Jocund in Japan

GOLDEN WEEK - May

2011-05-22T06:00:00.001-07:00

I'll write this later about my experience of golden week- the 3 national holidays aligned in a row occuring the first week of may. Later!

WELCOME TO HOST #4

2011-05-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

A-anyway, so I switched the day before the Earthquake happened. I'd had a meeting with spanking new host dad the week before, so I knew him a little. I'd also met him my first day in Japan- I thought, wow, he looks like a fun host Dad! And was kind of looking forward to this house a little.
.................. ach.
.................. I am a terrible judge.

I parted my host families bawling as usual, rocking hugging my knees and watching the death toll rise from the Earthquake. I then met the host dad here. The first thing he did, was I switched at 11 am- we brought my stuff home, fetched my bicycle, host dad showed me my room- and then left.
Until 8. Story of my life here.
Eeerrrr well, to be honest, if I had to sum up my relationship with this family, it'd be this; personality clash. It was bound to happen. 4th family 'n all that.

I walked into their house, and the first thing that struck me was this; the lack of things!!
This family owns practically nothing- the entire house is completely spotless and uncluttered. It's almost unnerving.

Now Pan out to my room. There are books and papers scattered all over the desk. The paper has my dirty clothes pile unceremoniously dumped in the corner, and a rats nest of wires/chargers surround one of my only light sockets. There is random stuff shoved everwhere and the whole space gives off the fresh scent of chaos.
U-u-u-u-uhhhh yeah. And here we have the very basic example of our personality clash.

I'm not saying slobs and neatfreaks can't be friends. But we all know those nightmare dorm stories of opposing sides being forced to live with eachother in close quarters- it's a strain on both sides. The neater side not being able to understand how the messy person manages to function in that pig pen, and the messy side wondering when the neater one will remove long pointy objects from a certain sensitive orifices. Seriously. For example.

Yesterday, when I descended the stairs for dinner, I met my host mom for the first time that day. She kind of gave me that normal smile, then launched right into a laundry list of everything I'd managed to do wrong that day. I'd left the bathroom jar a little bit ajar; the silverware drawer was slightly pushed out, a tiny translucent slip of plastic had been found on the floor that was apparently my miss, the light at the door was was apparently left on, and I'd used the wrong sponge to clean the rice pan.

Wow. I must be the worst human being alive. Just. Shoot me now.

Then we said the greeting to start the meal.... itadakimasu.....
Awkward. That. I'm sitting there stewing. Like. Awesome, nice to see you too. Wow, I'd had a sushi party that day at the house with 5 people. I'd immaculately cleaned up, I though. You didn't even known I'd had one until you figured out I'd washed the rice pan wrong. But no, lets' talk about all my little slip ups some more. It makes for great dinner conversation, you know.

And Host Dad. Please. Don't get me started. I'll get into that later, in time. I'll even dredge up memories of traumatic trip to tropical Island Okinawa for you.

Anyway, they run 3 salons in town and work from 9-8 every day except for Mondays, so I basically never see them. My favorite point about this family.

A-anyway

Thursday was Ensoku: 遠足！ Class field trip day! We'd voted a few weeks back and elected to go to Kobe, somewhere between I have no idea and Osaka. About the day after decision making, Saori had already decided what to wear. When they get to wear what the want, they kind of go crazy.
Anyway the day of, I arrived fashionably last- Aiko had screwed up her explanation of the meeting place and Kuriyama and Minami ended up having to run come get me while I freaked out on the phone. We boarded a travel bus, and I got plunked next to a girl who I'd never really talked to. Awwkward. I didn't know what to say. The return trip I offered up my Ipod and we listened to music together and talked about prolificness of Wakayaman love hotels, so that was nice.

Once we arrived in Kobe, we grouped up and given full reign- my group decided to go to China town. So did the Sensei's, although we shook them off in a convenience store. Chinatown was pretty cool, I kept bugging my friends, 'Is that guy Chinese or Japanese?!!' because I thought how nifty that they can tell the difference. Halfway through that, we ran into the Senseis and my friends literally seized me and forced me to ask to take a picture with Oyama Sensei. As in, here you go *PUSH* arhghhhhfhfhghghadfhdf that was awkward. I'm like, through the side of my mouth, 'SMILE, SENSEI, OK OK.' Hahaaa -

After that we wandered into bad Chinese style dress shops and various areas, and before we knew it, it was time for buffet~~ ohoh ~~ +1 culture point- if you go to a Japanese buffet, it IS culturally acceptable to take three plates and pile 'em up. I missed this at first, and thought, 'Wow. And I didn't want to look like a greedy American.'

Friday was a day off for whatever reason- someone who was important at one time's birthday I think. Ninna, the Australian girl from her school named Brunty, and I hopped on a Train at 9 to Tennoji- a section of Osaka. Ninna promptly got us lost, claiming how she 'knew where she was going' Which was fine, I got to see some of Tennoji
After we went to go make reservations at a place called Sweets Paradise. now, Japanese are pretty keen on gooey awful English names, but believe me, this one lived up to it. The concept is that you pay a painfully high base price to buy your way into an all you can eat pasta, cake, and sweets buffet.

+ 1 kilo for Emily.

Brunty and I masterfully spaced out our gorging and consumed calories after calories till the end. Ninna dropped out 20 minutes before our alloted 70, due to 'ice cream brain freeze' haha.

Quick glance around- only in Japan could you go to a all you can eat sweets buffet and have not one single person in the entire restaraunt be overweight. Sigh.

I returned at 5:40 so I could get to a Rotary event by 6- Dinner at 'Amuse' toiu French Restaruant. 2nd hosts Nishimoto, Current hosts, and then my first host mom + little bro came. Apparently it was makeup Birthday party, as I'd blown them off for Dinner on actual birthday. It was nice to see the 2nd hosts again, and we fell right back into it. Near the end, my 'steam roller personality always gets what she wants' Counselor Tsuji-San said, "Emily, we hosted this party for you! You are the center of the party," something along those lines; And I just cooly replied, "aaactually, I'm pretty sure that wherever you go Tsuji-san, you're always the center of everything.' And the entire rotary side of the table busted up laughing.

On Saturday, we had Makizushi party at my house, which combines the words for 'roll' and 'sushi' - Rynako, Kanna, Aiko, and Kuriyama came. We spent the first hour making rice, waiting for Kuriyama, and invading my privacy. When she finally showed up, we rode our bikes to a the nearby store called Evergreen to buy ingredients.

I'll admit, I was in sort of a bad mood. The 3 that arrived first walked in on my host dad going out the door, and he lingered for a few minutes talking and making cat noises. Now, they know I don't like the guy, but on first meeting he's a likeable guy, so they were like, 'ii kanji datta' which means, he had a good feeling? And when I kindly pointed out how they'd known him for 2 minutes and could not possibly begin to judge, Rinako said some things told me that I wasn't allowed to think of my Host dad like that- I informed her how actually, excuse me, I can actually think however I damn well please. It hurt that after how much I told about what he'd acted, she would still dismiss my feeling so easily.

Later they barged into my room, and of course there's the requisite 'haha this is messy' but then Rinako just kept going on and on and I'm like, aren't you just overdoing it a tad? Then later, at the store ... ARGHHH, I ended up clearly snapping at her when she something insensitive again, and walking off while they shopped for fish. I composed myself eventually and returned, but man that girl. I-am-better-than-you attitude gets me sometimes. Mattaku.

We came back, prepped the ingredients, and hoisted the coffee table into the living room. While rolling our sushi, we watched the movie 'my darling is a foreigner,' about a japanese girl who dates an American and the problems they run into. It was really cute. Overall, I had a good time though! When I came home my Host Mom had previously mentioned OCD flip out.

Sunday was '英会話練習！！” English Convo practice! With Ninna, Emily, Kuriyama, and Minami!!.... supposedly. Well, that got thrown out the window halfway through and we reverted to speaking Japanese, or just me and Ninna going at it in English. Ninna and I managed to get into fight mode near the end, which was kind of funny. We ended up running around shopping and going to McDonalds.

Anyway, thus abruptly endeth some week sometime I forgot. Chow.

東日本大震災ーEARTHQUAKE

2011-05-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

And so, it has been two months since I last blogged. It's not overly hard to remember the exact date on which I did so- The day before I changed families, but, more importantly, the day before the earthquake happened.

Neither, to be honest, was such a fantastic thing. Bit understating both. Not that I'm equating my current host family situation to a tsunami, but I digress.

Anyway, I remember clearly when I first heard about the earthquake, a bit like 911 and what the old timers claim about the kennedy shootings. I'd literally climbed the stairs from posting my last blog in the living room, when host dad paid me a visit to my room, which was rare- `There's been a tsunami on the coast', he said, 'I'm going to go survey damages for my job." I was like, what? Tsunami?

But he wasn't making a big deal about it and left, and so I didn't think too much of it, but I eventually got curious and went downstairs to turn on the news. The picture it was reflecting was surely, not a pretty one, but even then I had no real idea of the scope. I didn't feel the earthquake at all. Sorry. That's not exciting. It was the biggest earthquake Japan has ever had, I was there, and I didn't feel a quiver.

I'm sure everyone who reads this knows about it, but in the event of passage of time or a case striking ignorance, here's what happened; A 9.0 earthquake struck about 90 miles off the cost of North East Japan March 11, 2011. It triggered a 30 ft tidal wave that devastated coastal towns, killing thousands and causing what may be the most costly natural disaster in history. O-oh, and on it's way, managed to hit a nuclear powerplant, which went into meltdown mode.
Actually, when you type it out like that, it sounds kind of like a sick joke. Poor Japan.

That Friday, I spent the day watching the death toll count go from 1 by 1 to 40, then slept and suddenly it was 500. Then, again, when I was changing families and riding in my Counselor's car towards my next house, listening to the news pointedly to trying to stop crying- 1200 people dead, 1500 missing-

This number would eventually rise to 13000 dead, and around 20,000 missing- I haven't checked recently for more accurate numbers, but still. Horrific either way and understandably rocked Japan in a huge, huge way.

As for the effect on my life, we got a 3 foor tidal wave and not much else. There was nothing to listen to for the next three weeks but earthquake broadcast, and the commercials all turned to encouraging social messages - whether for lack of companies that wanted to broadcast or some country cheerleading measures, we literally got to watch the same commercials about 'TRY YOUR BEST JAPAN' for about 3 weeks. Consequently, when you sing, 'arigatou!' in a singsong、 someone will immediately sing 'arigatou!' back at you, probably followed by a stylish pirouette twirl. Check it out: [IF YOU GREET EVERYTIME, YOUR FRIENDS WILL INCREASE!!! Is the last thing they say.] Understandably, because this is a terrible and creepy commercials force fed to the population of Japan for 3 weeks straight 15 times a day, stuff like this has popped up.
Oh lordy. /facepalm

Ahem, yes, so, it was often remarked in the few weeks following the earthquake that the peace in wakayama was simply 'creepy' Osaka too, was in this state- It was hard to know what to feel, at this time, so peaceful, but then just so close so much destruction- and that's when it began.
The great noise sucking noise as hundreds of Exchange students accross Japan were dragged back to their host countries by hysteric Parents, Governments, and Exchange organizations. Stamp chan, the Thai girl at my school, was a casualty - 3 from my district as well boarded planes sometime in the 2 weeks following the quake. The faltering state of the Powerplant was the cheif concern, although the media was really playing the whole thing up the whole world over.

So lonely, Seirin. So lonely. I didn't even get to say good bye.

Either way, it was a very very tragic event, but I am very proud of Japan and they way they've handled response, relief, grief, and just everything. The feelings of going through it with this country will certainly be sometime I remember for the rest of my life.

2011-03-18T17:15:00.001-07:00

高野山ようこそ！

Sorry 2 blog posts in a row since I got too distracted last week - and I still have this weeks to write ungg

The day after the haircut was Koyasan 修練旅行！ Kouya Mountain Research / Study trip! Yay! Doesn't that sound like fun!
Kouyasan （高野山） is a World Heritage spot- I was totally sleeping during most of the lectures, but if I remember it right, it's in the 1,200 year old range. Its home to an absolutely ridiculous number of temples, as well as a highschool and college for those who want to become Obou-san [monks] The point was to learn about the bhuddist religion and heritage of the area.

I ended up being driven all 1 and a half hours of winding road there by a Rotary guy I'd never met before. I guess my Rotary is still not really into letting me take a train....ever. I was kind of apprehensive about the whole 'spend a good 90 minutes in a small car trying to be polite' but the conversation took off after about 10 minutes and we managed to talk most of the way there in fairly fluid conversation, so that was a relief. This was repeated the return trip with a DIFFERENT old guy I barely knew. It was actually fun, though, so all good. :] His son was a Mangaka!

Anyway, I was expecting it to be an Exchange student retreat, but in reality, there were only 4 other exchange students there. The other participants, probably about 40 of them, came from all sorts of places, everywhere from a nursing home care company to the International section of Wakayama Universtiy. This was so cool! We got to talk to so many different people. In my group we had a couple chinese, an American girl by the name of Lauren, a Filipino, and then some Japanese boys. I reallly liked the Chinese couple, graduate students form Wakayama U, and I spent a long time talking to them about there experiences here and in China. I mean, China is a country largely... what's the word, monsterized? by the US. I felt really lucky to be able to share culture with someone who came directly from it, who wasn't in the US and feeling pressure from attitude we have towards Chinese- basically, who would speak honestly and not defensively. I especially enjoyed this when I pointedly ask how dog tasted in front of Lauren, who had a little freakout fit while they debated whether it tasted closer to pork or chicken. Hahaha! And then, it's times like that, where you feel language learning is really worth it. : ) Who knows, when I'm done with Japanese....

Hanchou, or Group leader- [Did you know Japanese has about a zillion names for leaders? Thank god Hitler wasn't Japanese. Think of how many chants they'd have! The poor citizens would have to just yell HAIL ALL OF THE ABOVE 30 TITLES HITLER] Anyway, this guy was the spitting image of Aang from The Last Airbender. Anyone remember that cartoon/horrible Night L Shaman movie about the bald 10 year old with an arrow tatooed to his head? Yeah. that one. Consequently, we spent the entire, and I do mean ENTIRE trip referring to him under the names of "The LAST Airbender" "Aang" and "Avatar" and so on. After that, we spent boring bits categorizing the different monks into elemental Airbender types and searching for Aang's flying buffallo. Needless to say, I think the lectures and general point of this trip was completely lost on us. Especially my other Exchangers- Lauren probably speaks around the same level as me, but the lectures used a significant amount of specialized vocabulary that I understood from cramming Roman Catholic Church history for the World History final- but I have no doubt it flew right over the heads of my fellow exchangers.

Among activities we tried were: Calligraphy, meditation, planting a tree, walking through holy sites, eating, and breaking a significant number of rules. I have decided to leave out the bits that could endanger my ability to stay in this country. Which you know is the most interesting part, but.... ; )

Anyway, I'll skip explaining and just go for pictures instead:

Spring Solstice Festival

The word for statue in Japanese is the same as elephant- so technically we're sitting on a zou squared! Hah! How cool are we!

Our rad group!

Since Year End Finals ended on Friday, we have halfdays until Spring break! Which is the 24th! Which I would be happy about if I didn't like school! : ( That's about 2 weeks of halfdays for no apparent reason at all. Then again, since we'll be moving up to 3rd year after break, theres not like theres real point in drilling us on our current classes. Monday was the weekly Rotary meeting, which sucked because it happened -just- as the first World History class was held. That means after alllll that studying I did for my History Final, I DIDNT EVEN GET IT BACK, SEE MY SCORE, OR COMPARE SHARE THE PAIN WITH MY FRIENDS. [That's something I miss about getting tests back. While everyone here is slumped over their desks considering seppuku over the test score, I'm just sitting there blinking like. Nice weather huh.]
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The next day, my friends informed me that Oyama Sensei announced to the ENTIRE class that I had managed to beat out 22 of my classmates in the History Final- our of 40 !!!! AHHH! Isn't that great! Oh mannn, I have never been so excited to be average!
Tuesday, I got Biology and English, including that English composition final which was flipped around Japanese for me. Again, I got a class announcement, although as this was the 3rd time I kind of hid- I guess I'm getting attention because none of the Exchange students they get ever actually try to participate in class, even the ones that come with previous language knowledge. My Biology test, which was the same as my classmates but halved since I started participating late, I almost scored perfectly. However, I got tripped up since the word 'Blood type' uses the same 3rd kanji as 'Gene formation,' so I thought she wanted me to write the gene formation of the blood type (AO, AB, BO ect) but really she just wanted A, B, AB ect. >8 |.... grrr...

