早慶戦

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This is my first Thanksgiving not with my family...I feel like I should have had this week off. But I'm looking forward to the Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday with the Japan Study group~

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The day after Halloween was the first round of soukeisen, the baseball finals. Soukeisen is the name for a game between Waseda and Keio universities which have a quite intense rivalry. They were playing for 1st in baseball between the Tokyo Big 6 universities. The game I went to Waseda lost, but they ended up winning overall!

The actual game itself was just like any baseball game I've been to before. But the crowd is completely different. For one, there are cheerleaders. The whole school band was there too. Then there are a group of guys called ouen-dan who make people sing and lead chants. The cheering is super intense.



Things started long before the game actually did. This is the glee club--



cheerleaders with ouendan--



super intense...



Meiji Jingu Stadium.

It was really fun even if they lost, because by the end I had learned a bunch of the songs (including the school song), and the ouendan was super amusing.

Also, the Waseda pitcher, Saitou, is playing in the pros next year and I got to see him in action ;P

Halloween

I've been so busy lately! But before all that, I want to tell you about my Halloween--

Halloween isn't really very popular here; actually I was surprised to see anything related to it at all. But I guess that recently it's been becoming more mainstream, at least with kids and college students. Unfortunately for the kids though, there is no trick-or-treat.

One of my favorite stores here is called Tokyu Hands. They sell practically everything there. The store in Shinjuku is 8 floors filled with travel supplies, wood, paint, toys, cell phone accessories, etc etc etc. Anyway, they had set up a section for Halloween costumes there, so that's where I got the makeup for my costume. The dress I got at a second hand store, and then I decorated it myself.



That's my friend Kate from MN and her host sister. We got ready together at her house so I got to meet her family. It was interesting walking back to the station and riding the train...like I said, not many people celebrate Halloween. We definitely got some looks ;P



We got into costume to go to the Niji no Kai party. It was at a place in Shinjuku and we took up a whole floor. There were probably about 70 people there. There were drinks and food and dancing and even a costume contest.



It was lots of fun and I was glad to still have a Halloween :D Unfortunately, I had to ride the train home by myself and I probably looked like a hobo. But actually not many people were out because there was a typhoon that night. I thought it would be really bad, but it was just raining and a bit more windy than usual.

Next post coming soon~

mountains

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long, but here we go--

Back in October, everyone in the Japan Study program had a retreat at Waseda's facility in Karuizawa for one night. It's about a 3 hour drive from Tokyo in Nagano up in the mountains.



I'm really not used to mountains, so I thought it was really exciting. It's very pretty out there too and the leaves were just starting to change.





Most of the other people live in Tokyo, so they were really excited to see trees and grass. They were fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, and a baseball diamond.



I got to play some tennis and ultimate frisbee and throw a baseball around (which I haven't done in a long time).

Besides the 29 of us exchange students, our 4 Japanese assistants came, our accompanying professors, and also 6 students who studied abroad last year at GLCA colleges. We got to talk a lot and had a party that night. I wished we had had some more time; I would have gone hiking. But it was a nice break :D