Christmas

Today was actually really fun!!

I started the day by skyping with my family for the first time in a month... it was broken.  But I discovered the gmail chat thing, so I got to see them again :]

Then lunch [cause it's vacation, and I sleep late.] which was pretty great because it was soba, which is my favorite Japanese food.  I'm not actually going to tell every little detail of my day, I just am mentioning this because it was the second great thing of the day, which also happened to be the 2nd thing that happened for me today.  It was the beginning of a streak of greatness.  [i guess the skype would have been the first, but i think i'm being too analytical.  as usual.]

Host Grandma gave me a pretty snazzy leather jacket.  I've always really wanted a leather jacket, but felt guilty about the wearing-the-skin-of-a-comrade thing.  The problem has been averted by someone else giving it to me.  I still bothers my conscience, but then again, I eat meat now [just this year! and I do feel bad about this on a moral level... perhaps even more for abandoning my ethics, but I really don't want to burden my host family and also I don't want to limit my experience of Japan.  Cultural experience > personal ethics, I guess.]  Anyway, once again being overly analytical.  Simple version:  I like my new coat.  [You can see it below!]

In the evening, I went to Ina and met four of my friends.  We did Purikura for a very long time.  [Purikura=Japanese photo booth.  Not like the US ones at ALL.  I think I put up a picture in a previous post from it.  I'll put up another one now!]
And then we ate ramen at the mall.   I was going to take the train home, but Erika and her mom offered to drive me.  There is an art to accepting an offer.  It's like a game... how long can I refuse without them  thinking I truly don't want it?  Who will give in first?  Whoever holds out the longest is the most polite, but if you actually want what they offer you have to give in first, so you have to push it to the last possible moment before caving in. It was nice not having to wait for the train in the cold :)  And the whole evening was very fun too of course!  It was such a different way to spend Christmas, but still a great day!




Random Note about Great Things:
During my interview with Brown [over the phone, 3 days before I got in...very last minute!] my interviewer and I were talking about Japanese things and shodou came up.  I told her I take lessons, and she said, "Oh really!?  You should see if you can get lessons from a Buddhist priest sometime!  They really are the best!  In Tokyo, [where she lives] I can't get them from the priests-- they're to busy!"  Or something like that.  And I guess I never realized how awesome it is that my shodou lessons ARE from a Buddhist priest.  And my 1st host dad is such a good shodou teacher that other Buddhist priests take lessons from him.  Benefit of living in a small town I guess!

Moments Today

Outside of the mandolin club room, there is a pool of wet yellow house paint.  Nanako and I clean it up with old sheet music.  My instincts are making it hard to resist turning this into a body-painting party.  But as soon as it is cleaned up, we go to wash our hands.  It doesn't come off.  Makonee and Megumi join the hand-washing quest-- they tried to clean up a little more after we left.  We end up going to the nurse's office.  [So different from what I would normally do!]  [Also, it's my first time going to the health room... there are 2 girls snuggling in bed and 2 reading a magazine on the floor.  It seems like a place to just relax.]  When we still can't get clean with the nurse's soap, we end up going outside to the maintenance people and getting it off with paint remover.  Nanako cleans my hands for me, and the others say she's like my mother.  She kind of is, in the mandolin world. An hour later, our hands are pink from the scrubbing and the cold [and the chemicals?], and we finally can return to our instruments.

Suzuka and I get very excited when we discover that Jingle Bells exists in both languages.

Walking home, I show Cassiopeia to Megumi.  I successfully explain that it is a swan without knowing the word for swan.  We look for Orion and can't find it.

It's a good thing I went with culture instead of instincts in the paint situation, because it turns out that what I thought was a casual dinner with my first host family is actually a 7 course French meal at a resort in the mountains with various priests, professional temple builders from Kyoto, and an opera singer.  I discover that though I may be able to explain a swan, I cannot explain the difference between a priest and a monk.




Ok so done being all poetical and stuff like that.  :]
other good moment, though not today:
I was going to a Rotary meeting last Monday, and a Rotarian was driving me there.  His two little sons were in the back seat.  For the drive there, they were very very shy.  They would scream and hide their faces if I just looked in their direction.  On the way back, the 8 year old was very curious about me.  He asked me lots of questions.  The one thing that really freaked him out was that I spoke English.  I hadn't spoken any English in front of him ever, yet he still got really anxious, saying "I completely don't speak American!!  I don't even understand AT ALL!  Don't let her speak American!  I only speak Japanese!  I just DON"T UNDERSTAND!"  It was actually really cute.

Also, in my last post I forgot to mention that I went to Tokyo, which was definitely contributing to my happiness.  It was soooo completely different.  Like a different culture.  But not.  But still, so different.  I'll need to live in a Japanese city sometime if I really want to know Japan I think.  Anyway, I went with Annika, the other exchange student in the district [she's German and very awesome] and the four outbounds.  We spent the first day going to different parts of Tokyo.. Akihabara, Ginza, etc, and the 2nd day at Disneyland!  Funfunfun.

Once again, I know I have about 10 million things I'm forgetting.  Gotta blog more often!!!

Hey Guess What? My Life is Absolutely Perfect.

So much is falling into place/becoming perfect at the same time.

First off, I got into Brown!!!!!  How is that even possible??  I'm ridiculously ecstatic.  I have fits of uncontrollable happiness, and I bet people think it is kind of weird when out of the blue I burst into a huge smile and start vibrating.