Tuesday, I did what I've been considering for a long time; I told Arai-Sensei I wanted to quit badminton. After school, I went to the teachers lounge- but I was so nervous that the first time I entered with the low greeting 'Shitureshimasu.." I saw his back and ran out again. After composing myself again, I marched in there and told him. He was doing that 'speak in slow polite japanese like I don't understand anything' thing again, and halfway through the conversation I said, 'Sensei. Sensei. That- your normal speaking style is okay, really.' and the teacher sitting beside him busted up laughing. I explained my reasons for quitting- I have the Japanese Proficiency test, the SAT, and then I plan to try to try my hardest on all my classes from here on out- that will require studying. I left the real reason unsaid, however, that I wasn't getting along well with my teamates and found the regime excessive. But the studying thing was no lie, either.

To be honest, I've kept up badminton so long because telling Arai sensei that you want to quit takes significantly more guts than killing yourself daily in the presence of people who aren't a big fan of you. He's just one of those teachers that you don't want to quit to- I'm sure you understand. That, and my captain and some of my team mates- I respect them a lot. So, after school on Wednesday, I went to collect my stuff and say thank you for everything they did. That was an awkward affair. I'd warn one technicolor moose sock and one white one, and as I bowed to say thank you, I kind of looked down- haha.... I wanted to ask for a picture too, but I was so nervous that I forgot it. Wahhhh... I really have almost proof I was ever there. I think that in the end of my exchange, my failure in badminton will be my biggest regret. But if that's all I have for regrets, I think I'll be okay.

From here on out, I'll join art club for a 2-3 days a week and investigate volunteer options since colleges like that and maybe I could meet new people. I have almost dropped art entirely over the last 6 months due to badminton, which I think was a bad decision because Art is the only thing I've ever passionately held my entire life. Furthermore, I feel like I've lost the ability to value artistic skill, especially as I plan my future in the opposite direction. I want to pick it up again.

Thursday and Friday (today) were off days since 3rd year middle schoolers were taking highschool entrance exams. I wrote 'good luck!' on my desk teehee. I spent Thursday running around with Ninna, being foreign idiots, doing horribly taboo things like eating special imported Oreo's by dipping them into a milk carton while straddling a high fence and talking loudly in English. It is good to have a foreign friend you can relax with in Japan. :::) While we were doing that, a creepy old guy approached us and asked started saying things in English. We just kind of looked at him, I said, 'Takk' [Danish / Swedish for Thanks] to Ninna and she took off in Danish while I nodded and and answered in really poor french. I don't know if he bought it, since we were half laughing, but he just sat there and stared a good minute or two until we ran away.
As for what she was saying, apparently it involved yogurt and yelling at me to speak in German.

Friday, I got up early, and thought to myself, I think I'll blog in the dark while drinking hot Cocoa!
And so I did.
Today is packing day, I'm switching to my next hosts tomorrow. Ughhh, like usual, I do not want to leave. This family is so sweet, they know all my likes down better than my real parents [OK, so my real parents usually just ignore them haha] and they're always so funny. I came home the other day to find the snack bowl stocked with Snickers and white chocolate and was just all BAWWW HOW DO I LEAVE... I don't want to! And because this is Ayume's house, visiting might be awkward. They've invited me back to visit in the Cherry blossom season, since this is in the country and it'll be a sea of blooming flowers in a few months.
Anywayso I'll end it here. Next blog, Family number 4!

Cleaned up room

WEEK FORGOT EMIRI OVER N OUT.

Snip snip snip

2011-03-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

You may realize that Wakayama snowing for once is not actually the point of posting this picture.

Okay, I cut off my blog post last time at Friday, the fourth of march since I hadn't told my parents yet, but I did, so here goes.

Friday, the fourth of March, I had plans. I had had plans for a long time. Friday was the last day of year end tests, and to party, my group was going for Sushi afterwards and then to a hair salon. Even Saori was planning to tag along. Now, neither of these places are ones you'd find me often, having an intense dislike of all things seafood and the longest hair in the prefecture.
Sushi in Japan is really something. I don't know what Sushi places in America are like, but if they're anything like Japanese ones, the general concept is so; Snaking through all the tables and parading around a whole acquarium of sliced up fish on little plates is a conveyor belt. All plates are 100 yen unless otherwise marked. When you see something you like, you just pluck that dish off the belt. I found it thrilling, equating the split decision making process you that car chase bit of action movies. DO I WANT THE EGG ONE? ANOTHER EGG ONE? ARRGGHH ITS HALWAY THROUGH OUR TABLE-DIVE FOR IT, MAI-CHAN!!! [NO!EMILY STOP EATING THE EGG ONES JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO PANSY TO EAT ANYTHING RAW!]
If there was something particular you wanted, a small touch screen suspended above the table let you pick through the menu and the cooks would slide it on the conveyor and it'd get to you eventually. There was this slot on the side of the table to put dirty dishes in - every 5 dishes, you got a chance to win a small childrens toy. Everyone was super surprised when we won on the first go- rare apparently.

Kan-chan and our sushi plate stacks > : )

After, we went to the hair salon. Now, this is usually not much of a group activity, as far as girls go. Remember how I said I had the longest hair in the prefecture? I'm not really even joking. Of course, laws of probability say that someone in the few hundred thousand people living here that there is someone with longer hair than me, but I've yet to see her, and my hair is frequently cited as being 'the longest they'd ever seen' by Japanese.

And it gets shorter when you braid it.
BASICALLY just to the top of my knee wow that's crazy

Well.
Not anymore.
Two ties, two clips, 50 centemeters. For the non metric, non mathematically inclined, that's about 1 and 2/3rds feet or about 20 inches. ALLISON M. IF YOU ARE READING THIS I USED THE RULER YOU LOANED ME TO MEASURE IT. It still has your name written on it and everything haha.
Let me reiterate for those who've known me for the past 11 years: Yes. I Cut My Hair.
And put it in terms for those who haven't, to express the importance of this; I CUT MY HAIR OH MY GOD I FINALLY DID IT I JUST SNIP SNIP CUT IT OFF OHHHH MMMYYY GOODDDD IIIII CUUUUTTTT MYYYYY HAIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRR ITSSS GONEEE well actually its in my desk drawer I haven't mailed it yet- is that weird??
AND ITS SORT OF LIKE GETTING OFF A TREADMILL BECAUSE ALL OF A SUDDEN IM JUST FLOATING. WHO KNEW IT WAS THAT HEAVY-
Ok. To clarify, this is what we call HAJIMETE HAIRCUT. As in, virgin hair was de-locked. For the past 10 or so years of my life, a family friend has handled the trimming of my hair with the regular payments of pasta. So. I'd never had a legitimate haircut, and never been to a salon.

Ohhh baby. After trimming the initial 18 inches off [10 and 8 inches respectively, to be donated to Pantene's Beautiful Lock's charity for free wigs for cancer patients] we opened up a glossy magazine and tried to figure out the best hair style to go with- not made any easier by the fact all the models were exclusively Asian, let me tell you. We finally settled on something and I swear it took the stylist about an hour to trim down my freakishly thick hair into something resembling layers. Then, for kicks, she curled it and sent me on my way.

Me and the hairstylist that cut my hair

-deep breathing

Now, a week later, I think I'm finally used to the concept. Maybe I gave some people the impression I was vain narcissist in the process, because this past week whenever I pass a mirror I would just STARE- that's me? HOW ABOUT THAT.

STILL STARIN AT THAT MIRROR narcissist emily stoppit

FEBUARY NOKORI

2011-03-10T17:24:00.000-08:00

The last time I sat on a cat, I got scratched...

Yosh, this is Emily filling in the second half of February. I remember I stopped writing the 19th, because that was the day Ninna and I went to see Super Station master Tama!

Hey, everyone, did you know?
>: ) I ride a train line every morning and afternoon called the 貴志川線- Kishigawasen. Its a small line that serves a fairly limited area, but is actually quite famous for it's three special trains that run every day- the Ichigo [strawberry] train, the Omocha [toy] train, and then the Tama train! Excuse me, SUPER STATION MASTER Tama train! Wait till you see it.

Omocha

There is a mini toy meuseum like display, and in the back there are vending machines you can buy plastic balls with little toys inside.

Ichigo- because who doesn't like strawberries?

Rode this one to school most days-

Tama

This one is the best! Not only because the designis insanely cute, but because theres an entire bookshelf filled with childrens books. I've actually read a few on the way home from school.

You may have guessed- Super Station Master Tama is a cat!

I scammed Ninna into coming to see the real deal with me, which involved paying a steep train fare to reach the end of Kishigawasen. Which wasn't magical castles and rainbows, let me tell you. It was a tiny, mostly barren station with a fat, sleeping cat and kitty decals. Rah rah.

BEHOLD.

Anyway, Ninna wasn't feeling well so we stopped at my house on the way back and ended up drinking tea for a few hours and playing Japanese Super Smash brothers.

The only thing I remember about Sunday was that I ate McDonald's Miami burger and it was not very good at all.

Tuesday, Saori came back !!! She did! She walked into class 2nd period and the entire class simultaneously drank their breath [Er, wait, gasped, that's the Japanese expression?] We were all like AHHHHH ! OKAERI! [Culture point; when you leave the house in the morning, you say 'ittekimasu!' or, I'm going now. Anyone present says 'itterashai' in response- Similarily, when you come home, you say 'Tadaima' or I'm here, and anyone present says 'Okaeri', or welcome home-]
The true reason why she came back is still a mystery, but I was glad! Whether it was by our influence or some other reason, she came back the rest of the week, although started skipping during the third day of testing...

Wednesday I had my interview with Oyama Sensei, aka previously mentioned Mr. P-P-Pokerface History Homeroom teacher. Everyone had signed up for a 10 minute interview last week to discuss grades and studying, and to my surprise he asked me why I hadn't and signed me up for the last slot. Anyway, during homerooom I got a call in to have my interview. I entered the history teachers' room a bit nervously. Oyama Sensei was on the far side of the room, already sitting in a sort of reclining computer chair. He motioned me to a parrarel seat, and I noticed to my surprise how much his demeanor had changed- he was completely relaxed and for lack of better words, had a sort of lounging posture. The only solution I have for why the guy who I'd never seen smile or even relax in 6 months was sprawled out on a cushy chair was that maybe 42 kids can stand their own against this guy, but he had full confidence he could commandeer the conversation alone? Hahaha.

Anyway, he opened with talking about my development in Japanese. 大分美味くなりましたねって- or, you've become the quite good, he said. We talked about the impending History Final. I had asked him about what I was to do a few days ago, and his first response was offer to prepare a sort of essay like last time. However, I told him I wanted to take the same as my classmates, and he seemed surprised but agreed. During this interview, I ended up telling him how I'd memorized enough Kanji to read the textbooks and had acquired a really strange vocabulary in the process. I kind of joked how my goal was a 20 %, and I swear to god- he looked at me, SMILED, and said it should be atleast 30-

W-W-W-W-W-W-WHAT - cue last week's image of Oyama sensei holding two dalmations in an eccentric dance pose shattering-
I composed myself until I returned to the classroom, where I excitedly went over to one of my friends, slapped my hand on her desk and was all 'HE SMILED OMGGG OYAMA SENSEI SMILED KYA' I told the story later in great detail to my female friends!! kyah!

That thursday, during Japanese History, a couple of the guys were picking on one slighly oppressed boy named Yasuda. Apparently something snapped, because in the middle of the lecture he abruptly stood in his chair, banged his hand down upon his desk, and basically yelled, 'YOU GUYS CAN ALL GO SUCK IT, BECAUSE I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND NOW AND YOU LOSERS DONT. SO STOP PICKING ON ME.'
LOL.
Needless to say, the entire lesson was derailed, and he went around the rest of the day with a twitchy, defensive pose. Haha!
Friday was the first of year end tests, but only English and Japanese liturature, which I don't take, so there wasn't anything I had to be worried about. Here's a list of tests I machoistically signed up for:
****World History- same as classmates
**Spanish - Same as classmates
Biology- Same as classmates, but only about half the material since I started late-
English Grammar/General English- No using dictionary, even for Japanese translation / reading parts
*English listening / composition - Flipped around for Japanese-
The ones I was most worried about I'll mark with * - yeah.
I.
Studied.
For.
That.
History test. Little by little, every day for a week, I translated every handout Oyama Sensei had given us and memorized the information- [I actually have a fairly phenominal short term memory for that kind of info, although this doesn't work in Japanese because the names become disjointed an impossible to remember- for instance, Urbanus becoms Urubanussu and that's an easy one. ]

and on top of that- CHINESE. HISTORY. You know Japanese? All those Kanji? Yeah? Squiggles? Take the normal 2000 kanji, I still cant read a good 700 of these, then add EXCLUSIVELY CHINESE KANJI because it's already not bad enough! Also, I can totally tell the difference between a Chinese name and normal Japanese word I don't know! Not! HEAD. DESK. HEAD. DESK.

The real deal was monday. I feel lame in that I was more nervous for that test than almost any in my life. He handed out this giant paper filled with rows and rows of blanks, and then two huge papers filled with Japanese paragraphs and questions, and my heart kind of dropped. But as we started into it, I realized I could read it, and I knew the information, and I immediately calmed down and managed to get through almost the entire test- although I got caught up at the end on the Chinese portion.

The rest of the Tests passed without much event. Monday was the biggest day with Spanish and World history, and it was mostly downhill from there. I enjoyed jeering on Ayume as she crammed for math. 'Ganbare! Try your best!' and then in English, "goodluck!,' I said, walking off to go play with Ninna. Wahaha!

Anyway, I have a special story for Friday, which I can't post yet because I haven't made it public what I did that day, but when I do, I'll post it up!

色んなお世話になりました

2011-02-19T03:32:00.000-08:00

Don't Litter! Love, Kappa

OKAY COOL HI AGAIN HERE WE GO

By the end of Saturday the 12th, I was completely toasted, despite skipping badminton. At school, I belong to this group of girls, and we're always together during break time and such. Originally, when I joined,. I remember specifically writing to my parents 'send me American snacks that can be shared, my group is 7 girls so enough for each!'

Well, after Winter break, it took me about 2 days to notice, but our group had become 6- A girl called Saori was missing.

She did not come to school in January.

She did not answer our texts or phone calls.

The only way we knew she was alive was that she was active on an online art website. Saturday the 12th of February 2011, Aiko, Minami, Kuriyama and I launched our assault on Saori's home. The goal? Convince her to come back to school. We informed her we were coming, painted intimidating symbols on our faces with Seaweed Jam, and fashioned makeshift battering rams to our bicycle baskets. OK, not really, but with a warriors spirit we marched into her house. We were greeted warmly by all of Saori's family except for Saori, and was promptly served tea and cookies. Then Saori came out, and she had dyed her hair and and and..~ And well, at that, her little brother was also ushered into the room, and proceeded to steal the the spotlight by running around in circles and shouting "WOWWWW 4 PEOPLE CAME I'M SO HAPPPPYYYY!!"

Talk about a conversation derailer.

It was awkward at first, but that slowly faded to a more normal atmosphere, with the rest of

the party eventually ragging on her and making jokes about her new abundance of free time. And then there was the conversation about Oyama sensei, Lady Gaga, and P-P-P-Poker Face. That mental image isn't leaving anytime soon.

We left on good terms, saying 'Jaa, mata, getsuyobi ne' which means 'Bye, I'll see you again Monday!" Come Monday, Saori didn't come, and I can't say any of us were surprised, but alas.

Good luck to you, Saori, in this World.

After that adventure, I was picked up at Kamayama trainstation by Host dad to go to Dinner with Host Mom's sister and friends. You know how when you're really little, you have pre- arranged playdates with other kids to give your mom a break or whatever? Well, I, at age 16, had a prearranged English playdate with a man called Jeff. He teaches english. This was all I knew beforehand about him. Now, when you think, Language teacher, you think thinly balding slightly overweight mellow dude, right?

Oh no, no no no. Mr. Jeff turned out man built slightly like a bear with a height to match. He spoke in a rough central American accent and had an equally rough attitude. This man had absolutely no mouth to head filter at all, said exactly what he thought, so all in all he was basically the opposite of the Japanese stereotype

He was extremely intelligent, and we spent half the dinner debating Japan culture from Woman equality to National attitude. It was nice, since I haven't had a chance to hold an educated conversation for about 6 months, and I think Mr. Jeff felt along the same lines because before he had my name down he told me when the conversation turned to college, 'I like you. You're not stupid. Tell you what, you study your little ass off, come here, and you can live with us for 4 years when you go to college.' He was half serious too.

The other half of dinner he regaled me on how he'd gotten his internal defibulator device stuck in his chest while conscious and working for Japanese gangster construction companies, and whole trivia of life. And inbetween pauses he would argue with his friends wife. Which was interesting in that she didn't speak English and he didn't speak Japanese.

