School & Summer Heat

I've been reading the Sapporo & Hokkaido section of my Japan travel guide, and they really like to emphasize how cold this area supposedly is. The island repeatedly described as a 'frozen hinterland' and 'bitterly cold' while summers are apparently mild and good for 'escaping the heat' in the rest of Japan. I feel very confident that whomever wrote that has never been here in August. The past few days have been crazy hot! But thankfully, the heat is my only complaint, and according to my guidance councillor, it only gets this hot for a few days each year. 

Anyway, I'll stop boring you with my silly complaints about the weather (I guess I'm just too used to Canada) and get onto what this post is really about: school in Japan. My first day of classes was yesterday, and I admit I had absolutely no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn't what I got. People had told me that foreigners tended to be popular, but I definitely did not expect my class to scream the first time I walked into homeroom. Though after the initial excitement died down, everyone was incredibly welcoming and friendly, as well as very patient with me and the language barrier. I introduced myself in front of the class in Japanese and in English, and each member of my home room introduced herself to me as well. They seem like a great group, and the class seems to have a high energy, fun vibe to it. 

It's also been interesting seeing how much of my classes I've been able to understand. I have a pretty good grasp on numbers, so I was able to manage in math. Except for doing the actual math, apparently I have no idea how to do trigonometry without a calculator. One of my history classes and my bible class were also easier because I was already familiar with the material (the interwar period and Noah's arc, respectively) and I have one English class that seems to be conducted mostly in my mother tongue. Japanese History, what I think was Literature, and another English class that revolves mostly around grammar were more difficult, though I could catch a word here and there. We also had an assembly today, very little of which I was able to understand, but there was some singing and lots of excitement. 

So far, school in Japan is both fun and challenging, and seems simultaneously similar and wildly different from my old school in Canada. I'm finding the uniform thing pretty easy to get used to (no pictures yet, sorry, but I look just as goofy as you'd imagine in a sailor style uniform), and the religious aspect and lack of boy is also fairly easy to adjust to. The obvious language barrier is the biggest challenge, but I hope to keep working on my Japanese until I can overcome it. In the mean time, however, I'm still managing to make friends and enjoy the experience.