Second awesome thing:  Friends.
When I first got here, everyone said "Japanese people are shy!  Don't feel bad if your schoolmates are a little reserved at first!"  And initially, I thought they were wrong, because everyone was super friendly to me.  But there is a difference between being friendly to me and treating me like a normal friend.  So I realized after a while that they were, in fact, a little reserved around me.  And I had to get used to the Japanese style of friendship too.  But now, I feel like I really have become a normal friend to them.  It really makes me happy.  The turning point [I think] was this past Thursday and Friday.  I went to study camp with my whole grade.  We stayed in little log cabins up in the mountains.  Since we were so high in the mountains, there was snow!!  Snow makes me hugely happy.  When we got off the bus, I was soooo excited! [I had slept the whole way there, so I hadn't known there would be snow.]  I immediately started catching snowflakes on my tongue and initiated a snowball fight.  It was the first time my friends had ever seen me really truly unavoidably thrilled.  I think that seeing me being ridiculously happy kind of opened a door... they saw my true self more than usual I guess.  Anyway, I taught them how to make snow angels and we played tag and Japanese Red Light Green Light and slid around on icy hills and just generally had a really fun time.  Also, the meals were all buffet style, which brought back happy ASP memories.  Another good thing was that my Japanese suddenly was good enough that I was essentially uninhibited in social interaction.  All of the things I want to talk about are connected... so I'm going to come back to friends/college/the perfection of my life in a minute.

But now:  the Japanese language update.
For a while I felt like I wasn't progressing very well, but that changed.  And now I can tell I'm on the verge of a new zooom upward [english vocabulary = :[... I forgot the word for "plum" today.]  But this zooooom up is a big one... I feel that it will take me to a level where I can fully interact with people, get the grammar right all the time, and basically be fully functional.  I already am functional, but in a not-grammatically-correct sort of way.  I still need a lot of hand motions and people to say things twice sometimes and often get the grammar wrong.  HAPPY THING:  I had to make another speech for Rotary, and so I wrote it at school.  I had my host mom check the grammar and the whole thing was correct! the only mistake was from reading the dictionary wrong.  legit, ONE LETTER was wrong!!  Before when I wrote speeches, my host mom had to rewrite the whole thing for me.  ALSO exciting: my host mom says my pronunciation is getting really good! After being told for my whole life that no one can hear me and I mumble and generally am terrible at speaking, it makes mer really happy to move past that.

So back to college/friends.
I found out about Brown on Tuesday morning before school.  When I got to school, I was SO excited to tell my friends that this is how the conversation went:
Friends:  Ohayou!!  [Good morning!]
Me: OHAYOU DAIGAKU DAIGAKU DAIGAKU!!!  [GOOD MORNING UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY!!!!]
Friends:  eeeh?
Me: DAIGAKU HAIRU HAIRU BROWN DAIGAKU HAIRU! [UNIVERSITY ENTER ENTER I WILL ENTER BROWN UNIVERSITY!]
Friends: AHH ohhhhYAY Omedetou!!! Sugoi!  [ahh ohhhh yay congrats super]
Haruna: ... Emma Watuson?  [I told her about Brown before... no one here know about it, so I just told her it's where Emma Watson goes]
Me: Hai Hai Issho!!  [yes yes together/the same!!]
Friends:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH SUGOI SUGOIAHHHHHHHHHHH
*High Fives, squealing, jubilation*
Me: ToDai, KyoDai mitai!  [it's like Tokyo University or Kyoto University]
Friends:  AHHHHHHHH atama ii oOOOOO [ahhhhhhh good head ooooooo]
*jubilation, high fives*
*Continues for quite a bit longer*

Anyway... the point is that they were WAY more excited than I thought they would be.  They really cared and were truly happy for me.  [and were superrrr excited about emma watson.  if i might her, i am required to send them her signature.]  More evidence that they really are good friends, and that they care about me much more than I realized.  I felt for a long time that they just were babysitting me, and I worried they resented me, but now I see that that is completely not the case.  Yay.
Also, this is another instance when they got a peek at my true culturally/situation-independent self.  Which brings us closer.  Being absolutely overjoyed is a good way to make friends, apparently.
Getting into college and all that is obviously a pretty big deal in Japan, so people are always SUPER excited for me when I tell them I got in.  My host mom made me a special dinner!  Pink rice, sashimi [with the fish head and tail on the plate!], clam soup, etc.  My previous host family gave me a fancy pen and mechanical pencil for lots of studying.

Other good friend thing:  My mandolin friends [who are 2nd years... I've talked about them before] went on a class trip to Hiroshima.  My three closest friends brought me back souvenirs!  Yes, the cookies and candies are delicious and the earrings are cute, but the best part to me is that they thought about me while they were on their trip and took the time to pick something for me and remembered to bring it to school and all that.  The 10 minute walk home with them is seriously the best part of my day, and I'm glad they care about me too.

Evidence of exchange success:
Adaptation:  I now apologize when someone else drops something and I pick it up for them.
Being a good influence:
         Me:  *happy happy happy obsessing about college*
        Yuuka: [to Suzuka, but I overheard IN JAPANESE] Burijitto-chan is so happy about getting into                                           university!  It makes me want to study harder!

