Day 4 -- Factory Tours, Party, and Bowling

1:36 PM

*YAWN*

(-_-) ☆☆☆☽☆☆☆

(-_-)　☁☁☁⛅☁☁☁☁

(~_~)←ーー☀

(の_の)　　☀

(If there are squares above, you can see this here: http://puu.sh/2U7JH.png)

Oh is it morning already? It seems last night I fell asleep writing my blog post. Sorry about the day's delay! As you have hopefully read, I was up pretty late last night!

Today we visited Mitsubishi and JFE Steel, which are Japanese companies producing cars and steel, respectively. At each, we were treated to a detailed description of the production processes, and an interesting tour of the respective factories. Both used fairly precise robotics or conveyor belt mechanisms to do most of the work. I couldn't take pictures inside the factories (company policy), which was kind of the best part of the experience, but I'll post a few tidbits from the reception areas*.

Still, seeing (and feeling 0.0) near molten steel, well over 700 degrees F, watching man and robotic arm working side by side to assemble a car, and having a guided tour the whole while was pretty amazing.

All of this, I should mention, was in Japanese. We had translators on hand (Yabe and Chen sensei, our teachers), but I understood a lot, and even asked a few questions in Japanese. That said, I do NOT know business buzz words in Japanese.

 We went shopping for a while, and later we went to a party hosted by the Okayama University students . I have never, EVER spoken that much Japanese in my life. I am proud to say, however, that I held my own, and even stopped feeling nervous, even when I couldn't remember a word or phrase.

I cannot describe to you, after years of work into learning a language, how satisfying it is to say something in Japanese and get a reaction of utter surprise. The conversation typically goes something like this:

Japanese student "Hello, I am Takeshi. Nice to meet you."

Me "Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you too!"

JS  "So, do you know any Japanese?"

Me "はい、僕の副専攻は日本語なんですから。" (Yes, because my minor is Japanese)

JS "WHOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA!"

I'm nowhere close to fluent, but it's awfully nice to hear things like "it doesn't sound like it's just your minor," or overhearing people telling their friends that you're fluent. It certainly makes it feel like I've made progress from the old days of "KNEE HON GO GA WA KA RI MA SEN" (poorly pronounced, "I don't understand Japanese").

After the party, a few of us went bowling with a Japanese student (Hiro). He was awesome, and we asked each other a ton of questions about each other's language. I didn't bowl too badly given my 8+ years down time (got 2 strikes in a row at one point!), though I still never made it above 120 in any individual game. We then paid a visit to the bowling alley's arcade, after which we came back to the hotel and crashed. Interestingly, the bowling alley played nothing but fairly new American songs (e.g. Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, etc.). Also featuring out front, the coolest car I've ever seen.

This carrrrrrrrrr

Despite the 300 pin challenge to the right, bowling works exactly the same here as in America.

I'm on the left screen at the top. As you can see, I'm great.

Taiko Drum arcade game, video below

 will be live at: http://youtu.be/0woXc-AKv2c

*I'll do it tonight. Uploading isn't working at the moment.