Speaking of which, I asked him pretty early on ‘So you don’t speak Japanese, huh, how about that.’ I then got a story about how a childhood disease that almost killed him, but irreparably damaged his brain making him incapable of learning new languages. I will never judge before knowing again. I will never judge before knowing again.

After dinner, Jeff's British friend and his wife came and most of the adults got flying drunk, which was hilarious. The Brit had brought along his little boy, just a wee thing. He was spouting off Japanese about a million miles an hour when I asked him, “hey, what's that toy?" in English and he just said 'ITS A FLYING FISH!" And took off in English. I was just all WHOAHHHH COOL IT SWITCHES JUST LIKE THAT, I WANT A BILINGUAL 3 YEAR OLD TOO!! [The Brit's response? You can have this one…]

Monday was Valentine’s day! In Japan, on Valentine’s day, it's a tad different from America.

[These rebellious youth, undmindful of the traditional values of imported marketable

holidays.] Instead of merely doing something with your special somebody, [or mourning your

lack thereof] you give chocolate to all your friends! Or really, supposedly, it's the day girls give chocolates to boys, but since boys and girls tend not to mix and nobody likes

chocolate more than, well, a female, at the highschool level it has turned into 'girls make treats to give to everyone they like'day.

Ninna and I jumped that bandwagon hard. I'd googled out a couple of Japanese recipes beforehand, and the bright idea was this: Japanese recipe means we could find all the ingredients at a Japanese grocery store and Japanese measuring devices would match up with the amounts!

This aside, anybody that really knows me that for my plan for the domestic future is to marry Riannon K and come home to a homecooked meal every night. Either that, or enjoy cans of Spaghetti O's and instant ramen with 30 cats. Still deciding. That is to say, I'm not the best cook you can find. Keeping all this in mind, let me show you the equation for our dream treats.

2 exchange students + 1 Danish Cake recipie .. in Danish, without the instructions + 2 Japanese recipies + a Japanese kitchen + Japanese Measurements

The reality? - WHAT IS THIS EVEN SAYING - SQUINT HARDER AT THE PICTURE NINNA - WHERE IS THE OVEN - IM PRETTY SURE THIS IS AN OVEN - NO ITS A MICROWAVE - ITS DEFINATELY AN OVEN - THIS IS THE OVEN - THAT IS THE TOASTER - GOOGLE TRANSLATE YOU ARE NO HELP AT ALL - THE CHOCOLATE BALLS!! THE CHOCOLATE BALLS!! - HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE JAPANESE SQUIGGLES FOR SPATULA?? - EMILY I FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR FUTURE HUSBAND - SHUT IT NINNA - HOST DAD PLEASE PUT DOWN THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER - GET ME A SPOON STAT - WILL A RICE PADDLE WORK ? -ect ect

Do you see our domestic skills overflowing from this cake. Simply spilling out.

Somehow, through all that, we managed to make mostly edible and halfway yummy chocolates, cookies, and even a cake. Enough for about. Oh, 12 valentines. I had about 16 people I really wanted to give them to, but alas. Ninna was kind enough to let me have 9, and exchanged with my school group, Stamp-chan, and (heheh) also gave one to my Handsome Homeroom Teacher, Oyama sensei.

On Valentines, Wakayama also did something it does fairly sporadically but quite halfheartedly, like a habitual diet shirker; snow. Apparently, it had decided to make up for the last, about, 12 years [See; as far back as my classmates remember] and really put some effort into it. It snowed from 11:00 to about 9:00 pm. The snow, initially fighting the higher than freezing temperatures, didn't stick at first, but around the 3rd hour it started to lightly build. Like powerdered sugar. This drove my cooped up classmates just about out of their minds- they're about as exciteable as hyperactive Chihuahuas anyway, and probably just about anyone would take flipping out over snow to legitimately paying attention to Ancient Japanese.

After school, there was a giant snowball fight in the courtyard, and people built mini snowmen on the tennis courts. Badminton was also canceled, and I headed home in the two inches of slushy snow on Deathtrap, the not so trusty bike. Which sucked. See why students in Spokane don’t commute 40 minutes via bike.

HDad built the snowman, HSis the snow.... rabbit?

From the side of the house

Tuesday was hisashiburii badminton. There's been an interesting and diverse range of things keeping me from it lately, a great deal stemming from my lack of desire to go, but regardless of the reasoning, I'm pretty sure Arai sensei has not been pleased by this. At all. Halfway through practice, when Moeh went over to ask Arai sensei if we were to be paired for a certain thing, he said, 'Emily is weak'but with a really heavy Kansei accent in really rough Japanese. I just kind of laughed and Moeh and Sensei looked at me and asked why, and I said 'I understood that...' and Arai Sensei: ‘Ahhh, so you understand now hmm..’ The only thing keeping him from chewing me out is probably his perceived imaginary language barrier.

Wednesday was the last day of Badminton until year end of tests are over, which start in two weeks.

OH!!OH!!

YOU CAN ALL CONGRATULATE ME !! ON WEDNESDAY I FINISHED MEMORIZING THE 1006 GENERAL USE CHARACTERS LEARNED IN GRADES 1-6 OF JAPANESE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!!!! I HAVE OFFICIALLY REACHED THE READING LEVEL OF AN EXTREMELY MENTALLY DAMAGED 10 YEAR OLD!! YAY ME!!

See the ones in red? I've memorized those. Yes, all those.

I am thumping myself on the back because no one appreciates this. No one. I say this because the Japanese don't seem to believe I can actually read them, and all the foreigners seem to wonder why I bother trying. I strive alone. Alone. And you know what? I can read light novels now. And Biology textbooks. And most of history. And warning labels. And train station instructions. Eat that. EAT THAT EVERYONNNNNNE.

NOW FOR THE NEXT 949... AND THEN THE 300 EXTRA USED IN NAMES.... YAY.............. ...

If you want to feel a bit of my pain, click here and click the 'study button, then just click through a few - notice how most of them have 2-4 different way

Thursday I got caught up reading on the train to school. I started that night's dinner conversation with, 'Say, Ayume, did you know that it takes about 20 minutes to walk from our station to the next?' Host family kind of stared at me for second, like, 'Oh, no, you didn't-' And yes, yes I did- I had looked up from my book that morning to watch the doors of the train closing on my stop. At the next station, I checked the schedule- the next train wasn't for about 35 minutes. So I started off on foot. I didn't have a clue where I was other than 'if I follow the general directions of the train tracks I will inevitably end up at my stop. It was a nice walk. I wish Japanese roads made more sense.

My host family joked that I probably couldn't find any more ways to screw things up, and had probably managed to pull off just about every small mistake you could imagine at this point, from forgetting keys to dropping traintickets- I warned them not to test me. They also commented on my excellent sense of direction and firm grasp on the layout of Wakayama city. I assured them it was because of my extensive experience getting lost.

FUN THINGS TO DO WHILE LOST; TAKE PICTURES

Yasai / Fruit store

Japanese school bus-tiny tots only only- green words read; Nagusa Kindergarten

Temple near school

Practically a whole flock of birds were on this structure

The next day, I proved them wrong by forgetting my PE clothes and having to watch during PE. Which was kind of fun, since I ended up spending most of it with Kuriyama writing the PE pass slips ‘With your entire heart, please write a reflection about your pass experience’ [I kid you not- that wording. Japan is pretty cheesy.]

Did I mention since after the Marathon, we’ve been doing jump rope in PE? Yes. Jumprope. Not as a side thing. Jumprope. Just jumprope. I definitely haven’t touched one of those since 2^nd grade, thanks.

She warned me that writing; ‘Everyone seems to really hate this, and me too.’ ‘Wow, aren’t these PE uniforms gaudy? Like the entire gym is purple’ ‘Even standing and watching for 50 minutes hasn’t imparted upon me the actual point of this.’ Would probably be a bad idea, so we spent about 20 minutes wracking our brains for suitably awful responses.

Saturday, I ended up at 7 o’clock AM studying somehow. I will be taking the same world history and biology tests as my classmates, WHICH IS BASICALLY LIKE SUICIDE BUT HEY AWESOME. ADMITTEDLY MY SCHOOLGIRL CRUSH ON MY HISTORY TEACHER IS KIND OF DEFINITELY HELPING THE DRIVE TO STUDY.

[Yutaro, Forgotnameloudboy, and Sakura being Uke, Seme homo peas and offspring hetero peas, respectively.]

You know, with teaching methods like this, maybe Biology is possible afterall...

Anyway, month 6, OVER AND OUT.

Febbing it up 2 weeks

2011-02-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

Us!

Sup!
Halfway through February already...

I left off near the end of January, right before one of Rotary's oh so fun droning lecture orientations, at which I ended up extemporaneously speaking for about 5 minutes in Japanese due to a speech topic mixup. [I had managed to ask the only other exchange student that had no idea.] Anyway, it was on the differences between Home country and Host Country- I seemed to have an opinion very different from my other Americans. They all made their speeches about how different Americans and Japanese were; Americans were noisy, said exactly what they thought, how Japanese were respectful quite and polite...ect... I'm not going to really go into it, but it seems like they were still generalizing and stereotyping so much, which disappointed me. Felt so shallow. I spent my time going into why I thought our cultures were more similar than was said. I really do feel that way, too. I wasn't just being ornery.

Arai Sensei let me play my first doubles match two days later at badminton. Moeh and I lost the first, but and won the second! Admittedly, she was kind of carrying me, but I didn't do too bad.

The next friday was Marathon meet day! Since the start of third trimester, we'd been doing running in PE. Whenever we ran, we were ranked according to speed. My ranks, respectively, out of ~65 girls were 7, 51, 6, 42, and 9 - tell me that Badminton hasn't paid off! Er, if not necessarily the exercise of badminton, Mr. Badminton captain has PE at the same time as me and it was frankly embarrassing how often he lapped me when I wasn't trying my best. I bet you can guess which days he wasn't there though hur hur hur-

This was the only picture of the Field I got before my cam died.

Anyway, on the actual meet day, I forgot my bike key and ended up hitching a ride with host mom. We had the Marathon in this giant stadium, and the girls started first. All of us were called out to the middle of the field, did our exercises, and were sent off with a bang! We looped the track in the middle twice before heading out winding 5.5 km course around the outside. As I was exiting the stadium, a couple of the watching boys from my class yelled out "GANBARE EMIRI!!" [try your best!!] and halfway through I ran past Oyama Sensei, who was standing there looking overheated in this long coat. He repeated the same words, so it was certainly a good atmosphere !! : ) I kind of didn't pace myself too well though, and by 2/3rds of the way through I was ready to just about collapse. I kept it up and finished 41st of 300 girls. That's not overly bad for someone who's been consistently sedentary for the last, oh, 6 years. = D

The next day, my host family took me out to this giant theme park, Nagashima spaland! There was this ridiculously huge roller coaster, and since it was pretty damn chilly and overcast, there was almost no one in the park. We ran around, Ayume being quite audible in her complaints of the previous day's exertion, and went on every ride.

1/3rd of the largest rollercoaster in the park

Yes, I did jeer my host family onto going on this ride. Ayume and you can see HMom in the back.

Miyuki and HDad waiting for coaster

Afterwards we drove for about 10 minutes and pulled up in front of- a hotel??? No, wait, an Onsen?

Now, for the uncultured of you reading this blog, allow me explain the concept Japanese Onsen - hotsprings. AKA, - public bathing. You bathe in a special room with everyone else, and then you can go out and soak in the hotspring pools. My reaction to this revelation was probably pretty funny to watch, to be honest. Everyone got out and I was just sitting upright in my seat glancing around and stuttering, 'wait, what, what, what are we doing- I thought we weren't doing this?-' they all just kind of paused and stared at me, like, you didn’t know? What's your problem? 'Well, if you don't want to, if it's impossible, it's okay...' host mom offered. I stewed in my panic, and did what I usually do when it comes to things like this- go for it. Afterall, there was no time to really make a decision, and plenty of time to regret later.

It was amazingly, uh, Japanesey. Host mom and dad bid us goodbye- HMom to a massage, HDad to the Sauna. We girls went into a locker room arrangement to undress. Without a hint of hesitation, my Hsisters just stripped down to their birthday suits and headed off to the bathing area- leaving poor sheltered, cripplingly modest Emily in this state:

Now, in America, having hair halfway down my thigh, I tend to get a lot of stares, or at least double takes. As a foreigner in Japan, Japanese sometimes have a hard time looking away. Combine this with a general lack of clothes and you have the overpowering novelty of foreign hair queen, stark freakin’ naked. Now, I’d like to think I’ve developed a bit of a thick skin by now, but I swear to god that having everyone’s eyes lingering on you and having conversations started by little old ladies can be a bit unnerving. “Y-yes my hair is long,” wheredoIlook wheredoIlook’ uh, thank you,” says I, clutching that tiny, tiny, towel. “I have to uh, go now.” Eyesscarredeyesscarred.

Speaking of towels, the practice is that when you get in the hot spring pool, you fold the mini towel you’ve received and place it on your head. I actually counted the number of times it fell off into the pool. 7.

I did find one upside to all my pesky hair- when it finally got into my head to use it as camouflage, I found that method actually gives more coverage than most modern day bikinis!

I’d like to think I bonded with my host siblings during this experience, but I think they found it more strange that I stuck to them like glue. EXCUSE ME I AM A POOR CULTURE SHOCKED FOREIGNER YOU ARE NOT LEAVING MEEEEE KYAAAA -

After getting dressed, we ate dinner in the huge room with rows of low tables and floor mats. I felt warm, clean, and just general contented- until I decided to eat an icecream cone, which was pretty stupid. I mean, there are few feelings as good as the warmth and pureness as I got after all that bathing and soaking, and then I had to go shove a mountain of frozen liquid down my gullet. Sheesh.

There was like a whole week after that but I completely forgot what happened. I have a day planner but all I really wrote in it was: “I had a weird dream about state shoes. My shoe was Nebraska. I wonder if Nebraska is actually in the shape of a shoe, like in my dream,” so I guess I should probably just go.

MONTH 5 AND 3/4ths OVER AND OUT!!

WE BID YOU ADIEU

JANVIER

2011-02-03T23:46:00.000-08:00

Temple at Nara

Yes, sorry, I’m a horrible person. Let’s talk about January.

As stated in the last Journal, I changed families again in the beginning.

The Tsuji family has been interesting. It has it’s ups and downs.

I feel like I’m being watched constantly- the my Host mom and older Host sis have no problem commenting on any habits I have that don’t match up with their ideals, be it hygiene or eating or whatnot- which I didn’t feel too bad about until my host mom brought up the subject of bathing- now, I bathe every other day here, which is about half as often as the Japanese, but one day after coming home from club on a normal bath day, I fell asleep accidentally ended up not bathing. The next day, my host mom brought up the subject and recited my hygenic activity for a the last week and asked if it would become a habit- older sis joined halfway. I was like, wait a second guys, why are you even paying that much attention?? THIS IS BORDERLINE CREEPY-

On the upside, this is the first Host Father I’ve had that I actually feel comfortable with. My first two just kind of weirded me out, to be honest, which probably has more to do with my sheltered childhood than with any actual creepiness, but I digress. It’s fun at mealtimes not to have to grit my teeth while suppressing the urge to throw up at the variety of sounds emitting from Host Dad.

Host dad is just kind of one of those incredibly chill ‘I live with 3 women, and believe me, nothing you do phases me’ kind of guys. With me that makes 4. Poor him.

This morning, I was running late and forgot my lunch on the way out the door, and he just coolly ‘Emiriii! Lunch!’ and brought it out with me- along with the snack/candy basket! “Okashhhh [candy/snack]’ he said, slurring the last s sound and grinning, like, no big deal, you’re already on your bike but here’s your lunchbox and I brought out the entire snack collection too’ no probo. It was really thoughtful and funny, I thought. Although it does show he’s picked up well on my like of candy, which could be a bad thing. Ahem.

Host mom is really a very strong person, and we butt heads sometimes but never seriously. It’s what you get when 2 outspoken stubborn people with different raisings get thrown in the same house. From the get go she just adopted the attitude YOU ARE MY EXCHANGE STUDENT AND THAT IS THAT okay LETS GO. But, she is, as mentioned earlier, really attentive and tends to worry.

Host mom and Host dad have a really great relationship too. After the kids leave the dinner table, they just sit there blabbing for ages and when I end up being the last of the 3 kids eating I always hurry because it vaguely feels like I’m interrupting something...

Ayume Tsuji, 17, has been interesting. I never know how to act, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ve been making more of an effort to put myself out there after my school counselor said that Ayume had said in passing that she didn’t know if I was happy or not in their home. It’s paying off, I think. Still. As were in the same class, everything I say and do around her is something I wouldn’t mind my entire class knowing, which can be taxing.