This is how perfect my life is right now:
I have always wished on stars.  Usually, I wish for a variety of different things, but when something big is coming, I wish for the same thing every day.  [For example, "Star light star bright first star i see tonight i wish i may i wish i might...pass my driving test and get my license... not have any terrible problems during my travel to japan... get into brown...etc].  Last night, walking home from mandolin club, I saw the first star in the sky and just stalled.  I had this strange moment when I had no idea what to do.  I had nothing to wish for... there is nothing else I want.  I ended up wishing to learn more Japanese quickly, because I can always use more of that.  But really, I am so content.

Even though my life is perfect at the moment, I do not feel that this is the high point of my life.  It may be one of the best times so far, but this is only the beginning. If my life has become this wonderful in just 17 years, I can't even imagine what it will turn into in the years to come.  [Especially with Brown as the foundation.  gahhhhhhhhhhhh cannot contain my excitement!]  I have set the bar very very high for myself, and I intend to meet that expectation.  I'm sooooooooooo completely thrilled about my life.

Erika and Haruna.  Yay friends!

I hope you enjoyed this novel-length explosion of rainbows and unicorns.

WWII awkwardness, Racial Differences, Buddhism and Mistakes, Places I Feel at Home

Watching a movie about WWII for 2.5 hours today was a little awkward.  I was worried that after repetitively seeing their people be blown to bits my my people, my friends would shun me.  But it was not so.  Instead of shunning me, they taught me how to say "sunshine."  No one even mentioned that I was from the US.  I actually would have liked to talk about it a little.  The movie was emotionally rough for everyone [lots of people cried] and I tend to want to talk things like that through afterward.  But I realized that the awkwardness was not in the atmosphere, but just in me, and caused by my worry.  No one blames me for what happened, just like I don't hold anything against them.  And I hope that after my year here the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of the US is that tall confused and friendly girl, and not how their grandparents died or that gory movie they saw in school.


I'm having racial problems in mandolin, in the most non-problematic and amusing way possible.  They keep trying to fix the way I hold the mandolin, but it is just physically impossible.  My limbs [specifically my arms] are too long to hold the mandolin the correct Japanese way.  So they'll kind of look at how I hold it, and then try to adjust it so my elbow is closer to the instrument, but then the pick ends up half way up the neck, so they try to readjust me, and eventually we just all give up.


Today I went back to my temple for a shodo event.  About 80 people came, and we all spent about an hour writing out a Buddhist prayer/chant.  Before and after, there was "Namu Amida Bu"-ing and ceremonial things like that.  Because of where I was sitting, I had to carry up a bowl of flowers and put it on the altar.  I think I managed to do it correctly!!  The shodo part though... I made lots of mistakes.  But part of what I love about Buddhism [I don't know if it is just this area, or all of Buddhism actually] is that no one cares if you make a mistake.  I was worried at first when I started being involved that I would make lots of mistakes and RUIN THE WHOLE CEREMONY.  I saw all these rituals and thought they must be incredibly sacred and must be done perfectly.  Yes, they are sacred, but Buddhists are generally nice understanding people.  And it isn't so serious all the time.   If I do something wrong, I'm not interrupting some fragile channel connecting them momentarily to their source of truth, I'm just making it obvious I'm a foreigner, and the ceremony goes on.  It seems to me that Buddhism in Japan isn't really so much of a religion, in the way I'm used to defining religion, but more of a cultural tradition.   [I didn't wreck any ceremonies today... I just am bad at writing kanji and accidentally skipped a whole line].  I find it amusing that it is now a normal part of my life to have coffee with half a dozen men in big robes and shaved heads.  I also realized that by Japanese standards, I'm Buddhist.  I don't know if I am by my own standards, but I've gone on the trips and I go to shodo every week and other temple events, which is what Japanese Buddhist do.  [this ties back to it being more of a cultural thing than a religious thing].  I guess the real test of my Buddhism would be where I had my funeral, but I don't plan on having that any time soon.  


It was odd for me today going from my current home to my old home.  It seems strange to have 2 places that feel like home [I really don't know why, seeing that I've had 2 homes for more than half of my life].  Also, there are at least 5 people I think of as some sort of motherly figure.  [My real mom, my two host moms, the Spanish woman here, and Cynthia.]  I guess "home" no longer means "where a person lives" but is more along the lines of "a place that a person knows well and feels safe and loved."  And "mother" is no longer "the woman who ejected me from her womb" but "any woman that takes care of me." [Mom... I definitely don't just think of you as a womb. If I was less tired right now I'd make that sound less harsh.  But you know I love you <3].




Random note:


I still get freaked out when I see people eating or reading in the left front seat of cars.  

|>o<| <-- I can make a bow :)

   For a while, I felt frustrated that my friends at school are all younger than me.  I stopped minding a while ago though, because there isn't anything I can do about it, and they're funny.  Then, while walking up to our mandolin concert, I found out one of my best friends in the club has the exact same birthday as me!  After wishing for friends closer to my age, I came across someone precisely my age.

       This is one of the reasons I'm glad the joining-the-rock-band thing didn't work out.  The people in the band are all 1st years.  I wouldn't have met any new people either.  It probably would have been fun, true, but since it didn't work [all the school rock bands are already established and I can't just hop into one midway through the year] I joined mandolin.  Everyone in mandolin was new to me, and they are mostly 2nd years, which is the grade I would be in if I was placed by age.  So this means lots of new friends who are more likely to become good friends.  And mandolin is every day, so it fills up my time much more nicely than weekly rock band would have.  

