Hello My Name is Leaf Forest

I actually had to wake up early this morning... er, "early." By which I mean 10am. I tried to wake up at 9, but that failed. I had class at noon on the Japanese education system. It was 2hrs long, and the room had no AC, so that kinda sucked. I had a 1hr and 45min break in between my next class (a basic Japanese culture class), so we all went to buy a snack and just hung around till it started. It was hot in that room too ugh. The classes were sorta interesting.

about Japan, that their colleges are really easy. It surprises me that for a society that works its ass off from kindergarten through high school (they have rigorous schools and entrance exams, and go to cram school at night), and then again in the work force (they have long commutes and very long work days), would have a fairly laid back university system. Maybe other schools are different, but that's what I've heard and things here seem... well, laid back. First of all, they still register for courses beforehand (although international students don't), but instead of being sorta locked in and getting down to work in classes they seem to have a slow first three weeks (of ten weeks) to get oriented and decide whether they want to take the class or switch to another class or what not. Maybe that's just the courses taught in English? I don't know. Classes are also 1-2hrs a week, while OSU's are 4-5hrs a week each, and I'm taking about the same number of classes here. At OSU on the first day the teachers already buckle down and delve into lecture, because they barely have enough time to get through the mI'd like to rant for a minute if that's ok. First of all, I'm finally understanding what I'd heardaterial in 10 weeks. It's my second week here, and I've done no work for school thus far. In physics last year, I had a whole problem set due three days after class began. None of the classes seem all that hard either, or requiring of that much effort to get an A. It's just so different, and to be honest, I rather like the challenge of OSU, and the classes here make me appreciate going there. Although, I suppose I haven't gotten too far in yet, and I'm sure Japanese language courses will be more rigorous. I just hope these courses can academically challenge me somehow. I'll go into this again when I've finished the trimester.

I cut my foot by slamming the side of my foot into my bike pedal while trying to brake quickly yesterday, and I seemed prone to smash the exact position of the cut into everything today. So now it's not only a cut, but a bump too. I need to work on the whole clumsy thing. It killed in the shower.

I met a girl from Czech Republic in class today, that was cool. I told her my last name was Czech It means small forest/woods in Czech. And my first name comes from the name of a leaf, laurel leaves to be specific. Huh... I never saw the ironic connection until just now. Anyway, some girls from Lithuania and a girl from Estonia (another country I know nothing about), were also in the class. One of the girls may have been from another country in Eastern Europe, but I can't remember. After class, the Lithuanian girls and the Estonian girl and some of the Californian group and Tori and I went to dinner. We got to sit on the floor in traditional Japanese style, that was cool. My food was good, but all that crap I heard about Japanese portions being smaller is total bull. Lies. Maybe I would say that about food in grocery stores and other things, but in restaurants like this they food you more than some American restaurants. I have yet to finish a full meal like that. I barely got through half tonight. I need to stop eating stuff like this every night or I'll get fat lol. It's hard to eat healthy when I have to go out to eat every night.

No one wanted to do anything after dinner which sucked, since it was only 8. So I came home, and then the kid from Purdue who hangs out with us told me his tutor was having a birthday party that night, so me and him and one of the girls from California went there around 10. It was really fun, there was about 9 people, counting us, and the rest were Japanese. I don't really get a lot of chances to speak Japanese to be honest, since I hang out with Americans, so it was nice to get a chance to practice. I did horribly at first, but after I warmed up I was speaking much better. Every was nice and patient, and they spoke English a little too. I also apparently seem to be forgetting English somehow, as it took me 3min to come up with the word "practical."

Needless to say, today was a much better day than yesterday.

Just got home around 1am, and I have a class at 10 tomorrow o_O so I need to go to sleep. Pictures again. There's two random pictures of campus, then my giant bowl of food which is way too big, and the last is instructions in the bathroom stall just in case you came to college not knowing how to use a toilet :)