Although it’s not exactly the 1/4th mark of my 6 months here, today we had our midterms for Summer semester. This also marks the end of the Summer short-term program which the majority of Americans are taking. From my perspective, it feels as if classes are finally getting into a groove and the second half of the semester would be a lot more learning and a lot less adjusting, so I would feel pretty torn being ripped away from the program at this point in the game. Though I have a feeling that I’d feel that way even after the end of my second semester. Of the Americans doing short term, I think Donnie is the only one I know well who is leaving. Most of the Americans are in the Afternoon classes, so I’ve only been able to talk to a few outside the context of the culture class. I’m pretty sure that all those in the culture class are doing the full semester, but I could be wrong.

In order to prepare for the midterm test, the teachers were nice enough to post the material that the test would cover, although it might as well have said “everything.” All the kanji, all 10 chapters of Minna no Nihongo that we covered, a 400 word written composition, listening comprehension, and particles. The test took up the entire class time plus it went 15 minutes later than usual. First off was the written composition, which went well. I may have made it too simplistic in order that I didn’t attempt any tricky grammar that might just wind up getting points deducted. For the previous written compositions, I had gone all out and tried to use difficult sentence patterns only to get a tidal wave of red ink returned to me. Next was listening. The first half had problems that showed pictures and had a speaker on a tape describing one of the pictures. There were also ones that would ask a question and then hold a conversation, but I would always forget the question by the time the conversation got over.

The second half of the class contained reading comprehension, which was over passages that we had read over the course of the first half of the semester. The most difficult part was when there were words missing from the passage and we had to choose which word would fit best there. Next was a comprehensive grammar portion, that was similar to all the tests we had taken up to that point. The last 30 minutes was the kanji section. I’m happy to say that I felt really good about that portion, and only missed about 3 out of 20-25 questions asked. The other sections of the exam were somewhere between “eeeh” and “good”.

After the exam, a group of some of the Korean students invited me to go to a Okonomiyaki restaurant. By the time we were all sitting, Jeff was invited as well. The restaurant was playing American hip-hop and R&B, which Jeff and I both “appreciated.” One of the Korean girls thinks that the Black Eyed Peas sounds “Indian.” It was a pretty nice lunch. We also had Yakisoba, which everybody likes. As for Okonomiyaki… I had kind of a difficult time with it. There are a ton of flavors wrapped up in there, and I’m not crazy about the texture.

After lunch, I bought some shampoo, briefly went to Shibuya (way busier than the first time), and then took a pretty huge, sleep-cycle-damaging nap. So, it’s past midnight here and I’m feeling rather awake. Oh well. Only two more days of classes this week (which should be gentle if the teachers have any humanity to them) and then it’s the Kamakura trip.