     

    I was walking to home the other day, near home, on a drizzly cold day.  There was a big gust of wind, and I immediately felt like I was back at home walking to the barn.  I could almost feel the rough wood of the door, the cold metal handles, and the comfort of getting inside and turning on the lights.  And it made me realize that I don't think I'll ever be able to be homesick, because all of my experiences and emotions have never gone away.  Everything I've ever felt or thought is still there.  I agree with the Vonnegut idea of time that everything exists all at once and we just experience one moment at a time.  But just because a moment isn't the one showing up doesn't mean it isn't just as true.  My whole life is inside of me, and so I can never miss anything because it is all there.  I really should start writing when I'm not ridiculously tired.  This sounds so cliche right now, and it was going to be very insightful. :(

   

Oh my!  How have I forgotten to mention this till now!!!  The baby was born a few days ago!!  I am now a host aunt.  The baby [a girl] is sooo cute.  It makes me a little less repulsed by pregnancy [just a very very little bit].  no name yet.  They're still at the hospital, but they're coming home the day after tomorrow.  Its my first time living with an infant [other than myself].  I wonder what it will be like.

I had a funny experience the other day... My family and I were buying curtains, and my parents asked how mandolin was going.  I showed them my new callouses [I'm so proud of them], and my host dad whipped a little spray bottle out of his briefcase/purse and started spraying my hands.  I asked why, he said it was so that they wouldn't hurt.  I asked what it was... it was water.  The whole experience just seemed so strange and unexpected, especially because after ward he started spritzing his hair.  

As usual, I'm forgetting lots of things I wanted to say and the things I'm saying are coming out wrong.  

Sooo pictures instead :)

Concert Garb and Mandolin

My neighborhood.  Cloudy day.

So Japanese :D  [with Annika from Germany and her host sister Yuri]

Proof and Worries

So just to provide further evidence that stoves are not a good thing around high schoolers... today after lunch we were all brushing our teeth, and one of my friends discovered that she could melt the non-bristle end of her toothbrush on the stove's metal chimney pipe.  So we all did this, with the normal end of the brushes still in our mouths.  So many faces next to such hot metal.
[I'm not actually that concerned about this, I just think it's kind of funny.]

Also... the worry part.  Not understanding all of Japanese is particularly difficult when I watch the news.  For example, today the news was on TV while I was eating breakfast.  I saw videos of explosions and fires, and understood that it was related to North Korea, but had no idea what the meaning was.  It could have been just a factory accident or the beginning of a war.  So now I'm going to look up the news in English and see what's going on.

木 林 森

Sometimes I have so many things I want to write about that I just don't write at all because it just seems too daunting.  I will do my best to whittle at it, but also accept that I just can't get in everything I had in mind.

Rapid Fire Catch-Up!

Weirdest food: Slice of fish consisting of just its spine, fins, and the bones and flesh in between, dried out till it's crunchier than a pita chip, and eaten plain.  I did not, in fact, eat this, because I was so incredibly stuffed that it was just impossible, particularly when the idea of eating a skeleton was not so appealing.

Silly Word Mix-ups:  Katai versus Kaitai.  The first means "hard" -in the solid way, not the difficult way, the second means "want to buy." So I said "Japanese clothes are hard" instead of "I want to buy Japanese clothes."  It was quite amusing!  I had another good one, but I have forgotten.  I often get "dobutsu" and "daibutsu" confused.  Not such a great one ... Dobutsu = animal, Daibutsu = Buddha.  Oops. OH I remembered the one I forgot!  My mandolin needed to get new strings.  My friend [who has been teaching me to play and is amazing at mandolin] and I were talking about it, partly in Japanese and partly in English.  I asked who was supposed to change the strings... me, or someone else? and she said "You."  Me: "Oh me?  Okay, how do I do it?" And then there was this muddled confusion moment... and then I remembered that the best mandoliner in the club is namedゆう which sounds like "Yuu."  Ohhhh languages make life so much more interesting...

Sports:  Badminton is over, and I went from being a complete flailing dysfunctional thing and utterly disappointing my PE teacher to making it into the 2nd best group in my class [out of 4 groups].  I thought that maybe I had started on a path of success in PE, but that is mostttttttttt definitely not true at all.  Volleyball is NOT my sport.  When my PE teacher saw me once again flailing dysfunctionally, he just kept repeating "むり！むり！Unberievable!" [むり＝impossible.]  I really think I should have lied when he asked if we played volleyball in US PE.  Somehow, I'm really not embarrassed at all... I just feel bad for the people who get put on my team...

Host Family:  I'm starting to feel sooooooo much more at home here.  I'm getting used to it a million times faster than I got used to my first house.  Yes.  1 million.  [Probably cause I already somewhat understand the culture/language/school system etc] AND my sister could give birth any day!  My host mom and I were planning tomorrow, and at the end, my host mom added "...if the baby isn't born, of course!"  I'm so excited.  [Usually I think pregnancy is gross and babies are a strange phenomenon.  I still think that, it is just impossible not to get excited when everyone else is so happy.]

