I made mochi!

Today, I went to a near-by park with my host mom where they were making mochi.
Mochi is a sort of sticky/chewy rice cake that is made by pounding a special type of rice with a wooden mallet in a big mortar. It's typically made/eaten around New Years, but is also available year-round.

That's not me, but that's what I did

After watching how it's done, I took my shot at making mochi.

How it works, is one person wets the pre-mochi mass of sticky rice stuff, and the other person pounds it with a hammer (this whole sentence is one giant innuendo just waiting to happen). You do this quite a few times, and then the finished mochi gets taken off to be cut into smaller pieces and filled with things like anko (red bean paste), or be topped with flavored powders.
Since the mass of sticky rice is sticky, the mallet gets stuck and you end up getting tired pretty quickly. But it's awesome, because you get to smash stuff with a big hammer!

JLPT

Today On Sunday, I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).
There are 5 levels: N5 to N1, N5 being the easiest and N1 being the hardest. I took the N4.
They split it up into 3 sections: vocabulary, grammer and listening. Listening gave me the hardest time. Either some parts were too fast, or I had to stop and think about the meaning of a word, and by the time I figured it out, I was lost as to what part the CD was at. :C

When I think about it, it's kind of surprising that I took the N4. When I first got here, I felt like I wasn't even ready for the N5, and after only 3 months, I'm taking the N4. I hope to take the N3 either before I leave, or when I get back to Canada.

The test is taken very seriously. At my place, they had five proctors keeping watch, everybody had two seats in between them and the next person, and you weren't allowed to have anything but an pencil, eraser (without the paper casing), and the test sheets. And they were totally able to kick you out if you didn't follow the rules.
Forgive me in my moment of "omg it's just like anime", but it kinda felt like the written Chunin exams from the original Naruto. Just not quite as intense XD

Results should be in sometime in January, so I will update when I know how I did. I think I passed. I didn't do THAT badly. I hope

Rock concert in Japan!

So last week, Me and my friend went to Osaka to see the visual kei band Nightmare (the band who made the first Death Note opening. for those unfamiliar, this is Nightmare, dressed in their visual kei stuff)

After a ~40 minute trip from Kobe to Osaka, we put our bags in a coin locker, and walked to the venue. It was only when we got there that I realized I forgot my ticket in my bag, so I had to go back and get it. My friend wasn't too impressed. But we still made it with plenty of time before the show started. And when it did, It was pretty awesome. This was actually my first concert ever. I mean, I've been to Warped Tour before, but each band only got like 30 or so minutes on stage, and there were about seven stages. That's more of an outdoor music event, whereas this was concert for a single band on one stage.
So yeah, they come on stage, played music (obviously), and had an encore (is it 'had' an encore?), which I was told happens at every one of their concerts. Before they started to play it though, the singer had a short conversation with each of the other members. At one point, him and the bassist (who is significantly taller) were comparing their height, and the singer turns around and starts yelling "ONIIII-CHAN, ONIIIII-CHAAAAAAN" (TL note: onii-chan means "big brother"). Many laughs were had.
Then they played their last song, I bought a t-shirt, which they only made one size of; small. It'll look cool on my wall I guess XD

The weirdest thing was that people didn't rock out as hard as I expected. It was a really tame event for what it was. People weren't jumping all over the place, there was no singing along, no cheering etc. What they did do was some headbanging (which was really cool to watch, considering most of the audience was made up of girls so hair was flying everywhere), hand/arm motions (im not sure if that's just a VK thing or a Japan-concert thing) and the occasional fan-girl yelling their favorite band member's name in either a really cute, albeit high pitched voice, or a really low and metal growl. It was really cool to see all of the people dressed up in awesome visual kei stuff though!

I really wanna try to go to a Miku concert T.T

Evangelion!

There was no school today, so I decided that I would finally stop by the theaters and see the new Evangelion movie.
It was pretty awesome. I didn't understand much of it, but I got the main idea.

But it was Evangelion, so it was awesome anyways.

I also picked up a sweet art book at a mini shop they had set up in the theater. (I think that's the coolest thing: having shops with movie paraphernalia in a theater. Especially when it comes to anime movies where you know the fans will want to buy stuff) Half is various frames throughout the movie and concept art. the other half of it is interviews with the cast. I'm considering making a project out of translating them. I think I might learn some stuff from it.

I think the next anime movie that comes out is Ao no Exorcist (Blue Exorcist), and that is going to be AWESOME.

Halloween in Osaka

Sorry for not posting sooner. I've been busy. And by busy, I mean lazy when I get home.

On October 28th, me and some friends went to Osaka for Halloween. We didn't go trick-or-treating, as they don't celebrate Halloween like that in Japan. Here, it's a day that a few people will decide to dress up (after school) and bring candy (to school). It's something like April Fools day in the west; it's not a big holiday or anything, it's just something for poops and laughs.
Anywho, we went to a rather large shopping center/mall, which also had a giant ferris wheel that we went on. The view was fantastic. The best view is seen in a video I took, which will be uploaded before the year's end. (See second and third sentence of this post for reason)
Side-story, we were creeping a couple in the car in front of us, just waiting for them to kiss... then they saw us. That was awkward.
A few of us dressed up. I didn't, because im a party-pooper like that. But in our group, we had a Pikachu Kigurumi, a cat, and two people with some crazy-ass makeup.

Twas a fun day. Osaka had a nice feel to it, as only a big Japanese city can feel.

Caligraphy

Why can't I rotate this picture?

This is what I did today. The left one (or top, I guess) says "The path of the student bears no path of a king", which basically means there are no shortcuts in studying.
The right (bottom) one says "I will bring the future". I wanna become a research scientist, so I feel that it's appropriate :3

Midterms

All this week, Japanese high school students are writing midterm exams. That means that me and the other exchange students are stuck in the Exchange Room studying Japanese. That's not a bad thing, it's just not my favourite way to study. I prefer talking with people.