Party games!

The difficulty of my class has been ramping up something fierce. Most of the grammar that we're covering is still stuff I've already studied on my own, but it's getting to the point where I feel like I may be falling behind in terms of listening and speaking skills. That kinda causes a bit of a problem, because unlike grammar or kanji, verbal communication isn't really anything you can sit down and study until you get it right. I have a television, as well as a fairly large collection of my favorite shows and movies on my computer, so I can practice listening that way. Still, though. It's not really the same as having a real life conversation.

It seems to me that while studying is important at Yamasa (obviously, as it is a school), something that is equally important is leaving your apartment as often as you can and interacting with other people in Japanese. Preferably people who don't speak English so there's no safety net.

Playing difficult Chinese games

Whiiiiiich brings me to last night. One of the other students had a big party sort of thing at his apartment and tons of people went. By "tons" I mean about 20 or so. That's a lot for how big the apartment was though.

There were a lot of students from Taiwan at the party (including one from my class!) and they taught us two fun games. One was apparently called "5 10 15," and you can see the two students in the foreground of that picture playing it. Basically it's a very fast game where the two players take turns saying a number, either 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20 (mind you, this game was played entirely in Japanese last night). When someone says a number, both players instantly change their hands to either closed, one open, or both open. If the number of fingers up match the number that was said, the player who said the number gets to go again. Call two correct numbers in a row and you win.

棒打老虎雞吃蟲

The other game was similar to rock, paper, scissors. This one was played in Chinese because it had a sort of rhythm to it that would be destroyed if you played it in any other language. It was called "Bang Da Lau-Hu Ji Chi Chong." I guess that translates roughly to "Stick beats tiger, bird eats worm." Basically how to play was to say the name of the game in rhythm while touching your pointer fingers together on every syllable, and then call out either stick ("Bang-zu"), tiger ("Lau-hu"), bird ("Ji"), or worm ("Chong"). Stick beats tiger, tiger eats bird, bird eats worm, worm eats stick. As I was doing research on it this morning, I learned that apparently there's some sort of psychological aspect to it that I can't even begin to understand, but it was still really fun to play.

I brought my ukulele to the party wrapped in a towel in my backpack and sang a few songs and taught my Taiwanese friends how to play the chords C, G, Am, and F, since like every song ever just uses that chord progression anyway.

So that was that. Met new people, learned new things, introduced new people to how amazing the ukulele is. Good times.

Today, apparently, we're heading out to Nagoya for some sort of party at a small Australia-themed bar. I don't really know very many details other than that, but I do know that my entire evening will be spend there. Until then, though, I better get my ass in gear and start studying those kanji.

Till next time!