Today was great.  I didn't have school [today is some national holiday for ... I'm not sure... maybe uncles?] so I slept till 11:30 and then we went to the most wonderful place.  [actually 2nd most wonderful place... I'll get to that.]  We drove to the mountains [which was only about 7 minutes or so] and up onto this tiny little road and wayyyy deep in the woods.  The place was a restaurant, but I really had no idea what it was when we drove up.  There were a bunch of little log cabin buildings and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles of firewood [!!!! wood stoves are rare in Japan!!!! I was superrrrr excited!!!!] and little dirty statues and sprawling dangling masses of somewhat dry plants in various pots and containers.  Inside, it was cozy cozy cozy [wood stoves are theeeeee coziest things EVER] with lots of little mismatched treasures, such as a marionette Indian man and a chart of Egyption hieroglyphs and paintings.  It was so full of woodenness. I'm not so good at describing it.  There was also an old graceful brown dog outside and a delicious scent of post-rain forest dirt and pine needles.  Basically, I am completely in love with that place and felt so perfectly at home and realized how much the forest is part of me. Being in Japan has made me realize how desperately in love with mountains and trees I am.
Anywayyyyy then we went to Kosenji, my #1 favorite place in Japan.  [I've written about I think twice, and I actually wrote my college essay about it.] It was particularly fun this time because it was all about my host sister's belly [also know as the baby.  How weird is it that right now it's just this big lump that's distorting her body, and within a few days it will be a person?  Right now, she's one person... but that exact same growth will very soon make her 2 people.  Pregnancy is seriously strange.  I have similar emotional reactions to both pregnancy and monkeys.]  We all fanned the incense smoke onto her belly[/the human being within her skin] and rang the bell for her.  ALSO there is this little stream with a cup next to it and last time I was alone and thirsty and I wondered if the water was drinkable... now I know it is!  And that it is supposed to help you live long.  A skinny mountain stream runs down through the woods and then is channeled into a stone trough that has been covered with wonderful moss and then the water shoots off in a perfect clear arc.  Yumyumyum.
Then I just wasted the day away doing nothing, which is a nice way to spend a day off, especially after being a crazy over-committed girl for the past, oh I don't really know when it started, for the past really long time. Yay I finally get to do nothing!

Realization:  Japanese grammar is not simple.  I've been convinced that it is really simple for nearly a year.  But a few days ago I was attempting to read something in German and I had this moment of discovery. "Wait... the words... the order... it's the SAME! The words are in the same order!  What?!"  So Japanese conjugation and tense-changes may be simpler than most other languages, but that does not at all mean the grammar is simpler.  All the words are completely utterly entirely mixed around.  That makes it very very complicated.  So now I can stop feeling guilty that I'm not better at Japanese.

Japanese achievement!!!!  I have the kanji-understanding-level of an average Japanese 10 year old!  Yayyyyy!!!

Ok, so every single time I just absolutely have to apologize about my writing.  I wrote this pretty much exactly the same way that I would say it out loud.  I hope that makes it interesting and not just crazy.
Also!  If any of you ever have something specific you want me to write about please let me know!  I don't want this just to be a documentation of what I'm doing, I want it to be a little peek into Japanese culture and more... I'm not so eloquent/able to figure out what I'm trying to say right now.  Anyway, if you're curious about something, comment on this post or send me an email or contact me on facebook or write me a letter or talk to me on skype or speak to me through a dream... there are a ridiculous number of ways to keep in touch.  I'm kind of impressed by humanity and technology and development right now.  Speaking of which, this is completely off topic, but I've recently realized how much I love right now.  People [including me in the past] often talk about wishing they lived in the 60s or 1800s England or some other idealized time period.  I was thinking about this a few days ago [not sure why] and thinking about which time period I would live in if I had complete freedom to choose, and I realized I would choose the one I'm in with no regrets.  Or, not enough regrets to make me think I made the wrong decision.

Also realized I just love anything related to strawberries.  Japanese cutsieness is definitely leaving its mark on me.

Sorry that I overuse "just."

and ramble.

PS I'm back to my happy wooden gears feeling, but this time more... like an elegant old navy blue umbrella with wooden spokes and stem that opens and closes smoothly and with a satisfying swoooosh click.

Mandolins and Fire

Mandolin club today definitely revived my spirits.  After practice, I stayed for 2 hours talking to 3 people in the club about Japanese characters and our favorite bands and American bathrooms and other various things.  It made me happy. ALSO I may have written about this before but I'm really excited about a concert we're doing next July... it's on the national level, and in Osaka!

Point of concern:  I feel that there is no way my school can get through the winter without catching on fire or hosting some terrible accident involving students getting burned.  The school is heated by stoves that the students pour gallons of oil into every morning.  The whole thing gets really hot and is right in the main walking path of the classroom.  And of course, teenagers can't resist experimenting... Is this part hot? Ouch! Yes, that metal part directly over the flames is hot.  Some hideous accident just seems inevitable.  But they are nice because it makes a natural gathering point for everyone and I end up getting to get to know more people that way [and I'm not freezing all the time.]

That's all for now.  I'm sleepy, and I have mandolin tomorrow morning.

Switching host families, Venezuelans, Fulfilling my neglected duties.

This will be yet another disorganized catchup blog.  I really need to be better about this...

