Japan: I do a due adieu to Fukuoka

06/12/2006

After the stressful morning of presentations (Business Japanese is done! Hurray!), we had a nice relaxing "attack the paper" session. That's right! Caligraphy... Before we began, the professor showed us how it was done. He showed us various techniques, including the beautiful light / heavy strokes to the almost scary "paper attacking" mode. It was very beautiful and inspired us all to do our best. Ours weren't nearly as good, but it was still fun and stress-relieving. I wrote 福岡 (Fukuoka) on my fan as a souvenir (kinda lame I know). They also gave us the brushes we used as souvenirs! And of course the newspaper we used to wrap them up in...



06/13/2006

So, on this day, Gretchen and I went to check out this nice garden by the Seminar House. It was so beautiful and peaceful. I'm not even going to write about it; I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. Enjoy.









~Unknown~

So on one day, we also made our very own 判子 (hanko), which is the official stamp that Japanese use instead of signing official documents. My kanji is an old character and it means to conquer. The sound of it makes the first "kuh" sound of Christopher. The process of actually making the hanko was a lot of work; literally scraping out the kanji from a piece of stone (maybe marble?).

06/14/2006

This was our last full day in Fukuoka. Final exams and other fun school stuff. This day was also the day I participated in Masuda-sensei's research again, by having my revisit with Hikaru-san. It had been 3 weeks since we our last conversation was recorded, but it started out the same way (Hey, this feels like we're on the Radio). It was amazing to experience how much my Japanese had improved over such a little time. Hikaru-san said I spoke much more fluidly (not fluently) and my pauses were few and far in between.

Sara and I didn't have enough time to go all the way back to the Seminar House and back before the Fukuoka Daigaku closing ceremony, so we just went to the building and she napped while I played my DS until the party started. The party was great (although we all kinda fell apart without Nacky-sensei there to help us sing 明日がある (a song called There is a Tomorrow) and pretty sad. I got a birthday card signed by everyone and Noriko actually cried because we were leaving. I didn't realized our presence had touched her so much. She asked what time our flight was leaving in the morning to see us off, but I told her that she didn't have to come since it was so early and she had classes in the morning.


After the party, we did what was the only natural next step... Karaoke! Loads of fun for all and great memories to be made before leaving Fukuoka.