Day 36

I realize that the recap of classes is becoming quite stale, so I won't go into that much detail from this point forward.  Rather, I'll bring up interesting details and instead tell you about what I did following class.  On the note of important details for class, we were, for the first time, told that we are "bad at this" by our sensei.  I know that she's called the Shinkansen sensei due to the speed that she likes to move at, but I've also noticed that she is also probably the rudest teacher I've had both here and at university altogether.  I think next week is my last week with her, so let's just hope that I have Honda sensei again and am able to enjoy class.

On a semi-related note, the Institute is run by the Hattori foundation, and one of my new senseis has the surname of Hattori.  My initial opinion of her is that she's not all that great of a teacher, in that the first two sessions with her involved limited interaction between us and her - we simply wrote up questions to ask the other senseis, and then proceeded to interview them for the remainder of the first period.  The most feedback we would get from her would be little more than "make sure to keep your sentences balanced" (use the correct level of speech throughout).  The second period of both days was also just listening exercises, with the only interaction being "which one is correct?" "a" "yes."  Call me skeptical, but this may be an act of nepotism in one of the highest regarded language schools in all of Japan.

And now, the important details.  A newer student to Yamasa, Gareth, who's also teaching in the JET program, decided to organize a trip to Brazilia Pizza, a small diner of sorts that serves basically anything you want on a pizza, even hot dogs and potato sticks.  It's right over by Aeon Mall, and if any of you are ever over here, I'd suggest going there at least once.  All in all there were 7 of us and two very large pizzas, which needless to say were completely consumed within 20 minutes of their delivery to us.  We then went to the arcade and played some House of the Dead, and following that, returned to our respective residences and slept for classes the following morning.

The festival begins the day after tomorrow, so I'll be talking about that soon enough.  Until then, "oyasumi nasai".