More ballroom circle stuff

Whew, well I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with this blog this semester. Mostly it's just that I haven't been doing as many interesting things as last semester; I've been focusing on schoolwork and my ballroom club.

For my club, we have 2 1/2-3 hours of practice twice a week. It's fairly strict compared to school clubs back home. The Japanese have a senpai/kouhai system (senpai are older or more senior students, and kouhai are the less senior - even though I'm older than some of the senpai because I'm a third year and all the other new students in the club are first years, they're still senpai because they have been in the club longer and have more seniority). I'm given a lot of leeway though since I'm a foreigner and don't quite understand the system, heh. It's not that strict for my circle though, really, apart from a lot of lining up and bowing to say please and thank you a lot.

It's a reciprocal system though - we get taught a lot in return. The Waseda ballroom team is apparently quite famous in Japan (I believe it's the biggest dance clubs in the country, and one of the top). Because joining a circle is usually a pretty serious thing in Japan, where you are expected to keep it up for all 4 years, there are a large number of senpai - whenever we dance, we have two senpai watching us, correcting our steps and poise. It's great. At GW, the number of more experienced students rapidly shrinks, so there's not nearly as much personal tutoring going on. I wish I could stay longer to learn more, or that we could go at a quicker pace - I've picked up so much more in the last month here than I did in the year and a half-ish that I did it back home! I wish they would let me learn more than the very basics along with the freshmen kids though, since I already have some experience with ballroom. =/ They're not teaching me anything more advanced. Well, at least I'm getting more solid poise down and knowledge of the steps on my own instead of just following my partner.

One snag that I've run into is needing a full suit in order to see or attend a ballroom competition. Very strict rules on that; have to wear a plain white blouse underneath, plain black shoes, and skin-colored tights (no colored) if it's a skirt suit. This is quite a big difference from the competitions I went to with the GW team, where people dressed comfortably (since, especially for competitions that were several states away, we were incredibly sleep deprived and you'd find plenty of people passed out on the floor, under the chairs or a table, when not dancing). For most Japanese students, that's not a problem; suits are absolutely necessary at some point, such as when you become a third year and have to start job hunting. Most students have them already. However, as an exchange student... I don't even have a suit and home and I certainly didn't bring one to Japan. They're too expensive to buy and I wouldn't have room to bring it home anyway. So I have to find a suit to borrow for the two or three competitions we have before I leave.

During Golden Week (a national holiday the end of April/beginning of May, when we had school off), we had a gashukuu (camp) for two days. We went to Gunma prefecture, about a 4 hours' drive from Tokyo in the mountains. It was gorgeous, but we didn't see much of it apart from driving through. We had a short ballroom practice, and then the main focus of the gashukuu - a huge drinking party. For a 4 hour drive and $100, I was hoping for a lot more dance practice... Ah well. They also had a kimo-damashi, which is basically a haunted walk. We had to go with a person of the opposite sex that the senpai chose and hold hands the entire time (matchmaking game??), follow a long narrow road outside that led up to a shrine at the edge of the woods, while senpai in masks jumped out at us. It was... interesting. Not really too scary though.

Just started an online course from GW that will further limit my time for fun things, sigh...

Oh, and finally: one of my guy friends from ballroom is an incredibly genki guy who's English isn't terribly good but he tries very hard. In certain ways at least. He had my Singaporean friend in hysterics because of his explanation on 産む, to give birth: "Egg. Hip." Touching his rear. "PONG!" gesturing to an, er, egg shooting out.

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...