Circles and Dancing

"Circles" - school clubs - are very popular at Waseda. There's 1 or 2000 officially recognized clubs, and another thousand unofficial ones (I think at least; read that somewhere but can't find it again). In the beginning of April, there was a huge information fair for the incoming Japanese freshmen (the school year starts in the spring semester, not the fall). I've wanted to join a club, because it will really help me make friends and force me to use Japanese, but there wasn't much information about them last semester.

I spent several hours being completely overwhelmed enthusiastic kids popping up next to me and trying to get me to join their clubs (lots of sports; one that feeds stray cats; diving where they go down to some Pacific island and scuba dive; waterskiing; music clubs and musical/theater/orchestral clubs. They had EVERYTHING). I finally found a ballroom dancing club, which is something I did a little bit back at college in the States and was hoping to do again. There were a few weeks of demos and drinking parties that were incredibly cheap for the newbies, and practice started last night.

At first it was really, really intimidating. I was the only visible foreigner there (at practice I saw one other girl though), and when I went with another friend (also very obviously foreign), we were ignored for a while when the older students went up to talk to the new students one-on-one. Once they realized we spoke some Japanese and hadn't wandered into the wrong place accidentally, they were incredibly friendly and I've gotten so many new numbers haha... It's been great fun.

Practice is 2 1/2 hours, two days a week (Wednesday and Saturday). Going to that from no exercise was a little bit painful. :p It was somewhat chaotic, as there are over 100 students in the ballroom circle, but actually surprisingly organized and I got to dance a lot with more experienced dancers. It really helps to do that; when it's just two newbies muddling along and getting the steps wrong together it's hard, and I've done ballroom for about a year though not too seriously. And whew, I have certainly been using a LOT of Japanese! My listening is definitely getting better. There's a lot of words people use that I don't know, but I'm picking up what I do know a lot better. My speaking is still quite disorganized (as soon as I open my mouth - grammar? I've learned grammar?), but apparently my pronunciation is getting better and I can usually get my point across well enough. There's a few people in the club who know English though, as well as another exchange student friend that I got to join, so I can get translations. :)

I just need to buy proper ballroom shoes, which are quite painfully expensive...