I switched host families.
Current family description: Doughnut factory owners, live close to school, host sister is in her upper 20s and lives at home and is pregnant [I will be a host aunt soon :) ], very nice host mom, host dad speaks some English [but usually I understand him better when he speaks Japanese], host grandma is cute.  2 pugs.  Nice garden. Piano.  Electric organ in my bedroom.
I'm really really sad about leaving my old home though.  I felt like a real part of the family.   I had gotten completely comfortable and  happy there.  And then I had to leave.  It's hard.
It's funny.  At the beginning of the year, I was really craving couches.  Now, my host family has a couch, and I'm craving futons and kotatsu.  In general, my current family is much more Western and less traditional than my old family.  But that's not really a surprise, given my old house was a temple and more than twice as old as the US.

The house change has really put me in a weird mood. The smooth wooden gear feeling has gone away, and now I feel more like... hmmm... like I'm trying to pick up a large heavy object with my toes in the dark. I think once I get adjusted to life here and mandolin starts back up I'll be back to normal.

Positive thing:  I think this will be a really nice place to be for the Christmas season.  It's obviously not a big deal in Japan, but this house definitely will be festive in a wintery way.  We spent the whole first day I was here putting up tons of different christmas lights all over the garden and the fence and the balconies. [And going to lots of stores trying to find more lights.]

Other positive thing [pre-switch]:  Last Wednesday [?] my mandolin club and I and the brass band club went to the culture center to have a workshop with a group of musicians from Venezuela.  It was super fun to learn about different types of music, especially hearing my Japanese friends' reactions to it. Lots of new rhythms.  They performed lots of songs for us [mini Venezuelan guitar + flute + percussion + bass].  And then I learned that we were performing for them too!  Eek!  So I performed mandolin to professional musicians.  I only know very basic mandolin, and had only played the song once or twice, and didn't remember it and was just getting used to reading music for mandolin and was basically incompetent.  But my comfort zone has expanded sooooooo ridiculously much that it didn't stress me out.  I just tried to play the first note of each measure and hope no one paid attention to me.
Oh right!  What I actually wanted to say about that was about Spanish and languages.  They spoke in Spanish for the presentation and someone else translated it to Japanese.  Prime situation to compare my language abilities.  I'm still better at Spanish than Japanese.  But for the first time, this didn't make me frustrated.  Instead, I felt happy. I realized that they languages weren't in competition with each other, and knowing a little of both just means more people I can understand.  I'm not so good at explaining this.  I think now that I am more functional with Japanese it is easier for me to remember why I am here and not in Spain.  Gosh I'm really tired and not at all capable of saying what I'm trying to say.

I've been soooo sleepy lately.  I took a five hour nap today.

I'm sorry about this post... I had planned to make it more eloquent and less moody.

Oh Oh Oh!!! Not done yet!!!  I have COMPLETELY shirked my duties and not put up any pictures of my temple!!!  I probably should have done that when I lived there...  But in any case, I'll put them up now.

Gate

Main Temple Part

Buddhaaaaaaaaaaa

Closer up.

Buddhist priest toolbox

Hallway leading to house part

Goldfish!!!

日本語 and other things.

This is how I feel about日本語: 

      It is such a perfect language.  Everything is composed of blocks that are all the same, yet they can fit together in many different ways to create a huge range of words and ideas.  It feels like building with Lincoln Logs.  There are only five sounds, yet by putting different consonants and “ in front, a whole language emerges.  It is all just a big puzzle.  There is no wavy vagueness; Japanese is solid and geometric.

Here is how I feel about my Japanese capability:

      I am good at understanding and vocabulary, but bad at grammar.  Also, I only know the words that have come up in my life.  So, for example, I know how to say “hedgehog,” “water imp,” and “electron,” yet I just learned the word for “bad” today.  [That says good things about my time here so farJ].  When I talk though, it is usually just a string of words with no grammar particles in between.  But I really can talk a lot as long as my conversation partner doesn’t mind my incorrectness. 

Which makes me think of my life in general:

      I love my host family so much.  They understand my jarbled 日本語, and help me fix it all the time.  At the beginning of my time here, I felt somewhat isolated and like no one really knew me.  Of course, because how could anyone really know me, and how could I really know anybody, if I had only met them a month ago? But now I’ve been living with the Iida family for 3 months, and now I feel completely comfortable around them.  And about people not knowing me, I think they really know me now, but it is a different me.  It is not the me from ConVal or ASP or home life with my real family, but it is me just as much, even though it is new.  I guess it’s like painting a wall—the paint from before is still there, and it makes the wall a little thicker, but the only color that the people looking at the wall see is the top layer.  But the colors underneath affect how the next layer shows up.  And I haven’t turned into a completely new person—I still make little dove trills and get obsessive with tricksy things like juggling and origami and Japanese decorative knot-tying.  For example.  There are lots of things that are the same, but also lots of things that are different. 

      But back to life in general:

      I am so happy.  I feel no stress, for the first time since about 5^th grade.  Probably because I don’t have to worry about homework or tests or grades for the first time.  My only responsibility is making friends and learning Japanese and Japanese culture and being a good person to my host family and the town.  All of which is generally fun.  And I really love learning mandolin!!  I’ve just joined the club [maybe I already wrote about this?].  I have a feeling that the people in the club are the ones that will end up being my closest friends by the end of the year.  They are all so nice and friendly.  Another nice thing is that they are not all 1^st year students.  I’m in 1^st grade [about the same as US 10^th grade] so my classmates are quite a bit younger than me, which is usually fine, but sometimes I’ve wished I knew more people my own age.  And now I do!  Anyway, it is a great combination of music and friend-making and culture-learning and all that.  :]

In general, I feel like all of a sudden I’ve reached a new level of comfort and happiness.  Everything just feels right.  I don’t really know how to describe it.  My mood is like a big set of gears that all interlock perfectly and spin smoothly and are made of old polished wood.  That’s the closest I can get to it. 