My second week, they took me to Nara! For those of you don’t know, Nara is city in the Nara Prefecture that is most famous a special park. Of course, there’s a Buddha big enough that I can slip through one of it’s nostrils [Tried AND tested] and a temple a few times older than Amerika, [you are probably still wondering about testing the nostril theory] but the main attraction is neither.

It is fat, overfed, cushy pestulant beasts that litter the sacred cobbling stones..

No, this isn’t India. It’s not cows. It’s… deer. Uh, yeah.

You might not know this. But Deer are scary. Especially when you’re holding a handful of deer biscuits and there are approximately 10 of them nipping at your heels. And coat. And bag. And hair, if it happens to be long enough to be in reach. But of course there’s no one like that in Japan, right? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha….

ATTACK

But funnier than this, Ayume was absolutely terrified of the deer. Like, crying high pitched squeals fleeing in knee high, high-heeled boots kind of terrified. I’ll admit I found it hilarious…………

She didn’t really appreciate it when I snuck up behind her, and with a wave of a biscuit, summoned a herd of a deer for her…. What an ingrate. Maybe a cultural thing?

She did okay with the little ones though

Hey did you know this! The word Rickshaw, you know, that vehicle carried by a guy in front, common in india and what not? That’s! That’s actually a Japanese word! Jin (人)rik(力) Sha! (車)　Meaning: Person-power-vehicle! Person powered vehicle! Yeah ! I got to ride in one, courtesy of host dad, and it was interesting. The guy powering it was really funny, and had fun showing off his uh, equally funny English skills while me and Ayume apologized for our weight and promised to diet in the future.

Sadly we did not hit any deer on our Jinrikusha adventure.

Badminton has continued! A fault due to some perverse sense of masochism rather than enjoyment, I think, but I’ve had my ups downs. And my flats. And the downs. And the vertical drops. And my Marianna trenches.

Do you sense a trend.

To be honest, I’m not that bad at badminton. But last November, about 3 weeks after I joined the club, I was forced to take time off because I did something weird to my ankles and I couldn’t even stand without hurting. Before that, I had almost made friends in the group- but when I returned it just was so, ugh, awkward ka naaa. And you know those people that tend to lead the group? Well, theres one, her name is… SUSAN and SUSAN is one of those fun people that was nice to me at first for obviously ‘foreign exchange students are cool!’ ! When I came back, her and her jerk friend MARY took a dislike to me, and it doesn’t help that SUSAN and MARY are the best among the girls. And MARY is practically openly hostile, but in the manner of ‘I’m better than you, you pose no threat so I don’t really bother making a big deal of you’ hostile. Which is fine with me.

Around the beginning of November, Arai-sensei let me do a practice game. This is pretty rare, usually I just referee. Well, he matched me up, surprisingly, with MARY. Considering it was my 4th game set ever, I wasn’t exactly shooting for a win, but that day I was on one of my slightly vertical bumps, and shook hands with her enthusiastically while laughing over my soon to be utter defeat.

Well. Turned out, not so utter- I lost, yes, but 13-15. Much to the surprise of everyone involved, especially myself. Considering my second ever game, I lost to the worst person 21-0, this wasn’t exactly something I was expecting. Obviously, I was pleased, but man, you should have seen MARY.

After our referee went running to record the results of our game, MARY sank into the fetal position on the gymfloor, and the repetitious ‘what happened? What did I do wrong? What do I do?’ was ALMOST cute until I realized that MARY had neither a sense of tact, nor perspective, as even though I lost the next game 6-15, the bleatings of ‘What went wrong??’ continued in consistency for about 15 until she ended up in tears, SUSAN and her other friends gathered around.

I was slightly appalled. After the first game, I had said ‘Hey, it’s not like you need to worry- everyone has those kind of games.’ But she didn’t meet my eyes after this. But seriously, I know I’m not the best- but to think her opinion of me was so low that two consecutive wins would spark 20 minute juvenile fit is downright insulting. I got pissed enough to say ‘Hey, would you just quite already? It’s not like that game even meant anything. Aren’t you being rude?”

I do like badminton, it’s just, the people and the regimen are so exhausting.

On the 24th, I sat in on a Skype Video conference with Rinako and three of her friends- Rinako, an exchange student to Sweden last year, skyped her Swedish school’s Japanese class and we had a conversation. It was interesting! I got to watch Swedish being thrown around, which was cool. And be in the presence of people whom I suddenly felt superior to, Japanese language skills wise. That’s rare here, wahahaha!!

Another thing worth mentioning is that something about my Japanese comprehension really jumped around the beginning of this month. I’m not kidding at all. I’ve read that language learning is more like a ladder than a ramp, with stretches of flat periods and then EPIPHANY moments, but I’d never really experienced one- and who knows for sure? But I’m not kidding that I understood a disproportionately larger portion more during the orientation yesterday than the orientation a month ago.

My brain is starting to be able to connect what I read with what I hear, I think. For those not in the know, I’m a bit of a Kanji nut and I memorize about 8 a day. Considering I’m nearing the end of the Kanji learned in the first 6 years of schooling- first 1006, to be exact, and the most common 1000 make up about 95% of printed Kanji, I can actually read the majority of Japanese.　

意識ないで日本語の理解と読む力に進歩やった！

Don’t those little scratches just fill your heart with joy! They do to mine! I just go into happy place! I may have to learn Chinese next to keep the squiggle parade rolling!

But anyway, the gibberish syllables of Japanese words are much easier to remember when you have a meaning to associate with the gibberish, and some of them are really funny! For instance, worry uses the Kanji for ‘heart’ and ‘distribute’ 心配― because you’re giving your heart out to worry about the sake of others!

But it’s so hard to learn just orally- English we have Garden, and Vegetable- so when we want to say Vegetable garden we just say ‘Vegetable garden!’ In Japanese- Yasai野菜, vegetables, and sono 園, garden, give no hint to saien―菜園- vegetable garden. [The English equivalent of this method would be vegederp] So conversationally based, you wouldn’t be able to figure it out-this makes Japanese really hard to learn orally, I think. Many extremely complicated concepts that take English many words to express are made into 2 character words- but with Japanese’s lack of sounds and abundance of homonyms, it’s incredibly hard to remember words just from sound- I just plugged in ‘keishoo’ into my dictionary and there are 7 words- Alarm bell, inheritance, flesh wound, mild sickness, beauty spot, title, and shape!!

Because I can kinda read Kanji, and because the start of the year marks the start of the new trimester, I began participating in class. I still don’t fully understand all of the teachers rapid Japanese, but with textbook supplements I can basically understand.

My favorite teacher is my Home Room teacher and World History teacher, Ohyama Sensei!! He is so funny! I swear, I have never seen him smile- not one time. Although I might have seen a little one once… no, wait, that was probably just a lip twitch.

He’s handsome, always wears slick suits and glasses, and most of all, has just the clearest voice! Oh, man, someone catch me! Swoon! He’ll say things that get the whole class laughing but NEVER. WAVERS. Once, when the shortest girl in class forgot her hand warmer on the teachers desk, he held it up above her head and she was hopping around like an over excited rodent and the entire class was practically crying but POKER FACE man he would be great at poker you have no idea.

He likes to go on tangents during lectures, it’s fabulous! The problem is that I usually only remember the derailment moments and not the actual uh, lectures, but hey, if I ever find myself in a debate of the nutritional benefits of horse meat versus beef, or on the plumbing practices or lackthereof of renaissance Europeans- I’ll be set!

Now, being homeroom teacher, he comes at the start and end of school every day on top of normal classes, and then once on Wednesdays for LHR- longhomeroom. He uses these opportunities to prime us for life by giving us various bits of guidance and INSPIRING SPEECHES. I cannot actually tell if this is Mr. Ohyama being cheesy or just a Japanese thing, because my badminton coach tends to do it as well,[although I hear inspiring speeches is a pretty common affliction among the sportsy types] and not to mention every single Japanese assembly ever… Either way, inspiring speeches somehow become more digestible when given by a man who’s facial expression never changes….

I also picked up biology! Remember the kanji thing? Well, it’s a goddamn BLESSING in biology! In English, you have a crapton of sciency words that are about forty letters long and drop out of your head before you’re even done reading them- but in Japanese, they just stick a few kanji with appropriate meanings and BAM science term is born! Two or three characters long! Sweet stuff. Not gonna lie.

Now STORY TIME

About a week after my last journal, perhaps around the 1oth sometime, I succeeded in losing my train pass. Trainpasses are issued once, and only once- you pay upfront and get to hop in off specific trains without issue. Anyway, my train pass for one month cost about 60 dollars, and that’s kind of a mega discount considering I take a train twice a day, every day, including weekends- 220 yen in the morning and 280 in the evening- 500 yen a day- that’s about 165 dollars a month without the pass. Want to do the math on how much losing it on the 10th would cost?

It was after badminton- it ended late, and then coach gave us and INSPIRING speech such to that I couldn’t leave, and when he was done, I was LATE LATE. Both the train and I arrived at the same time- and my damn key wouldn’t lock, and then I was running running towards that train but WHERE WAS THE DOOR ARRRRGHHH what do you mean only the furthest one to the front- MAASAAAKAAAA-

I was exhausted from a 1 hour commute, 6 hours of school, 3 hours of badminton, and a frenzied 15-20 minute bike ride when I discovered a severe lack of trainpass. Luckily, my Host sis had afterschool uh, school, that day, and was on the train- she pleaded my case to Conductor-san – the next morning, it was nowhere to be found and I got to pay the train fee [cry] As I was pedaling out full speed in typical Emily fashion and doing mental math on how much this little mistake was going to cost me, this sketchy really handsome guy comes from out of nowhere and rides up really, really close to me and says “EMIRI!”

He was wearing a uniform the same as my school and knew my name, [although just about all the male uniforms in Wakayama look the same]- so I adopted EMERGENCY EXCHANGE STUDENT TO ASIA SURVIVAL TECHNIQUE; although you have no clue who the person you’re talking to is, if they seem to know you, act as if this isn’t the first time you’ve met!

It turns out, though, it was- he was from another school. How he knew my name? He’d picked up my train pass- and my name was printed on it!

SUDDENLY BEING THE ONE OF THREE CAUCASIANS IN A CITY OF 300,000 TOTALLY HAS IT’S UPSIDES. I asked if he knew about me, and he said no, and then I was all OH LIKE DUH LOL because totally how many other foreigners ride this entire train line? Oh that’s right none.

Either way, I was really impressed that he went to all the trouble to catch up to me to return it, since I pedal out about a million miles per hour. Although later when I realized he was one of the three creepy guys who come to my station specially to smoke it was kind of.. strange, but he went really out of his way to return it which was really thoughtful, so you really can’t judge a person at all, I think!

FOR THE SAKE OF SPACE WE WILL SKIP THE 4 OTHER STORIES I HAVE OF ME LOSING DROPPING SCREWING THINGS UP AND BEING SAVED AND SUM IT UP WITH THIS

JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE REALLY CONSIDERATE AND I KIND OF LOVE THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM. This is not a comparison to any other nation or anything. It’s just that. Japanese people.

Near the end of the month, I went with my Host fam to make Soba noodles! Unsurprising ly, we ended up in a room full of old people, haha! And listened to greetings for about 20 minutes, you’d thing we were annexing a small country or something. Near the end, I’d kind of zoned off somewhere, but I caught the words ‘International…’ and tuned in right in time for a very poor English greeting. Which was hilarious. How thoughtful.

Either way, I mucked around in a bowl for a while and screwed around with a long pole like rolling thing, succeeding in making a whole bunch of itty bitty, sporadically shapped two inch long noodles…. [no one said I was any good, you know.] and we boiled and ate them on the spot. Weren’t too bad. Then Soba-Sensei then showed us the proper way and I left with a vague feeling that something had been done backwards….

OH MAN THIS JOURNAL HAS NO RHYME NOR REASON AND IF YOU MANAGED TO GET THROUGH ALL MY ENGLISH STARVED BABBLING, THEN CONGRATULATIONS! This isn’t obviously everything that happened but it’s already like, 5 pages, so I’ll desist.

Month….5 and a quarter, over and out!

<3>

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2011-01-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

[Staring match with the 300 fish inserted into those boxes]

HAPPY 2011!!! ♥ 明けましておめでとう！
[Before I begin, let me point down- I've will be summarizing the 3 months I missed blogging because of my broken computer into relatively short posts. If you have time feel free to read!]

Japanese New Years is a pretty big deal! Much more so than Christmas, although my second hosts are pretty chill, so we didn't do a whole lot.

Eve was a joke next to America's party style. I spent the aftenoon with Ninna, and when I returned, we all kind of stayed up and watched television. I wasn't really paying attention to the time, and started talking to host mom about the lunch I was making tomorrow and halfway through the convo, host dad remarked that while no one was paying attention, the New year had turned. WOW. Talk about anticlimax. I went to bed pretty soon after.

I'd been on break for a few days so I got up late, same as everyone. At 11 or so we had breakfast, which, if you look up, was kind of a big deal! It's a traditional New years meal !
And it was awful.
Mochi is a sort of gluey rice paste eaten at new years, it was in that yellowish soup you see above. The soup was just some of the non-aggressively awful stuff I've ever tasted, like mild but just ugh. Kinda ruined the mochi for me, and I love that stuff.
And then there was the contents of those boxes.

SO.
MANY.
EYES.

For those of you who don't know, I really hate seafood. How this manages to work out in Japan is a mystery to me as well, but I spent most of this meal sitting on my plastic chair in the fetal position, a half crazed grin on my face as I watched my family eat this.

Later we went to pray at a temple, another tradition. The family loaded into a car and drove a ways to a medium sized temple directly on the coast line.

There was a large line of people waiting to pray. As I said, sort of a tradition. The sequence is to first throw in some money into this slatted box, step up and ring the bell by shaking this big, heavy rope, bow, clap twice, pray, and bow again. I was sort of rushed, so I can't say it truly made the zen wash over me, but it was cool nonetheless.

After, we went and got Omikuji, new years fortunes- Mine? Well, I opened it, stared at it, thrust it towards my host mother and asked how to read the Kanji and what it meant.
Her face was not good.
UN. LUCKY.
I couldn't read every thing it said, but it had advice on a variety of catagories;
Travel: Dangerous.
Investing; You will lose money
Your lost items; Gone forever

ECT. HAHA you know how in America, you get fortune cookies, but they're always good? Well, not so in Japan. When I was done giggling over how unlucky 2011 will apparently be, I tied the fortune to a tree, to leave the bad luck at the temple.

The tree with bad luck fortunes tied to it- click or squint to see.

Sea outside temple

The rest of the day we just watched this New Year TV special; SPY TRAINING. 6 comedians were made to dress up in suits and undergo 24 hour spy training- no matter what, they couldn't laugh. If they did, a guy dressed up as an insurgent would come in and hit them with this bendy stick thing on the rear.

...UHHH, welcome to Japanese Television! Have I ever mentioned Japanese Television?? It's ridiculous. Seriously. Seriously. Seriously. It's not like America, I mean, in 300 channels you might be able to find something that rivals Japanese Television BUT, most Japanese Families here only get 9 channels- which means it's the regular broadcast that is filled with things that frequently blow my mind. Has anyone ever seen the American broadcast, "I survived a Japanese Gameshow," ? The existence of such a thing should attest to my point.

The next day I switched hosts. It was a day filled with frenzily packing trying to clean up my minefield of a bedroom and pack. It took probably around 4 hours. Here is why. I think I've posted this up before.

YEAHH There was not really room for my stuff in that Room anyway- my college age host sister's stuff was still all there, so there wasn't much space. Consequently, my room was usually in a state much like that.

For lunch, I made Dirty rice and cornbread- my mother sent me box mixes from America. I messed up on the rice but it was still pretty good, and the cornbread was a first for everyone. It was kinda tense though, since after eating it, we left to drop me off at my next hosts. It was an ordeal that involved some crying like last time blah blah blah my host brother gave me a kids book gift card for 6 dollars as a going away gift, LOL what. My former and new family and some Rotary people gathered for tea and way too much was said about me, darn you first host mother. They're not supposed to know that yet.

Thank you Nishimoto family for everything!!

Anyway, meet the TSUJI family. They are my new hosts. I have a host mother and father and 2 host sisters, age 13 and 16. They are very. Sisterly. Ayume Tsuji is in my class at school, and for the last 5 months I have spent an average of 7 hours a day in the same place as her, 5 days a week- however, we had never talked. Maybe 3 times? Partly because I'm(We're) shy, partly because when I first arrived and my Japanese was incredibly poor, all my attempts at saying things had just turned wayyyy awkward. It's my fault and hers.

