First of all, on Thursday I was significantly less jet-lagged, although I did manage to doze off at a nice early 6:30 pm. Getting up at 8:30 will do that to you, I guess. But anyways, Wednesday was orientation for me and 5 other international students, which was all of us sitting in a room being given packets of forms to fill out. I got to finally meet Jake, the other Clemson student, which was nice! Everyone here was surprised that we had never met before coming to Japan.
After that we each went off with our tutors to do various errands, such as getting our pictures taken for 色々な用紙, and other things that are way too exciting to write about on this blog. Marina-san had a meeting to go to, so I tagged along with Jake and his tutor, Chie-san, to go and meet Tachi Sensei, who is the Clemson-Fukui liason as well as Jake's advisor here. Tachi Sensei, who is a professor of linguistics, is really funny and charming. When I introduced myself he said that he'd have no problems remembering my name because in 福井弁、the local dialect in Fukui, my last name is slang for "Who is it?" 例えば、when someone knocks on your door you can shout "誰あぁ？" (Dare a?), which sounds the same as my last name in Japanese: ダレーア (Dareea). He also told us to make sure to be "good little aliens" as we had to go to 市役所 later that day to complete our Alien Registration Forms. And because these forms are official documents, we needed ハンコ or 印鑑, which are both names for a personal seal (it is stamped alongside your signature on official documents). Which leads me to this:
This is my personal seal, in a handy dandy personal seal holder complete with ink, thanks to the generous Chie-san. You may notice that the seal has some Japanese on it, and at this point may be thinking "But your name doesn't have any Japanese in it Nicole!" or maybe even "How much cornier can this post get?" Because I am a foreigner, I can't just waltz into my local スパー, which is where I got the seal, and pick out one that says my name in katakana (ダレーア）. However, thanks again to Chie-san, we found this little seal, which says 二木 （にき）. The literal meaning of this is two trees, but the pronunciation is "Knee-kee," and since I've been telling people here that they can call me Nikki or Nicole, this is nicely fitting. (My second choice was Kishimoto, as a tribute to the two 岸本先生 who have done so much to help me over the past two years. お世話になったありがとうございます。）So now I have my very own personal seal of "two trees."
One additional fun fact: in the スパー, which has 4 floors and a restaurant, the seals are all in a four-sided rack, and you just pick out the one that matches the kanji (characters) for your last name, in the same way that you would look for a keychain that has your first name on it at a souvenir shop.
That's all for now from "Two trees who is it?" (aside from some 写真）。
おはようございます、Japanese student dorms!＜ 今日は、みんな konnichiwa, minna: hello, everyone 色々な用紙 iroiro na youshi: all kinds of (blank) forms 福井弁 Fukuiben: Fukui dialect 例えば tatoeba: for example 市役所 shiyakusho: City Hall ハンコ hanko: personal seal 印鑑 inkan: personal seal スパー supaa: supermarket 岸本先生 Kishimoto Sensei: the Professors Kishimoto お世話になってありがとうございます osewa ni natta arigatou gozaimasu: Thank you for taking care of me おはようございます ohayou gozaimasu: good morning ＞
No comments:
Post a Comment