dishes I made looking rad!

I realize that I haven’t updated the blog for 10 days – I promise this will change, as I’ll try to cover some ground with this one and also post my second Japanese journal about Onuma. I’ve been feeling as busy as I was at Yale, since there are just so many new things to learn every day and so much homework. Last weekend we went to Onuma, a quasi-national park right on the outskirts of Hakodate. (I really don’t know what a “quasi-national park” is, I’m assuming a national park like park that somehow isn’t quite really a national park? Yes I do like to be specific and give a lot of information, thank you.)

Onuma, whose name大沼 literally means “Big Swamp,” is a park surrounding the active volcano Mt. Komagatake (駒ケ岳) and the two lakes Onuma and Konuma (小沼), which means “Little Swamp” (yeah, really creative, I know). Mt. Komagatake actually erupts quite frequently, with a minor eruption occurring as late as 1996. I’ll be putting on pictures of Onuma with my next blog (in Japanese), but a preview: Onuma was extremely beautiful and also infested with some nasty bugs. Wasn’t that a great, simple way to put it? I’m really proud of myself sometimes. /sarcasm

Since I’ve been talking so much about how busy I’ve been, I’ll elaborate a bit about the academics here at HIF. Before I came here I was a tad worried about how the teaching at HIF compared to that at PII, since PII had a reputation for being academically rigorous while people at HIF seemed to be constantly talking about howらくit was in Hokkaido. Oh boy was I proven wrong. First of all, all of the senseis here at HIF have been absolutely top-notch from what I’ve seen, and are definitely on the same level as my Japanese instructors back at Yale. My home teacher in D Gumi, Okuno Sensei, is the nicest and sweetest person ever, and has an amazing personality to boot: a Kansaijin (関西人) through and through, she loves spicy food, nattou, and cats.

And the workload – I have to put in at least 3-4 hours of solid homework time a day. Unlike other subjects in which you could just coast through if you feel like you understand everything, I’ve really started to learn that languages are a bottomless pit. There’s always so much new vocab, new grammar, new phrases to learn, all the while you’re constantly forgetting what you’ve just picked up a moment ago! Plus, you can always get better in your pronunciation and use of the language to make it more “native-like.”

As I’ve stated previously in this blog, maintaining a steady work ethic has been a problem for me in the past, so this experience has been a welcome challenge in that regard.

Of course it’s not been all work and no play! Since the weather’s been so nice for the past week (we’ve had 70 degree weather and clear skies every day J), I took the liberty to finally climb (by climb, I mean get lazy and totally take the ropeway) Hakodate Yama, and bike along Hakodate’s beautiful coastline. Here’re a bunch of completely unrelated pictures of Hakodate’s scenery!

A buddhist temple, curiously made up of cement, right besides HIF.

Street view of Hakodate's famous 坂, or steep slopes.

We're right by the sea!

This is the view you get biking along the ocean. The air is so briny and salty, and the breeze so soothing, it's a feeling like no other.

Motomachi Koen, right near HIF! Azaleas are in full bloom all around the city.

Me and friends on top of Hakodate Yama, which commands a full view of the city, surrounded on three sides by water. 

The night scenery here is said to be the best in the world. You can pretty easily see why.

Starting from July/August, the イカ, or squid fishing season will start again. The light from squid fishing boats at night  along the coast make up 漁り火, which is another one of Hakodate's famous scenes.

The following several pictures are of a place called 立待岬, which is basically the very tip of the peninsula that Hakodate is situated on. You can see 青森県 of Honshu on clear days from here.

Bonus pictures of me wearing a yukata (浴衣)! Yes my t-shirt is definitely NOT supposed to be showing. Also, the belt (帯) is way too high. Do not copy this if you want to know the right way to wear kimono!

Everyone in yukata!

Yes I have shown yet again how lazy I'm to describe everything that happened this week. So enjoy the album - more to come tomorrow. I just have to go to bed because my head is killing me right now. Btw tomorrow I'm going with friends to the Hakodate Morning Market again for seafood! Super excited!!

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