The day before break started, as I was heading home, I said one thing to her, the first in a long, long time; 'So you're like, uh, hosting right?' 'Yeah.' 'Oh. Uh. Well then. I'll see you then, I guess.'
And we parted.
AHAHAHA do you want to guess how nervous I was for this family before coming?

But it went surprisingly well. Probably because for the first 2 days, Ayume wasn't there- she had a New Years job at the temple as a Miko.

She is a very pretty girl.

Anyway, the mom is really direct and nice, and the father is pretty nice too. This is the first family that talks at dinner and doesn't watch television, which is kind of nice although when conversation luls we can't default to the TV. That was conventient when my Japanese was so bad.

I share a room with my 13 year old Host sister Yuki. Theres a curtain but a huge gap on the side. I've never really had a sister relationship, so this has been taking a looot of adjusting. It's so easy to tell they think nothing of it, because they just walk all over each other and me, like, no big deal. Privacy? What privacy?

Anyway, school picked back up Thursday, and I went to school with Ayume. It goes Bike, Train, Bike and takes about an hour. I memorized the route within the first day and a half, so I could go to club by myself. I'm using Deathtrap[affectionate nickname for bike] from my 2nd family for the 30 minute ride between Seirin and the trainstation.

On Thursday, I was invited to go with my friends to Osaka Saturday. Up until now, every time I asked to go anywhere outside Wakayama, I was always told no by my rotary for various reasons- you can't ride the train alone, you can't go with only other exchange students, ect. By American standards, this is pretty reasonable, but Japan's public transport between cities is very safe, and all the teenagers my age do it, including every single other exchange student I know.
My Rotary, after saying no so many times, later told me that if I went with Japanese friends, it'd be Okay. I was all, well then, fine. But we're usually busy with club,studying, testing ect, so it's usually impossible. This invitations was just a 'yes, finally!!!' feeling.
And guess what my Rotary said when I formally asked for permission to go Friday?

NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

No?
W-why?
I was so, so upset. I later texted my first Rotary host mom and asked to consult with her about rules and whatnot. Her response was to go ASK on my behalf if I could go. But asking without my making a case for myself obviously didn't get me anywhere, and after being told no twice I kind of flipped out for part of that day. I came to Japan to see and go everywhere, not be babysat like a 12 year old and restricted to only my own backyard. I came to Japan alone, from 5000 miles away, to experience everything and there I was, not even allowed to tag along to an outing with three of my friends. Badminton practice that day was painful, I just could not hold it together.

When I got home that day at 8:30, I called my counselor for the first time of my entire exchange. My counselor is an Old guy, probably around 65, and very kind and very strict. After a 6 minute, intense phone call of reminding him that in the past they had said Japanese friends would be Okay, making about 500 promises that I'd be responsible, keep my curfew, and I finally secured permission. So exhausted after that, but happy. Finally!

On Saturday morning, I got up early to catch an 8:18 train to Wakayama station. I then took a bus to Wakayama city station, and proceeded to wait an hour for everyone to show up because of a miscommunication error. It was cold. TwT!

Finally at 10:10, ten minutes after the proposed meet time [I got distracted reading a book..] we met up with Sakura, Rinako, and Aiko, and proceeded to jump on a train headed for Namba, a section of Osaka, around a 55 minute ride. From there, we headed to various shops, included what I will dub pervert lane; a collection of sketchy manga[comics] / anime[cartoons] themed shops of various intentions. All those seedy stereotypes of Japanese lurking in the back of your mind? You could find it there! Probably. We didn't really investigate much except for Sakura who went into one Manga shop. The contents of said shop could probably singe your eyebrows off if you went into it ...!

After wandering for a while, we headed towards my request as of a month ago. MAID CAFE.
For those not in the loop with this rather typical example of Japanese weirdness: cafes where all the serving staff are relatively attractive women done up in full maid gear, who perform special doting services [NOT THAT KIND, don't be dirty] such as stirring your curry for you, assembling food items, and drawing in ketchup on your omelette. Famous for it's loyal attendance of seedymen. The first thing that popped to mind, a month ago, when a friend asked if there was someplace I wanted to go was this. Just because. When I said it, they were all OH GASP EMILY why! Despite this, I felt like they too secretly wanted to go, because they agreed way to fast. I was merely an excuse.

Anyway, we marched in and ordered from our frilly server friend three rice omelettes and a shrimp rice- mostly we chose the omelette for aforementioned ketchup drawing. That's right, upon yon tender omelette, the maid would draw or write to your to your choosing in good old ketchup.
Being, as my friends exclaimed, an 'S' type, I obviously chose to ask Maid-san to draw me the Mona Lisa.
Behold.

Caption above; モナリサ？！　Monarisa?!
[I find it has the same ghastly stare as the real thing

As I was asking, I was hit several times and told to stop being mean to the Maid, that no meant no, but she then cutely exclaimed in her best maid voice 'mistakes ok??' and upon my answer, fulfilled my request.
Next was Sakura, who ask her to write; '私は神様！' Watashi wa Kami-sama! [I am God!] Maid-san did, then said that the 'Omelette looked rather lonely with just that' so I told her to write ' 私も変態！'watashi mo hentai!' [I am also a pervert.]
She did.
Needless to say, it was an interesting lunch. Shame we weren't allowed pictures of the maids.

Pervert God Sakura

After that, we met up with another of Rinako's friends and visited a lot of clothes shops / malls and things, and a Japanese .. punk / goth rock metal shop?? I never had a real clear idea of where we were going. The new years sales are still in effect, and I snagged some really cheap quality clothes, which is rare for Japan.
Some pictures!

It's a little dark, but here we are..

Sakura and I

We ended up on a train headed home at 6:15, about 40 minutes after I started my curfew freakout.
Remember how I said I made about 500 promises, and that I just barely got permission to go? Well, I had to be in the train to Koshi at Wakayama station at 7:40- the train took about 60 minutes- that means I had about 25 minutes to get from Wakayama city station to Wakayama station. Bus takes about 15 minutes, which means there was only a about a 8 minute window for a bus to come about. And guess what. It didn't. I ended up on a train, which arrived in W!Station at 7:39. 1 minute before 7:40. It should also be mentioned that I didn't know which gate I had to get on for my ride home and neither Host mom or Host sis was picking up.
Kyaaaah. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Mainly, if I missed that train that I would never be allowed out of Wakayama again? Well. Badminton paid off. Aiko and I ran out of the train, she looked up and the board and was all KOSHI-EMILY NUMBER 9 GO
and off I went. I made it with about 10 seconds to spare. I do not kid. The train man ushered me in, the 'go!' whistle in his mouth.

DOKI DOKI DOKI [ドキドキする！] [Heart beating fast!]

A-anyway, that's been my first 8 days of new years! If you read this, thank you for your continued interest! I look forward to seeing you all this coming year!

去年色々なお世話になりました。　
「Kyonen iroirona osewa ni narimashita! : Thank you for caring for me this past year!」
本年よろしくお願いします！
「Honnen yoroshikuonegaishimasu! Please treat me well this coming year as well!」

HAPPY NEW YEAR ♥

December

2011-01-08T15:49:00.003-08:00

Insert December here
Placeholder plst

OCTOBER

2010-12-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

Hey, I am staring at my Facebook, trying to remember what happened this month.

Let's seeeee....

Well, not long after I changed families, we had a the Japanese equivilent of midterms- chuukan tesuto. They're a bit like finals at my US highschool- the week before tests start, all the normal work grinds to a halt, preparations begin. The testing lasts one week, and we have half days!

I could only officially take the English and Spanish tests at this time, although many of the other teachers prepared me extra things or had me write mini essays in Japanese for them. I managed to pleasantly surprise a couple of my Japanese teachers with that. I always toil quietly at my desk during classes I can't participate in, flipping through and making kanji flashcards, hitting the grammar books, so I was able to write it relatively well- plus Japanese people tend to be impressed by any foreigner who can do ANYTHING with Kanji at all. Wuahaha. I guess the squiggles were just memorizing....

Anyway, club also stops during those two weeks. After I changed, I couldn't get home by myself, so I ended up taking an extra few days off. By the time I figured out the bike route home, testing had started and I was off. It was damn surreal, let me tell you, to have those two weeks off, vaguely aware that BADMINTON was like a crouching beast on the horizon, soon to completely annihilate any free time or whatever spirit I had left...

Okay, so at the time, I didn't think of it like that, but it was a little weird. I could vaguely sense what a huge thing Badminton was about to become for me, but it just wasn't there yet.

Anyway, during this time, I did a whole lot of... nothing it looks like. A little bit of this.. little bit of that... seriously, what did I do during that time?? I have completely forgotten.

I vaguely remember trying to avoid my host family - I'm pretty sure the solution at the time was to first hang around school as long as I could, then when that failed to waste time, bike ride. Posted this on facebook around the time;

I look forward to going on more bike adventures with my affectionately named bike, Deathtrap. Nowhere within 10 miles of my school and home is safe. [For me I mean- it's a given I'm going to get lost. Plus, Japanese streets are crazy.]

I was pretty psyched about my 2 wheeled hunk of junk. Or atleast, about my two wheeled excuse not to be at my host parent's house. I actually managed to cover a decent chunk of Wakayama during this time. I vowed to see it all, but my life later got eaten.

WHALE ATTACK

OH AND I MARATHONED PHEONIX WRIGHT, A DS GAME ... aka 逆転裁判　if you want to be Japanese about it! My host sis lent me them, had english and Japanese settings har har guess which one I played on...

OBJECTION!! Is somehow less awesome in Japanese. Nonetheless, IGIARI!!!

Anyway, tests eventually quit. I was pretty happy- I don't mind days off now and then my classmates are too fun to do that forever. However; this brought on my official start to BADMINTON CLUB...!!!!

Armed with my shiny new racket and special badminton shoes, I marched on to my adventure in sports...

Anyway, it was really hard at first, a little awkward as everyone had to take me aside and teach separately. I didn't bond immediately with any of my new team mates' Did I mention I was OUT OF SHAPE Actually, I have been OUT OF SHAPE FOR

6 YEARS.

I died.
I diiiiied.
Seriously, for a few weeks there, I would literally just come home hurting every day. I idly remarked to myself about 3ooo times how I had basically forgot what not being sore felt like.

There is nothing like leaving home feeling especially homesick and coming back 7 hours later, having forgot you ever had feelings. Especially in your legs.

Oct. 23rd, My comments after Weekend Afternoon Practice.

Weekly practice schedule;

Normal Weekday practice days; ~3 per week, 3 hours, not including setup/cleanup. I get home around 8 these days.
Running day; Everyone runs 8km! That's around 4 miles.
Weekend morning practice; 4 hours, starts at 9am.
Weekend afternoon practice; 5 hours, starts at 1
Day off; ~1 per week.

The bikewracks right before school is about to end

This is my bike after a typical badminton practice. Notice how it is the ONLY bike left in my section.

Lets add this up- in a typical week thats ~18 hours of official practice time PLUS 8km running. However, add in all the extra time devoted to cleaning/setting up and transit on weekends and you'll have ONE. GIANT. TIME SUCK.

Ok, and my teammates are badass, having been at this schedule for around 20 and 7 months, respctively between 1st and 2nd years. It was so awful at first. To be honest, it was really, really hard, always being the one that couldn't do it, and couldn't understand, and couldn't fit in.

バドミントンばかりね

In conclusion
BADMINTON BADMINTON BADMINTON BADMINTON ATE MY LIFE

Alright moving on,
Host family!
This was not a good month. As might have been evident by my last dying post. But I wish, wish I hadn't had that as the last thing I wrote-

My first two weeks were just miserable. I was so, so not ready to change. Still shaky with the whole Japan thing, I hadn't made really close friends because of language barrier, couldn't really speak Japanese overly well, ect- furthermore, the only person that had ever really listened to me with an invested interest at that point was my first host mom and I was definately attached. To be honest, one and a half months in is probably the WORST time I can think of to change. I did cry a fair bit. I probably didn't really learn to relax around my host family for the entire month of October, but learn to relax I did. I learned to deal with their constant accommodation, their idea of hospitality, the new personalities, ect.

It probably helped when I started picking up the more commonly used vocab from my host mother, and she stopped just being an incessant stream of almost gibberish and more like something that I could understand. She too, began to learn more of what I could understand, although she never really learned to slow down. This was so tough at first, if you would remember my last post- but my Japanese is better because of it.

Anyway, I'll sum this all up with one short story-
During this month, I managed to have 3, count them 3, bike incidents. Now, I don't mean accidents. With this family, I acquired a bike with a built in lock- that uses a key.
WORK
IN
PROGRESS

PALPABLE AWKWARD

2010-10-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Ahh, this weekend is winding to a close, but let me tell you about last week’s, shall I?
Saturday and Sun, Rotary weekend! I spoke more English in a time span of about 24 hours than I had my entire stay in Japan, I kid you now. I spoke it quickly, guiltlessly, and relentlessly. It was great. I even developed a pseudo British accent, despite there being no exchangers from Britain. Let’s not question.

It started with Host mom dropping me off at Ninna’s host parent’s house, from which we drove to Hajime together. Took about 2 hours. Ninna is an exchange student from Denmark who speaks pretty fluent English, complete with sexy accent. I hadn’t seen her since Orientation, which I now regret a bit. She lived so close! Argh! Anyway, we hit it off just fine, hopefully I’ll see her again pretty soon after school sometime.

Anyway, we arrived at a foot of a mountain and were shortly followed by a gaggle of Exchange students and Japanese Rotary.. Alumnis? [Rotex!] We smashed into this giant gondola thing and ended up going up the side of the mountain and making a short trek to this Buddhist temple, where we were exposed to a large, clear, tatami-mat lined room- proceeded to act like 5 year olds for a good 30 minutes.
I can’t really speak for my other Exchangees, but atleast for me, it was less the piggy back ride race and more of

ENGLISH EUPHORIAAAA

After not speaking to a native English speaker [besides my parents on skype twice] in one month, I finally got a chance to exercise my native tongue. I’m not going to go too into our other Exchangee shenanigans, but let it be known that the Polish kid has the best English accent in the history of every. I want it. Imagine an extremely choppily said, “Hello kitty on rollarskates swinging a pair of lollipops” and you will have a good idea of what it was like.

Countries represented were: America, [6], Denmark [1], Poland [1], Finland[1] Sweden, [2] France[2] Brazil [1] and Mexico [1]

Our activities included listening to Japanese speeches, using public baths, doing a whole lot of not sleeping, achieving Nirvana, [Okay, so most of us were actually thinking about how much we hurt in that funny pretzel meditation pose….] and being beaten up by a monk. [I kid thee not.] All this in an authentic, zillion year old temple. 1000 year old? I sort of forgot. Actually, a Tom Cruise movie was filmed there! The last Samurai! Yeah! Let’s pretend I’m actually familiar with American Pop Culture and this fact holds significance!

On Monday, I visited the badminton club. I’d gone Friday, but ended up getting a chair pushed at me and watching for about 2 hours, instead of actually doing anything. It was fun. Captain tried to teach me swings. It did not go over well. He tried for about 25 minutes. Then Arai-Sensei (The badminton couch) walks in, grabs my wrist, puts me through the movements and has me doing it in about 3. Ahahaha.
The first years think it’s hilarious when Captain and Arai-Sensei give me the English treatment. I’m inclined to agree. They’re so awful.

Either way, after, Arai-Sensei told me to visit me in his office the next day, and asked me if I wanted to join or not. To which I absolutely said the smart thing – “clubs are a big part of school life here and I need some time to decide.’

Oh wait, no it was more like ‘OKAY SURE SOUNDS GOOD.’

I’m so rash. I kind of randomly decided to visit and just… jump in with both feet, you know? It’s not something I ever really did in the US, this badminton thing. Heck, this sport thing. I chose this club over the art because, well… I adore art, but somehow, spending my exchange year sitting alone doing art projects every day after school isn’t how I want to do it!

So I compromised. On Monday, I also went and talked to the International teacher and got myself transferred to a first grade art class twice a week- something to break the studying alone monotony.

Tuesday and Wendsday I had off from club, and ended up going out and buying an electric dictionary on Wednesday after school with my bank card. It’s my new best friend, by the way. SO. FLIPPING. MAJICAL. Not only can I write and read kanji with it, the touch screen can function as a mini tablet so I can draw in class while looking like I’m studying HUR HUR HUR

Thursday I had club, although I ended up going early since it was the last full day with my first host family. I ended up on the bus at the same time as another of my classmates and talking all the way down. Mostly we talked about the school system, and the English curriculum. She actually came out and spoke a bit of English with a little encouragement; I’m willing to bet my classmates hesitancy is greatly contributed to be the presence of other classmates.
When I got home, host mom was gone, Kouyo was playing PSP on the couch and ignoring me anyway, and I ended up just getting more depressed than I already was, ahaaha.