Also, since I wrote about 日本語, here’s a little bit about English:

      For the first time, I can tell what it sounds like.  When I first started being able to hear it from an outside perspective, I thought it sounded coarse and unpleasant, but more recently I’ve noticed how awesome English words are.  They are all so different and playful.  Muddle Trivial Luxury Spider Gurgle.

2 Days in a Row! Yay!

Japanese fashion is very defined and different.  At this point, I don't even try to dress the same way as everyone else, because I just can't.  I'm planning on acquiring more Japanese clothes over the year, and then hopefully I can fit in/learn, which I very much want to do.  But for now, I just dress the way I usually do and hope it looks "American" and not "bad".   

Occasionally though, things work out.  Successful things include: my pale purple sweater, my shirt with stars, my cabled leggings, and today, the biggest success of all came.  My strawberry hat.  

I just wore it because it was a cold morning and I have a 2 mile [maybe 1.5?  I don't really know] bike ride to school. Riding past the kids who walk to school was the funniest thing ever.  I'd hear them having conversations, and then I'd ride by, and the conversation would stop.  3 seconds later, once I got a little farther away, they would burst until little gasps and say "kawaiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!" which means cute, and is the MOST used word in Japanese high school girl language.  Strawberry hat was definitely a hit.  

Anyway, it was funny and a minor success amid a lot of uncertainty, so it made me happy.  

I feel like of all the things I could be writing about, hats are probably not the most meaningful, but I also feel like Japanese fashion is kind of one of those things that I have to address at one point.  

Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu Namu Amida Bu

I have to write more often.  Sorry about that.  When I don’t update my blog for long periods of time, it turns into just a list of what I’ve been doing.  I want it to be more of a peek into what I’m thinking. 

Warning:  I am starting to be bad at being good at English. 

Exciting things!

• I went on a 3 day trip to the south/Shikoku!  Went to 7 different temples.  It was really amazing.  I did lots of chanting, incense-lighting, small-talking with grandmas [there were about 80 old ladies on the trip, a few men, and my host parents and host sister], raw-fish/ unknown substance eating, and a little bit of public bathing.  Lots of new things.  I could write way more, but I’m going to try not to let this post get too long.
• Class Match!  2 days of wandering around watching soccer, basketball, and table tennis interrupted only by 3 half-hour soccer games.  [We lost all of them.  The only point we got was scored by the other team on their own goal.]  But it was still super fun, and no one really cared that we did horribly. 
• Last Sunday was a lot of good things in one day.  In the morning, there was an international festival.  I learned a little Bengal, saw lots of people who I wanted to know, saw a Japanese Swiss horn choir thing, and wished I could’ve stayed longer.  But I couldn’t because I had to go to a Rotary Orientation, which I actually kind of can’t remember… After that, I saw the temple where my host mom grew up!  Super pretty!  [Temple #11.  I’m keeping track.]  Then host mom, host aunt, and I went to Matsumoto castle.  It is about 500 years old, a national treasure, and awesome.  Not so good with me describing words today, sorry.  Steep stairs, little windows, moon-viewing balconies, flat lawns, flowers, black wood.  Rain. 

Yesterday, my host mom was describing some way of doing something [I forget what] and asked if it is the same in the US.  I told her how it [memory not great today!] was different in the US, and for the first time talking about the US felt like I was explaining a memory, not what I am used to doing. 

I can’t decide what I think about my speaking capabilities.  Sometimes I think that I’m terrible and can’t say anything, but other times I think that I am almost as good at Japanese as I am at Spanish.  I think the second one is true.  I don’t have hard evidence of my progress like I did when learning Spanish [test grades etc] so maybe I don’t realize I’m getting better.  And I think I take the things I know for granted.  Also, I’m learning everything at once.  It isn’t like school-learning where you learn basic stuff, and then a new grammar trick, and then a new set of vocab.  In the school-way, you have a limited set of things that you are very good at.  In the immersion-way, I have a lot of things I am moderate at.  I’m trying to master all of Japanese grammar at once.  The rate at which I acquire things that I am super at is slow, but my breadth is great.  So I can saw a lot of things incorrectly, but little-by-little more correctly.  Just know, I thought of “dan-dan” before I thought of “little-by-little.” Yes! 

Usually when I have something to say, I have to think of it in English and then translate it in my head, before I can say it, but there have been a few times where I just went straight to saying it.  On these occasions, I assumed I must have got it wrong, because I didn’t think about it.  But I didn’t. 

Seasons change within 2 days here.  Tuesday it was early fall, Wednesday the leaves started changing, today it is freeeeeeezing cold, like winter.  I kind of wish my school had heating…

That’s all for now.  In the future, I’ll do shorter, frequenter posts rather than rare monstrous posts.  [I think frequenter might not be a word?]

PS  I visited the mandolin/guitar club yesterday.  Super nice people, super pretty sounds, super excited, gonna join.

Still here and alive

Hello!  Sorry I haven't written anything in a long time.

