Japanese Girls are Weird.

While I was writing my last entry, I heard a strangely familiar noise--the kawaii voice. I personaly think it sounds irritating and sort of foolish. I guess it comes from wanting to sound cute like a young child, but it ends up sounding more like an affectation. It is something that seems wrong to me, but then I don't really like the english equivalents much either.
On the other hand, I don't hear too many women on campus talking like that. They generally look very serious and stylish.
That reminds me, yesterday a girl in my dorm from Thailand was commenting that it is impossible to find girl's clothes in pink. This was a rather foreign concept to me coming from the states, where it seems like every store that has a ladies section has atleast a portion dedicated to pink things. And, she said that a sizable minority of the guys clothes were pink. I'd heard pink was becoming a hip color for guys, but to have a store where the girls section has no pink and the guys has much seems odd to me.
I guess this could be pointed to as an example of how fashion moves in Japan compared to the US. I think that in the states certain colors, while not necisarrily popular, will always be present in a store.

Last Tuesday, Kendo.
I have been going to Kendo for a while now, but the problem I have with the club, that I have had is that there is no Sensei. This means that there is no one to really give instruction and the clubmembers don't really do much instruction.
On Tuesday, I went to kendo and I got more instruction than usual after the club members were done practicing. I was really eager to improve and so I was trying rather hard to do what my senpai was showing me, but she seemed to get sort of frustrated with me. She then called over the exchange student in the club who joined last semester and he told me that she thought I was not listening to her.
It was then that I remembered my manners, at the university I had gotten use to doing multiple things at once; ie recieving instruction while practicing something. This is a bad habit to have in Japan because, as I have noticed, listening is not something that can be done in parallel with something else without it seeming really informal or rude. Listening is also more active here, with lots of hai's sodesuka's, etc--though I suppose I think that way because I am socialized to say things like hmm and yes while someone is talking.
At any rate, I felt really awkward, but at that point I was too tired to really freeze up too much. Since then I have tried to be more careful when someone else is talking.