Friday was my last day with HMom, Yuri, and Kouyo, the first of 4 switches I will make in Japan. Yes. 4. If one eyebrow isn’t slightly higher than the other, it should be. That’s ridiculous. How will I ever settle down? I won’t.

Did I mention that 1 and a half months in is an awful time to change? I mean, I’m not completely used to everything yet, can’t truly connect with people still because of the language barrier, and got extremely attached to my first family though all the ups and downs of the first month and a half- and you want me to SWITCH!?! BAD. TIME. Awful time, in fact!

Anyway, that Friday was completely the same as any other, right up to the point where I started packing my clothes. I even came home and had a long drawn out conversation with my host mom about the possibility of getting texting on my phone, like we’d be going to the phone store in three hours, not dropping me off for good at a new family.
Packing was quick. I don’t have that much clothing or things, anyway. I’d managed to acquire about 3 bags of school clothing and a yukata, though, so when I went out the door I was fully loaded.

Said goodbye to Yuri and Kouyo [and that little snot actually gave me a present, the second volume in a random kid’s boxing manga series, haha!] and drove to the next hosts with one of the Rotarians. Ughh, I was truly trying not to, but during the final part of the switch I just started crying so hard which is… probably not the best way to make a good impression.
GONNA MISS THESE GUYS.

Got my suitcases upstairs, went over family rules [Which was muuuch easier now that I can sort of speak Japanese, let me tell you] and collapsed into bed.

Didn’t get a whole lot of respite- Saturday, about 600 middle schoolers and 200 parents visited Seirin, and I had been asked to give a little speech and participate in the presentation. To get there, I had to put on my Rotary Jacket and uniform, then bike around 40 minute with my new host brother to school. I could not figure out the whole ‘Ride a bike in a long, flappy skirt’ thing. I’m sure I flashed many an unsuspecting Japanese…

but no, seriously, how?? !! (;__;)

Anyway, speech went smoothly… sort of. I kind of messed up… in English. Yes, my speech was mostly Japanese, but the first part was in English. My mind totally supplied the wrong order of words, although I don’t think anyone really spoke good enough English to notice.
I did the Japanese part perfectly though! I didn’t even need to look at my sheet. Thank you Debate, glad you have added one sort of useful skill to my incredibly limited set!

At the end of that day, we went out to eat. I ended up having cheesy rice gruel and water. Delicious, I know. My host dad also got tipsy, maybe even drunk, enough that he didn’t drive back, which I cannot say contributed to my feelings of comfort in this house.

Anyway, here goes Host Fam intro!

Mother- Piano teacher. She likes to talk. Really fast. It does not matter how many times I do not understand and ask her to speak slowly when explaining things, she will always eventually end up reverting to ridiculous speed. If I don’t understand, she gets frustrated and thinks the best way to make me understand is to say more things in rapid fire Japanese. Is also very, very, very uncomfortably accommodating to the point where I do not ever want to talk to her because she’ll find some way to inconvenience herself unnecessarily for my sake, usually when I don’t need anything. Take a chill pill.

Father; Gradeschool teacher. Drinks and smokes. Doesn’t know how to talk to me. Seems to compensate for this by filling the silence with little grunting noises. Likes to practice his English on me, and translate very basic Japanese for me. Which are, incidentally, not the things I need translated.

Sister; Incredibly shy, talented 14 year old violinist who is always carrying around a pair of tamogochi. She’s fairly nice, but has no idea how to talk to my level either. However, she seems to really want to get to know me. Her idea of a good method is to hang around and not say much to me, but smile kind of nervously a lot.

Brother; 18, reminds me of my American bro a lot, except he’s ever so slightly more outgoing. Likes anime a lot, reeks of awkward. He doesn’t know how to talk to me either, and ends up switching back and forth from formal Japanese, like talking to me informally makes him really uncomfortable. I ignore this and talk to him informally. = )

Judging from the negative spin I put on that report, you can probably guess my current level of contentment with this family.
I want out. Really bad. It's now to the point where after school, I really don't want to go home anymore, although I spend most of my day at school so this isn't too bad. [by the way, writing this october 9th- I've been here over a week already, feels like sooo long. 11 more of this? = ( ]

This family is not so bad, I guess. But I really don’t find any of them overly likeable- and not a single one of them understands yet how to communicate with me, something my last 10 year old host bro picked up from the very beginning. I just feel so isolated all of a sudden, despite living in an even smaller house with more people.

OOKAY, REALLY, WEEK 7 OVER AND OUT!

BOOM BOOM POW

2010-09-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

So today, I slowly woke up from a pleasan-

Hooooly crap the power just went off

Okay, sorry, that’s not helping my intro at all.

So today, I managed to slowly wake up from a dream. It was slow, it was gradual. There was this noise that I couldn’t quite figure out. My-

And there it goes again. Like a lightning bug. Bzt bzt.

Annnnyway, so this mysterious sound, my mind somehow justified it as my hostmom being in the lower part of the bedroom [I sleep in a loft like arrangement] running around with a wheelbarrow full of rocks or something. I did not find this odd or questionable, somehow. I ascended slowly from my slumber.

Yes, kids, this is how my mind justifies strange events. I hope I never kill someone. If I do, the justification behind it would probably be something like, ‘I was half asleep but I knew the taco he gave me in magical garden land made me forget memories of my long dead mother who died traversing the gap between existence and chocolate. It made sense at the time, really.’

No kids, it wasn’t my Host mom crashing around with a wheelbarrow of rocks.
That thought can [sort of…] be explained completely by my next fully coherent thought. [There was a few more in between, but those were mostly filled with expletives and, dear reader, I would not want to subject you to those.]

“Is cannon fire louder than thunder?”

Yes kids, it does take artillery worthy thunder to wake me out of a dead sleep. Crashing all around me, from all my windows, flash. Flash. 3 am, pitch black, my world a strobe light with subsequent symbols-drum-gong arrangement. I did connect the dots.

I then proceeded to run around my house, looking for a window on the upper floor that I could actually see the lightening from. Turns out no such window exists.

My second attempt had me standing on the toilet, looking out the tiny little window at the very top. It then occurred to me that I had to use to toilet. So I did. Halfway through my business, I swear to god the loudest crash of thunder I have ever heard sweeps over the house. And the foundations rocked. Or at least, I did. I nearly jumped off the seat. I haven’t felt the need to get out of the bathroom at such a speed since I watched that one horror movie aged 7.

Anyway, I eventually decided on the tiny window up in my loft, and tuned in for the end of the lights display. Which wasn’t restricted to just thunder. Nope, like a string of blinking Christmas lights, my house and this power grid shut down in a series of sputters. A few minutes later, I watched it blink on again, slowly, from house to house like a chain reaction. Magical.

I am completely exhausted. .
-- fin 5 am writeup

Well, the next morning, I awoke to a strange sound again. It was the rain pounding down as if there was no tomorrow. This continued for about 40 minutes, with more thunder. I went downstairs to watch the rain, which ended up being a bad idea as host mom turned on the tv when all I wanted to do was listen to the rain. Ah…

Anyway, I feel the need to tell you that now you will experience a TIME SKIP.
This was the events of Thursday morning. Setting the clock back to last Sunday…

Sunday was … really… busy. Trip to Osaka, which I was under the impression was a trip to Universal studios Japan. However, first stop?

Cosco. Ha. That. Was weird. At first I’m all WHOAHHH COSTCO yeah.
It had a strange parking garage like arrangement, with giant escalator-like paths[sort of like the moving floor in the airport] for you to simply set your huge cart upon and enjoy your ride. Sci-fi cosco, much? My mouth was just wide open the entire time. Why so amazing, cosco?

However, the…inside was. Creepy. It. It was as if. You let in 2000 Asians into Spokane cosco and sharpied on some kanji to a few of the products to make it seem authentic. Seriously. The layout, the feel, the signs, the crowd it was EXACTLY like the one in Spokane, with a few minor differences in the food court and checkout placement. It was incredibly weird. I’ve only gone with other people to cosco a few times, usually it’s my own family. It felt like those times as a little kid when you accidentally follow the wrong cart by mistake.

After that, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN BBY. For those of you out of the loop, it’s a character/movie themed amusement park, like Disney land, except with Hello kitty, Sesame Street, Spiderman, and Peanuts themed rides instead. It was… interesting. At first, it was friggen packed like whoah. Waiting was… a few years.

Lets establish this; The Japanese adore swag of just about everything that American kids liked when they were about 6. The word ‘cute’ is definitely the most commonly said word here in Japanland, and I wouldn’t be half surprised if, should a super secret Japanese ninja assassin squad exist, it had a cute cartoon mascot. I kid you not.

I say this completely neutrally. Sometimes my girl side squeals silently to a pitch so high it only exists in my imagination. At other times, my fingers twitch with the urge to tie Kitty-chan and Elmo to the local train tracks.

But anyway, I’ve never seen so much… character themed frivolous stuff in my life. Ridiculous.
Despite this, it was fun! My favorite ride was probably.. the roller coaster, big surprise. It entwined itself with many of the buildings and snaked over walkways and by crowds, and at the end of the night when I finally rode this, it was definitely magical. On top of the world, rocketing around swirl of frivolous entertainment, humanity city and all I could think was ‘JAPAN oh god I’m in JAPAN wow look at this look at this holy crap I love this place.’
It was truly pretty.

There was other rides, such as Jurassic Park [The end freaked me out, this giant T-rex lunges for you and you DROP.] Spider man [This was COOL- it was a 3d arrangement, and it certainly made you feel like you were admist a battle, rising up then dropping dropping stories and BAM caught in spidey’s net, although really it was a just a genius design of the usage of a relatively small space with 2 large 3d capable screens and props] Space Fantasy [So hard to describe, but so cool. Think of it as a trippy indoor rollercoaster.]

We ate at a replica of the Jerassic park’s center, haha. Complete with T-rex skeleton and everything…

We stayed until it closed. Fell asleep on the way home. Whew.

Next day was a day of autumn! No school! I don’t get it either, but whatever, who’s complaining. Papa took Kouyo and me to the local Shrines- about a square half mile with various shrines and temples. Walking around the peaceful setting reminded me of part of the reason I decided to come here in the first place. That such an anachronism can stand so peacefully, with a place so firmly set aside among the hustle of Japanese life, is amazing. Oh Japan.
Feeling the reverent awe of the old structures, my camera promptly died. I got a few before, though.

After that, I had a green tea ice cream cone [strange stuff, mate] and we went to [水を取り] which means to take water. An endeavor that consists of driving 1 and a half hours to an obscure mountain to get water out of a plastic pipe fed by a mountain spring two kilometers up the road. Uh. Yeah. So. It was pretty, atleast? Most of the driving was through lushly forested Japanese mountains. The sky was threatening rain and it was a really peaceful ride up there. : ) Something that can not be said about the ride back. Ohhh no. Not at all.

I was attempting to ask a grammar question to host dad. His English seems to the level where he could answer, but I guess there’s a difference between conversational and discussing grammar. Either way, he was concentrating really hard and… got… lost.
CUE BLANKET OF DARKNESS.
Yeah, that was creepy enough.
CUE GASOLINE TANK IS ALMOST EMPTY DING.
…..
….
Did I mention the fact were an about 40 minutes into nowhere? How about the fact we were lost?
Talk about a tense time. Luckily, 10 minutes later he found the main road, and most of it was downhill from there. I do swear that I spent the next 40 minutes expecting us to sputter and out and go to a sickening halt on the side of the far too narrow Japanese road. However, we did reach a little town and saw a gasoline sign…! Kouyo and I shouted AHHH 助かった!! 助かった!! 助かった!! [Tatsukatta! SAVED!!] Just over and over, Haha. Exciting…

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty normal days of school. I had a revelation on Wednesday that I had OFFICIALLY LEVELED UP IN JAPANESE. That I could put together a Japanese sentence together without actually really… thinking too terribly overly hard about it. Not just sporadically, but becoming increasingly more often!

I feel your scorn.
However, Japanese is a language that is neither easy, nor encourages it’s beginners to string together large sentences.

Simply, it operates by using words and attaching particles to them to demonstrate the grammatical use.

So, in order to make complex sentences, you have to string many, many of these word particles together. The Japanese equivalent of ‘If you ride to school with mike’s bike at 12pm, please take the lunch I made yesterday’ would go like this: [12:00 at] [Afternoon] [School Towards] [Micheal’s personal] [Bicycle by] [Quickly] [Go if], [Yesterday At] [Made] [Lunch that] [Take] [Please]
１２時午後学校へマイクさんの自転車で早く行ったら、昨日作ったお弁当を持って行って下さい。

It is difficult because you have to think about how all these particles and words will interact- whenever you add something to the sentence, you have to figure out how to make it work with the rest of the sentence, and as you can see, it bears zero resemblance to English. And my example isn’t even talking about all the tenses and conjugations you have to think about. [first verb is past tense tara form, second is past plain, third is te, fourth is te with request additive]

Trying to string these sentences together at conversation speed is hard! At first, I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t bother. English isn’t the same. If you say something like ‘quickly went’, you get looked at funny. You have to string it all together. But you can totally say ‘quickly went’ here and it’s grammatically correct…. So motivation to always form long complete sentences doesn’t exist. You can make a zillion short ones if you wanted. However, now, I’ve picked up a form of pacing that, with a tiny bit of forethought, I can string together sentences. It’s a little like music, where you have a beat and that beat falls on the particle. It’s so much fun, I love Japanese <3

Thursday was a day off, which was good with that rain. In the evening, my class had uchiage-「打ち上げ」- a party to celebrate the completion of our bunkasai play. It went from 7:00 to 9:00 downtown which means… CITY ADVENTURE…!!!
First, I took a bus and a train to my usual stop. Had about an hour to burn, so I went city exploring again. [Did I mention that if I have time, such as waiting for the train or such, I walk around?] My travels took me around a huge deserted pool area, and through this little road into the woods. Forgot my camera, though.
After, I phoned Rinako and she and Haruna-chan appeared, gallantly peddling their bicycles. I actually didn’t recognize them instantly out of uniforma haha;; So prettily dressed and made up. Japanese know how to dress!

We then walked back to Rinako’s house. After waiting a while inside, her, Haruna-chan and I all jumped on bicycles and pedaled about 20 minutesthrough falling dusk to a department store. Bicycling in Japan is crazy stuff. You dodge and weave lurch and bump and pray for divine protection from car bumpers. There, we took purika. I will explain this cultural phenomenon next week when I get the photos emailed to me…

After that, we biked another 10 to the restaurant. We were late… haha… I ended up sitting at the end of the table, by Rynako and across from my host sister to be. I’ll whine more on that next week, though. It was a grill type restaurant- in the middle of the tables, there was 3 coal powered grills. We were given plates of raw meat and tongs to cook it on the grills. I would have been delicious if not for how completely squeamish of fat I am- Japanese have nooo problem. They kind of got a kick watching me try to cut the fat off with a pair of blunt, wooden chopsticks….

I didn’t really understand whose food was whose and ended up eating practically nothing, secluded at the end of a table across from my next-next host sister who is neither friendly nor interested. Then I paid 20 bucks for the privilege. It sucked. Completely. I forgot my camera, and everyone went photo crazy and I was a table away from all my friends and just baaww.

Still, aftwerword, talking with friends and biking through Japanese downtown with the wind in my hair and between my toes[Hey, high heels and pedals don’t work well with me.] was good. I went home with Haruna chan, since we travel the same way. On the train we found Yutaro, previously mentioned only Japanese boy who speaks to me LOL. This was a mega surprise, since I’ve never seen him on my train before? Or bus? Or anything other than the classroom? We ended up sitting together and making fun of my Americanness. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while… For some reason, he also had a skillfully photoshopped picture of… obama jedi on his phone. He randomly showed this to me. What!

This one! Anyway, when I got off the train, Mama and Kouyo were waiting for me, and we went home. So exhausted. It was 10:45 or so by the time I stepped off the train. Anyway, that’s about all I have to say for this week. Sorry it’s long! A lot happened! Now, I’m packing for the Rotary weekend, should be fun. ENGLISH. Although I’m getting to the point where I really enjoy Japanese.

Competetive as I am, I want to see how fast (how slow, probably…) I’m improving compared to my classmates. Maybe I should have studied more hmmm…. Anyway, Ciao! Hope Amerika is going well. WEEK 5, OVER AND OUT.

OCTO AWFUL

2010-09-18T05:41:00.000-07:00

Guess which color team I was on?!

Sooo I should probably write this in segments of 2-3 days instead of 1 week because I have a habit of … forgetting things.

Oookay, this week started off with Monday. Bet you didn’t see that coming. It was practice for sports festival. Which entailed doing a whole lot of… nothing. We got all dressed up in our sports gear and went out to the field, sat in rows, sat in a different sort of row, ran back and forth a few times, sat in another row, ate lunch, ran out and did the wave, and sat in in a row again. Sit down stand up sit down stand up. Like church!

All this for about… 5 hours? Yeah. It was scintillating. I must have brushed my bum off for dirt more times Monday than I have my entire life put together.

Tuesday was the real deal. The school was divided into 4 teams, I and I was on the yellow team. My… favorite color. Thankfully, we spent lest time sitting in rows and more time… watching sports happen. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of some of these Japan only sports, so you will hear my beautiful words instead.

Relay, Obstacle course, you know the drill

Taifunome- Eye of the hurricane. 5 girls would all grab a pole and run to a series of cones, at which the girl on the inside parked at and the other 4 ran around her to the next cone. Actually pretty funny to watch. Especially when girls would miss the pole handoff and have to scuttle after it while the rest of their teammates would be dashing for the pole.

Kago thingy derp forgot the name; They suspend a basket about 12 feet above the ground and scatter beanbags around. The team that gets the most in within 1.5 minutes wins. I did this. This was all I did, since I had no idea what was going on at signups. I think I got three beanbags in. We won!

Piggy back fights; Three boys would hoist another wearing a colored hat, and run around with him. The boy on top would attempt to snatch the hat of the other boys. This was especially amusing since there’d be 12 of these 4 boy teams at all times and it was a total free for all sdfk haha. Slappy fights commenced, like the kind little kids tend to do and what you imagine Neo and Mr.Smith should be doing in the epic midear rain battle of the 3rd matrix movie.

Tug a war; Made more interesting in that maybe 150 people would participate at a time … or more.

Hoard the stick thing; Players would line up on the outskirts of the field, and a bunch of poles would be lined up in the center. The object is to get the poles to your team’s endzone. Proves hilarious when theres only 5 or so poles left and all ~80 players are on just those.

Wish I’d signed up for some different things! It was till interesting. My team won! Yess.

Playing field from the window of my classroom. Note Bike corrals filled to brim.

Wednesday was more normal. I cannot remember a single overly interesting thing happen. I choose not to correct this grammer on a reread to show you that my English is dying.

Thursday was my first Japanese rain. On the way out the door, I shunned an umbrella from host mom. Ended up getting completely soaked in the last segment of my travel. The girl that walks with us thought it was funny how I had the biggest smile on my face all RAIN RAIN RAIN and snapping pictures of the herds of cyclists all hoisting umbrellas.

Thursday was also my first real Japanese lesson with Shimo-Sensei. It was a lot of fun, actually, she kind of opened my eyes to a few things. That, unlike in English, if a person is saying ‘un un un un’ [yes yes yes] it’s actually because they want to you stop talking, and less of a ‘YEA I GET WHAT YOUR SAYING’ thing. Oh. Woops… sorry host mom.

After, I went to the Illustration [manga drawing] club with one of my classmates. [Who was giggling over something madly with someone else the next day about me, artclub, and the word Minami, which I was under the impression was her name, so I’m not going to make the claim that… it was her. CURSE YOU, JAPANESE NAMES. But I digress.

It was kind of… awkward. Uh. I do not function well in groups yet . There were some fairly skilled people there. Lo and behold, the classmate who took me was also skilled, and showed me some of her art on her phone. Who knew? [This lead to my giving her my DA, which led to her finding and google translating this blog, so I think that I’ll be watching what I say more here. Or maybe I’ll just throw in more confusing things to translate and talk in complete slange. I ‘LREADY FANCY Y’ALL MAI HOMEDAWGS PLEASE DON'T CONSIDER ME SKETCHY]

It only took me a 5000 miles to find people who share my interests. Great.

I don’t know if I’ll go back, though. There’s a few other clubs I’m interested in too.

Rain!

Friday, I visited the art club. Whenever I’d brought up the subject at school, I would always get EMIRI BE CAREFUL THE ART CLUB TEACHER IS REALLY WEIRD.
He ended up being yes, a little strange, but also nice. It was pretty funny, actually. This school is used to having exchange students, so it was a little weird when people actually were interested in me at the club. I managed to make the first impression that I didn’t understand Nihongo at all, and ended up getting the English treatment from the Teacher and 2 girls. Which. Was. Hilarious. We just kept looking at each other like all ‘YEAH. WHAT?’

I met two girls there, one of which’s art I had intensely admired at the art exhibit during culture fest. I was all ‘oh so what do you like to draw!’ and she whipped out her phone and showed me… dang! I had one of those ‘tt- t- t-that was you! Amazing!’ Reactions and she just laughed kind of embarrassed like. She was really nice, and it was pretty funny when she was trying to express the order in which I should be drawing this bottle and peach.

I ended up drawing a flower for most of the time, which I promptly took home with me and gave to my host Mama like a 6th grader finishing her first crayon drawing and giving it up to the refrigerator, haha. I’m going to miss her a lot when I change families. : (

Saturday has been shopping day. Me, Hmom, Hsis, and Hbro piled into the car and ran into town to go to this huge shopping mall. Ow. My feet hurt by the end of that. Japanese clothes are ridiculously expensive. I went with 4,500 yen [Approx 50 $] and left with a hat, 100 yen, and two plain, flimsy shirts. Seriously.

Lunch time, Host sis enthusiastically said to me, "SO EM YOU KNOW WHAT TAKO IS IT’S REALLY GOOD."
I was all! Tako! Oh, like Taco? Mexican food? Yeah, I love tacos! .
So she rushes off and gets us tako. Which are actually not Mexican food, by the way. They are these fried balls. I didn’t comprehend. I smiled and nodded.

I got about halfway through one and… found a tentacle. In my fried ball. A purple one.
Cue freakout

Imagine. You are eating this thing fried thing. You have no idea. You eat half of it. You hover your chopsticks over the rest of it expectantly, look down, and catch a glimpse of the tip of a curled up purple tentacle nestled in the creamy white sauce. It looks like something out of a horror film.

Goodbye, appetite.

Hello, Octopus.

Bubble tea made things better later. Strawberry milk with tapioca balls. Delish.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are apparently going to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka! Should be fun.

Monday is no school. Yay!

Tuesday or Wednesday, I plan to visit badminton club and finish up my visitation rounds for clubs. Then decision time.

Week 4, OVER AND OUT.
[One month already? No way.]

JELLYFISH HUGS

2010-09-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

Some of my school friends

Good week! Monday was a pretty normal day of school. We spent most of it practicing for the culture fest play. ( :

Culture fest was a lot of fun! I was initially nervous, since I didn’t know how my classmates would group out and who I’d end up with. But I ended up getting adopted with 7 other girls and running around doing everything.

The closest thing I can compare Culture fest would be… well, in terms of my school system, the big basketball game everyone goes crazy over. Stinky Sneaker anyone? But o nly in terms of school spirit. This was more like one of those ‘valley days in the park’ thing- The first years all made booths to entertain, that were open constantly. There were 2 haunted houses, a dance thing, a horror movie, and a classroom where you could learn to make pinwheels and do various things.

The third years make food booths and sell food- crepes, icecream, pancakes, bubble tea ect.

The second years all put on little skits. I only saw one other one than ours, but it was basically hilarious. Not that I could understand it, it’s just… it was so awfully overdone. And the main characters were both boys in… floofly, ill-fitting princess outfits.

Ours was Alice in Wonderland. I did not manage to get a video, sadly, although you can imagine me doing this dance.

Also my classmates can be really scary…. This short, quiet, adorable kid ended up being the white rabbit, and they made him wear a little skirt, fleecy vest, and bunny ears. I swear to god, the screams of MECHA KAWAIIIIII were earsplitting.

Class play poster. It's maybe about 1.5 times my height? There was about 20 of these hanging from the school in a row. Colorful!

My class’ few boys have half the school’s musical talent, I swear. Two of them are great singers, and went up in front of the entire school with their bands. Another two are guitarists and drummers, respectively. You know you I’m impressed when I think, ‘hey, I’d put that on my Mp3 player!’ Skillz.

Afterschool on Tuesday, I went home alone without Yuri. Everything went seamlessly, and I didn’t feel the need to hide my MP3 player as I watched creepy American television. [Dexter season four OH MY GOD] Then on Thursday, Yuri had 7^th hour and was all ‘OH. OK GO HOME ALONE HAI’

Heh. Heh. I was all ‘OK no purobelem Yuri! I got this down.’

Or so I thought.

To make a long story short, I missed my train stop, ended up a few stops down. The station format was different, and I really had no idea where I was at first. This led to me freaking out, rummaging through my bag and… finding out I had left my cell at home! AND my money.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I turned around from searching to watch the next train going in the opposite direction…. [towards home] pulling…out of the station.

This was fun. The realization that you are several miles from home, can’t read the train schedule, don’t know your Hostie’s phone numbers, have no money, and actually can’t speak Japanese is certainly an interesting one. I’m sure everyone reacts differently to such situation but I… couldn’t stop laughing. Seriously. Funniest thing all week. It was mostly…‘Really Emily? Really? How’d you manage this…?’

Anyway, since it was only 5:15, everywhere was pretty deserted. I check the train board and made an educated guess on when the next train would come [around 40 minutes] and decided that rather than sit there, I might as well walk around town for a while. It was kind of interesting, but I kinda stood out due to a) foreigner b) different uniform c) only person really walking around aimlessly at that time… so it wasn’t really the most comfortable thing. Oh well, saw more of the city.

At the end of my walk, from about 50 meters away, I saw the train pull in. It’d been a while since I had ran that fast…

I was smiling like an idiot the entire walk home. Wooh, relief. You can watch my bemused, slightly panicked commentary that I made here.

Met the Art sensei at last! He was a tad strange, as I have been told everytime I brought art up in a conversation. Actually, it was hilarious. Over the past 2 weeks and a half, every time I asked about visiting art club I was told to wait till next week. Finally, I said to the foreign department teacher COME ON IT IS ALWAYS NEXT WEEK and he admitted that yes, it always was going to be AHAHA. Persistence won over, though, and he introduced me.

I plan to visit the club Monday, see if it interests me. There’s also a Illustration club, basically manga drawing, which I want to visit too. And possibly the badminton club, although I’m not overly stellar, just sounds like fun… maybe Kendo? We’ll see.

Gymnasium air conditioning in Japan. In other words, fail.

Saturday was a little weird… uh, went to the art store and bought pens with host dad. Went to the book store as well. My reaction was totally kid in a candy store, host mom was laughing. There were so many. Comics. I don’t mean the flimsy 25 page American style, I mean the 200 page, stellar inking style ones..! They were all so pretty. And cheap. 80 yen Deathnote? Yes please. Oh my god, I’m going to lose all my clothes and just pack my suitcases with this stuff when I go back…

Now before anyone goes OH EMILY WHY SO NERDY… first of all, I can’t read kanji [Chinese characters used in Japanese writing system], so I can’t read books at this time. Comic books, however, have the pronunciation of kanji printed next to the kanji, so I’m able to read them. Furthermore, because of the visual cues, I’m able to figure out what’s going on much easier. The series I bought, I read in English before, and with my dictionary in hand, I can actually read the Japanese version slowly. Talk about SELF ESTEEM BOOST. Chaching! Actually, you probably could not find a better way for me to practice at this time than reading things.

New art pens!

Anyway, that made me really happy. Sunday was less satisfactory overall, we went to the beach. Oh tropical Japan! It was as warm as the warmest lake in Washington, with a nice soft sand. There was one downside, however.

Jelly fish. WAAAAAAAHHHHH. It hurts!! I was the only one that got stung, and I got stung 3 times. WHYYYYY weeps. It has seriously swollen up, and hasn’t stopped hurting since I got it. It’s a little interesting though, since you can see where the jellyfish's tentacles stuck to me! It almost looks like scar tissue. Ever seen those pictures of the Humpback whales with giant squid scars? It’s a bit like that.

Ow.

Anyway, school tomorrow. Next week we have sports festival. I’m looking forward to it. Sayonara, minna-chan.

Week 3, over and out!

CHOPSTICKS CAN BE DIFFICULT

2010-09-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

First rotary meeting and + uniform!

I could have cried in my bedroom at night over culture shock and homesickness and stress like every other exchanges student. But noooo…

I made it nearly two weeks [and this counts travel] without any tears and THEN of course at the most inopportune time…!
Yeah so at my first rotary meeting…. Um….

Okay, so, let’s begin with last Wednesday. I was told I would be making a 20 minute speech. In Japanese. To my rotary club. Plus powerpoint. First of all, what? I mean, one and a half weeks in. I know they’ve every right to ask me to do things but honestly, if you took ever Japanese word I know and had me say them twice over, it probably STILL wouldn’t be 20 minutes. Far too early for such a request.

However, I’m good with rising to challenges. They motivate me. 20 minutes? Okay. Fine. Ganbarimasu. I’ll put you to sleep, but by God will it be 20 minutes

Then, a few days later I was told… 10 minutes. O-okay? More reasonable. Yay. Ok.

Then a few days later I was told… 5 to 10?

Then the day of, I was told to do my name and basic intro and I could even do it in English!

WAAAAHHHHH AS IF I ALREADY WASN’T CONFUSED ENOUGH BY THE NOT UNDERSTANDING JAPANESE THINGGG….

Anyway, I’m the type that like… when I get frustrated I start crying reflexively, and I kind of had a freak out on the way there in the car ahaha… and again in the middle of the meeting. It was baaad. And it was worse because I couldn’t explain that it wasn’t that the speech it was just EVERYTHING all together and I was fine and I really wanted to fulfill my club’s expectations. [You would too if your club spent like, literally, a ridiculous amount of money on you and threw you welcome parties and made speeches at you and gave you ridiculously expensive pieces of clothing]

But I ended up recovering and stumbling through the speech I prepared the days before just fine, thanking them and introducing Spokane, myself, and my school. I thought I did horrible, but apparently it went over really well and everyone was impressed with how my Japanese had progressed in such a short time. My host mom was really pleased and started crying too at the end arharhar….

Anyway I was so exhausted by the end of that… uwahhh.

This was Monday.. I wrote it out when I got home as a bit of a vent.

Sunday, I went grape bunch choosing with Hmom and sis. Supposedly, picking, but it was more like choosing. The grapes were kept in white bags and you peeked in and decided if you wanted it or not. The type is budou, and unlike American grapes, have very tough skin and pulpier insides. They're really sweet, but a pain to eat since you have to peel them first. Still mmmm.

At least the scenery was pretty.

I basically didn’t do anything overly exciting until Friday, well actually I probably did but I forgot about it.
Wow, I love how ‘going to a Japanese highschool’ no longer registers on my list of exciting.

Here’s a little bit about my school routine.

I get up whenever I wake up, usually around 5:30. Breakfast is at 6:00, and usually consists of yogurt/bananas, cereal, bread, rice(onigiri), and egg sandwiches. They don’t drink milk here except with cereal.

At 6:50, I go downstairs and get my hair braided by host mom. [My American mother is the BEST BRAIDER IN THE WORLD and I hadn’t actually realized this before…but now, no one can braid hair very well and it bugs me..]

Anyway, then I throw on the uniform, hop in the car with Yuri and her friend next door. We drive to the train station and jump on the train. [usually with only a minute or two to spare.] It’s extremely loud and jampacked at that time in the morning. We don’t even get little handles, let alone seats. As the train jumps and turns, all the people sway together with it, like one living breathing organism. It’s less romantic when we all kinda fall over at once….

The ride takes about… 25 minutes? After getting off the train, we walk a few minutes to jump in line for the bus. Thankfully, we usually get there early enough to snag seats, which is good because the bus ride is at least 30 minutes.

To be honest, I keep saying ‘bus ride’ and ‘train ride’ but the Japanese don’t really distinguish these words from ‘nap time.’ At our stop, I check yuri to make sure she’s awake, and we walk 10 minutes to school. It’s pretty scenic, but then again, I still haven’t gotten over how cool I think Japanese cities and architecture is yet.

Yay, commute!

At school, I arrive early and sleep at my desk. I’m usually pretty … um [wow, thanks Japanese 24/7, all I can think of is ‘lactose’ although I know this isn’t right] uh… LETHARGIC there’s the word. It actually takes until around 2nd period to start really talking to anyone.

There are 6 periods a day here. Between each is a 10 minute break. You stay in one room all day, but the teachers change. When Sensei enter the room, he or she says something like ‘sukitsu’ [although I’m not entirely sure]. On cue, the entire class stands up and bows.
This sounds stuffy and respectful and all, but kids actually talk or sleep in class pretty much constantly, so somehow I think American teachers get more respect.

Not that I’m complaining. I LOVE this system. I’ve gone from getting a 5 minute break three times a week with a 25 minute lunch to getting a 10 minute break 5 times a day and a 45 minute lunch. Furthermore, you basically get complete freedom during these breaks to do whatever you please. The teachers don’t seem to pay attention to what the students are doing, unlike the American system where you couldn’t really have less freedom if they leashed you.

School is so scintillating that I’ve decided to memorize my Japanese dictionary at the rate of one page a day. Of the 167 Japanese-english pages I am through 4. Akubi is the word for yawn and your birthmark in Japanese is ‘aza’. Furthermore, that sketchy person down the road is totally an ayashiihito. This may sound slightly futile, but I’ve used and heard many of the words already! Woo! It’s kind of a wimpy dictionary so only more common words are included…

I’ve made a few friends in class and I’m friendly with probably 70% of all the girls, but the language barrier is really preventing me from being more than that. Luckily, there’s a Japanese exchange student who went to Sweden in my class and, although she doesn’t speak English, understands my position and patiently explains things to me ehe;;;

There's about 6 or 7 guys in a class of 40. Only one guy really talks to me and just occasionally, which isn’t unusual since the boys and girls don’t tend to mix here? It’s okay, I content with admire them from afar while the Japanese develops. [Oh Japanese boys, I don’t think they make them better anywhere on earth. I think it’s the hair. Mmm.]

These kids have a pretty amazing English reading comprehension ability, but NO ONE talks to me in English. I’m not complaining and I don’t initiate it, but I think it’s pretty amusing that here I am, native English speaker in a class of people with an English focus, and no one tries at all. [Well, except for previously mentioned boy who occasionally gets out a sentence, but then again his hobby is studying languages so surprise surprise]

After school my English is usually horrible and with a Japanese ring to it. [Harro, mai naimu iz emiri, pureezd tu meechew..’waawt iz yaour naim? Oh waaaiiit pghhhsfhg Hello...]

After school, we’ve been doing bunkasai practice, although I hope to join art club soon. Bunkasai is cultural fest, and for it were doing a little skit called Alice? Although the lead is dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, the plot has zippo to do with it. I’ll try to get a video of it. Cross dressing is done, bad Japanese boyband songs are sung, and children’s anime dance videos are danced. It is quite fatabulous.

Oh! Friday I met Stanpu chan! She’s the thai exchange student. She’s not too skilled at Japanese yet, and I’ll be taking Japanese beginner lessons with her 2 times a week. She’s in host sis’ class, and apparently doesn’t talk too much. Which kind of lined up with how she acted upon meeting me. So much for exchange student buddies. Oh well.

Saturday was pretty quiet. Got up late, spent a while drawing, went to lunch to host grandparents. They laughed at my Japanese attemps a few time, pffft.
Went to the video store, it was HUGE. I’m pretty sure that the anime kids at my school would have just walked in and died of joy. There was like 7 aisles of anime, I was really surprised.. and the manga section was like a third of barnes and noble
I’m like
Going back to that sometime. Gotta get my comic fix…

Sunday, Kouyo and Mama were gone again. I went to the international center with papa and wandered around. It was fairly big, and had a little library of foreign books. I kinda want to go back, but it’s not like I want to… stay there like was the original intention of going today? Odd. There's only about 2-300 foreigners in this city. Of 300,000. Kinda makes me feel special.

View from international room

Anyway, not a lot else to report. Jaa, later mates.

Week 2 over and OUT.

YOROSHIKU ONEGAISHIMASU

2010-08-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hana-chan. She really likes tummy rubs.

Dad, you’d be proud. I’ve caught more fish in Japan than I have in a 2 years of the US!
Granted, they were about 2 inches long, and were caught with a net, but it’s the thought that counts am I right?
Saturday, Kouyo and I walked outside and noticed that the water feed to the rice fields had been cut off, and we ran to the feeding pond to go see if it was still full of water. There was about two feet, and a lot of fish trapped because of the cut off flow!

They were feisty little beggers, and kept jumping out of the container. Kouyo would shout OH NOO OH NOOO in this Japanese accent and it was hilarious.
He also fell in.
AHAHA-I mean DAIJOUBU KOUYO??? [Are you okay??]
Let me follow up with
SUSHI ADVENTURE

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
AKSDLFJASDJ ASKDJ FAS DISGUSSSTTIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGG
KSLFDJKASDJKF GRROOOOSSSSSSSSS

EWWWWWWWW

Okay I’m done.

Sunday was very guuud!

ORIENTATION WAS SO　AWFUL.　 2 hours of speeches from Japanese Exchange students who just returned. And the only parts I really understood well were when they were speaking in French FML. [Although it was kind of cool because I kinda zoned out and suddenly was all WAIT WHEN DID I START UNDERSTANDING THIS]

Anyway so introduction time… all the other exchanges students knew we had to make a speech but me! And I had to go second! It was sooo bad. After my awe-inspiring 30 second speech, I scurried off the podium and my host mom was just laughing so hard. I was all mouthing SORRY SORRY SORRY and she just laughed harder. No problem, Mama, I’m happy to be a source of amusement. Later, in thecar, she said EMIRI WA ICHIBAN KAWAII NE [Emily is the cutest no?!] which brought on a bit of a case of warm fuzzies.
After Orientation, we went to hanabi, which any self respecting weeaboo knows are Fireworks. Kouyo dragged me into this Carnival game thing where you get 10 minutes to sort through a large pit of rocks covered in water for a diamond. I cannot say it was overly exciting, but there you go. Cul-ture.

Japanese bus!

Monday, I went to school and went over my schedule with the head of the foreign department. He spoke okay English but was kind of… um… well, let me say that Japanese seem to really like to threaten corporal punishment. At that point, I hadn’t been made to feel bad about my inability to speak great Japanese yet but he managed to do it somehow;;
Although later, he left and came back while I was talking to my hosties about how the American school system was different. He looked kind of and was all ‘Oh! Wait to what extent can you speak Japanese?.’ and seemed to be nicer after that. Odd.

Breakfast for one morning! Onigiri.

Uh, I completely forget what I did on Tuesday.

Wednesday was the first day of school.
You know how in movies, characters who undergo traumatic events experience amnesia?
Then you know why I can’t remember anything about this day…

…

J-JUST KIDDING… sort of.

Got up in the morning, got help with my new sailor fuku uniform… pictures next week, I promise. Drove to train station, took train into town, took bus from there to school.
Do you know how expensive transportation is here? Definitely a thriving commerce. My bus/train pass for one month is… around 155 dollars. SFKJDSF SOIDJ AHHHH
Fortunately, my club is paying for it.

Yuri and Misaki [Her friend] On the way to school

Anyway, first I had to introduce myself to all the teachers in Japanese. Kinda scary. Then I got lead to my class, and had to introduce myself to the 40 other students there. Kinda scary. They all clamored at once and I heard the words ‘Kawaiii!” like a zillion times [Cute, basically, it’s so overused here.] They didn’t crowd around or ask any questions, but they were receptive to questions and very helpful.

This all sort of pales in comparison to what they just casually sprung on me next.

YO EMIRI… YOU’LL HAVE TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF… IN FRONT OF THE SCHOOL…. ON STAGE…. RIGHT NOW … HAVE FUN. Oh, stop looking so scared, it’s just 900 students sitting expectantly in long, impeccable rows, [military style] staring up at you on stage while you try to speak in a language you are mostly unfamiliar with. Please don’t worry about the oft severely hard to spoken understand manners code that I won’t bother to instruct you on for this case! Sheesh, it’s a wonder Americans get anything done with such wussy youth.

I totally skittered off stage after getting out my short intro, probably did it completely wrong. I try not to think about it. Anyway, now, the entire school knows who I am and I keep getting “HI EMIRI!!” in the halls. It’s all HUH HUH.. um do I know you…?

Anyway, I don’t actually remember this day too well. I did my best to kind of try to talk, and I sort of did, like I feel like I did okay. I could only remember one person’s name by the end of the day, though. Japanese names are wicked hard to remember. And they all kinda looked the same. Literally, half the girls in my class have the same haircut. Or is it three fourths?

Wakayama Trainstaition~ Second stop on the way to school

Anyway, was pretty glad to be done, even though it was only a half day. All day, I’d been so highstrung, one overly enthusiastic twang could have snapped me in half. These people in my class, I will literally spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week with for 11 months. Messing up the first impression would be like shooting myself in the foot, only more painful.

Now, up till this point, I’d been coasting on the LOOK I’M FINALLY HERE high. But somehow, even though the second day of school went pretty damn fantabulous, and I managed to get friendly with many of my classmates and get myself involved in stuff, my mood just crashed when I’d got home. It’d started veering a little after school, but after my host brother starting throwing a fit it took, a complete nosedive. I think it hit me then how very long I’d be here for and just how far away from everything I was.

This mood persisted into Friday. Students were taking tests and I was trying not to sleep in the international room, keeping myself awake by contemplating how much I didn’t want to be there and just how hard I was going to fail at this exchange thing.
After Math and Japanese exam, I returned to participate in English and things started to look up.
I conversed [By conversed, I mean I spoke haltingly, played charades, and motioned at the dictionary a lot. Much hilarity ensues.] with many of my classmates. I remembered some names and recognized some faces, practiced the dance for culture festival [I am HORRIBLE. Everyone kinda knew it already, add this to my lack of coordination and inability to understand] and giggled madly over the this bag with the Jamaican flag and a marijuana leaf that some girl in my class has. [She didn’t know…]

Anyway, after school was done I came back home and, after dinner, we did these sparkler things. They were very pretty, but it was way too hot and I got more bugbites that are swelling as we speak. On one hand, it’s incredibly itchy, but on the other, it’s kind of cool how my arm and right leg look broken in 2 places haha!

Koyou doing Hanabi

Mama and Kouyo on porch, Yuri walking from inside
.

Anyway, today I’m home all day, some of it home alone! Soon. HMom and Hbro are at a Kendo thing, HSister will be going to Juku [it’s like MORE school only outside of school;;] I plan on playing my little brother’s wii games and turning the music up. I am looking forward to it.

In anycase, I should really start writing my 10-20 minute rotary speech I have to give Monday, so sayonara, everyone.

Week one, over and out!

Herro! Mai Naimu iz Kiooyo

2010-08-20T16:10:00.001-07:00

ALIVE!

And guess where I am.

If you answered:

Sitting at this badass, 8 ft. desk kindly provided to me by my fantabulous host family, listening to my awesome new little brosski take out his massive reserves of energy on a friend of his downstairs while wishing I had gotten more sleep, you’d be right.

But let’s talk about my journey, shall we.

Woke up at around 2:45 am on the 18th, threw stuff into my suitcase before flying out the door in typical Emily fashion, 6 minutes after the proposed ‘leave no later than’ time. At the airport I said a final, rushed goodbye to the parents and headed through security. It was very relaxed at 4 am. It would have been fun to dreamily watch the sunset with my dull, sleep deprived mind. Except it was.. overcast.
Uneventful ride over, had a similarly uneventful four hour layover in Sanfran. Met up with Exchange student Ken from Illinois and jumped on an airplane destined for Osaka. It was frigging jinormous- 9 seats wide. The little personal light things were so far above our heads that when you turned them on it was like having your own mini spotlight. I ended up mowing through 4 episodes of Dexter, 4 pages in my sketchbook, and my entire mp3 battery. I thought my butt would turn to mush, seriously, 11 hours.
After getting off, Ken and I stumbled upon another rotary exchange student, Kat from Missouri. The line to customs was longer than the queue to a popular Disneyland Rollercoaster, and took about an hour to get through. I’d gotten off the plane pretty chipper, but by the end of that, ugh. Looked, felt like a complete mess.

Anyway, at the exit, I met Mama! ....and practically the entire rotary club too, with a big ‘WELCOME MS. EMILY’ sign. Practically gave me a heart attack.
6000 pictures and a truckload of Japanese gibberish later, we piled onto a bus and went to a restaurant in a hotel. I talked to Yukimi-san [THERE. I REMEMBERED. Weeps why are Japanese names so hard] and…. Someone else who’s going to Canada and… Hi—Hiiii- Hi something. Who’ll be my host brother in October! I’ll have to figure it out his name before then.

Anyway, it’s kind of a blur. I said arigatou a lot. It was… really kind of formal and there was all these respectable business men and I had ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKIN CLUE WHAT I WAS DOING OR WHAT WAS GOING ON AHAHA omg I probably broke like

。。。2039483904234 social taboos
They kept making speeches at me and I was all… TRIES TO UNDERSTAND FAILS　Says arigatou goziamasu again instead of anything useful….

But it turned out okay ! I think…….. sobb.
I’ve read a lot of horror stories about bad host families and terrible host clubs, and let’s just say any fears I had are mostly assuaged. I met my next few families and they seem like really g- HOLY‐A STORK JUST FLEW BY MY WINDOWーAnyway, they seem really great and look forward to having me!! 　Despite the fact I'm sort　of getting thrown around like a hot potatoe. [I’m to have 5 families!　Oh lord!]

Went home with current Hosties after. Went over some rules with Papa who speaks English and crashed.
Alright. As great as this all was, I have discovered the first thing about Japan that I detest.　It is. The humidity. And heat. That does not. Go. Away. Ever.　Sheer exhaustion took me out for 3 hours- then I woke up and it was all OH MY LORD I AM SO HOT WHY IS IT SO HOT OH LORRD IT IS 5 AM….　Clothes just stick to you here. I have yet to feel clean. Once. Despite shower.

I am feeling pretty good for now　Though! Last night, very confusing and I felt kind of weird, but today was nice! I hung out with my 10 year old host bro Kouyo. Yuri, my 15 year old host sis, is very quiet, so I haven’t talked to her like, at all. I’ll work on that.

But their house! It is in the coolest place! Japanese country is GORGEOUS.　It borders … fields of… stuff. I’ve yet to get a straight answer on what. I asked and Kouyo just told me they were growing snails. But anyway, there’s a waterway that runs through it with goldfish and…koi? And…leeches. Hiiru. Surrounding it are these wooded mountains, and the river of sweat running down your face makes it feel like the rainforest! Hm…
I’m not sure why I like this area so much. It’s a mix of plants and powerlines, wich modest little houses spattered haphazardly around tiny little lanes for bicycles and mopeds. I never did like the cut and paste American formula of neighborhoods with their cute trimmed lawns and carefully arranged flowers. Especially those blocks upon blocks of eerily similar white houses with cookie cutter lawns. American white picket fence stereotype, much?

This neighborhood is so much more appealing. Everything is smaller, and the houses are crammed together, but it feels more natural and relaxed. I’m no poet, but I’m sure you’ll see what I mean when I get a video up.

Mama keeps trying to use a translator on me, and the engrish that pops out is hilarious. She points at it and sounds it out carefully. “DO…YOU…ADVANCE WILL?”　Not as if I have any right to speak, as I’ve already reduced my host bro to a fit of tearful laughter over my bad Japanese. I think it had something to do with calling the fridge family.

Anyway, I crashed again about 6 o’clock, pulling an Emily and conking out straight on the floor. Mama woke me up for dinner at 7, which was… pizza. Sort of. There with sausage, chicken, shrimp and other such toppings, served with a side of… rice…?　It was strange.　We watched really weird television while eating. [The only channel that is normal is baseball! It’s so bizarre! Oh, Japan.] but I couldn’t stay awake, so I re-crashed. Woke up at 3 am. Tossed and turned till 4, gave up about 4:30 and
here I am
watching the
Japanese sun
go up.
How surreal.

Anyway, ciao! Enjoy your Midday, my morning is great. [Albeit slightly sticky.] Orientation tomorrow in Osaka, woo!

じゃ、また、みんなさん！

Obligatory Introduction Post

2010-08-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Gooood morninnnnggg starshine the world says hellloooo!

Hi, I'm Emily! (And to a few, Sal.) Currently, I'm tapping away at these keys in my comfortable American abode. However, in 6 days, I'll be jumping country to reside in Wakayama, Japan for my Junior year in high school as a Rotary Exchange student. I'll be staying with 2-4 host families while attending a public high school. (Complete with sailor fuku uniforms and a sailing club... ohoho!)

In case you're wondering, I don't speak Japanese. Uh. So. Um. ADVENTURE.....? !!

Anyway, I'll be blogging about the experiences, people, ect ect that I encounter over there. Expect pictures, art, and much nonsensical musings.

The only thing I really have to say at this point... it's a very interesting feeling to have absolutely no idea and no real way to control how the next 11 months will run. Zippo, zero, nada, zilch. Wish me luck, everyone. I'll miss you all! See you in a year!

和歌山！「Wakayama!」