Recently I've been

• meeting my future host families
• making more impromptu speeches than I enjoy
• having big festivals at my temple and feeling like an insider
• getting handmade wire strawberries from the temple's honorary grandpa
• forgetting everything that I've been doing....

Lots of thing that I've been doing, written badly but perhaps very honestly.

Lots and lots of things to write about.  I'll try to d it roughly chronologically.  Warning:  my writing skills have disappeared.

Kaoru was home for a while!  [she's my oldest host-sister, and lives in Tokyo].  It's always more fun when she's around.  Host-mom and Kaoru and I went to a festival at the Isuzu shrine [5 minute walk from my temple].  I caught little goldfish with an ice cream cone and got to take them home.  We let them go.  Festival description: little road with lots of booths selling unnecessary flashing plastics things and food. People marching around saying  "Oisho!   Oisho!"  Then there were fireworks.  These do not go up high in the sky, they are rain.  A jet of sparks flies out from scaffolding from in front of the shrine, and the people saying "Oisho!   Oisho!"  run underneath it.  The sparks bounce off of them.  As time passes, the fire-rain gets denser and denser.  Soon I can't see the people inside it.  So intense.  [and I am having trouble keeping my tenses in order, sorry.]  A few times the fire came down over the crowd.  I don't know if it missed me or if it hit me and just didn't hurt.

I had my second Rotary orientation.  It was in Nagano City, which is about 2 hours away.  Before the meeting, Kaoru and host-mom and I went to Zenkouji Temple.  It was big and beautiful and I went through a completely dark tunnel under the temple to rattle a key that I think gave me good luck.  Then Kaoru went away to take the shinkansen to Tokyo and host-mom and I went to the meeting.  I met the people who just got back from their years abroad and the people going next year and Annika, who is from Germany and wasn't at the last meeting.  We all talked and gave little speeches and ate and stuff.

I'm forgetting everything I wanted to write about.

On Monday I left school half-way through the day to go to a Rotary meeting.  This one was the weekly club meeting [middle-aged business people talking about good-world things and eating fish].  I went completely alone -- Masaki Ito, my Rotary counselor who speaks English wasn't there, and my host-parents were busy.  I survived!  Yay!  I also made a speech.  It was much better than my last one, but while I was making it I could tell how bad my pronunciation was and I couldn't do anything about it.  I think it was still fine though.

After that, I went to the post office and mailed letters alone and was successful, and then went to the stationary store and discovered a vast array of fantastic origami paper.  I only had my change from the post office, so I just bought mini gold paper, but soon I will go back and get striped paper and flowery paper and small paper.  Then I went home and decided to go for a walk.

I started by just going around central Komagane.  I ran into a lot of Rotarians.  There wasn't really anything happening there, so I subtly followed people to find new places to explore.  I ended up almost getting to my school.  Then I decided to go to the mountains.  I didn't know how far away they were, or how to get there, but they're big so I just walked in the right direction.  I found a road that passed the Isuzu shrine and went straight towards the mountains.  I passed through lots and lots of rice fields.  People were working in them with tractors.  I found pink flowers by the side of the road.  I kept going and kept going and kept going and then i started to recognize things.  I was at Kozenji!  So I walked around the temple and looked at rivers and moss and old stones and graves and found a path up behind it into the mountain woods.  I went on the path.  There were signs and stuff so it seemed ok.  Then there was a sign for bears.  I felt at home.  Eventually, it led to a little park next to signs of human habitation, such as a parking lot and building and golf course.  I lay in the grass. I miss grass a little.  Then I realized I would probably be late getting home so I kept going.  I was on a different road, so it took a long time to get back because I had made a big loop and ended up farther away than I needed to be.  My parents were a little worried, but they were also impressed that I knew how to get to Kozenji, so I think it canceled out.  : She goes on long walks and comes back late, but she knows what she's doing and won't get lost.  :  My frolicking and exploring needs were met.  I think the whole thing was about 10 miles.  [LATER NOTE:  I actually wrote my college essay about this walk!]

There were tests in school all day Wednesday so I got to not go.  Instead host-mom and i went up Komagatake, which is a really big mountain nearby.  It's 3 times the size of Monadnock.  My frolicking and exploring needs arose again, and I wanted to go to the top, but there wasn't enough time.  In any case, it was huge and beautiful and great.  I saw four monkeys.  There were less scary than I expected, but they still mess with my categorization system and I resent them for that.  They were cute though.  One was a baby riding on its mom's back.  One Japan goal completed.

I realized I am completely in love with soba noodles.  I crave them

I've been working on college applications and I dislike them.  I can't wait for the end of December, when I'll either already have gotten in early decision or be done with all of my other applications.  I'll also probably be good at Japanese.

Pictures

Dragon/Lion

Komagane Festival

Festival in Komagane

More Festival

Shirakawago

Shirakawago house

School Friends

できる！

Oops!!!  I haven't written anything in a long time!

Today I discovered I am only a short walk away from a Shinto shrine.

Now that it isnt way too hot anymore, Im going to go on walks all the time.  There is a lot of Komagane I have yet to explore.

There are so many interconnectednesses in this town.  Its just like being at home :]  Everyone knows everyone, and Im starting to recognize lots of people when I walk around town.

I dont know where the apostrophe key is on this keyboard.

Japanese is going well.  I can talk with my host family, and write, and understand basic kanji.  Im not able to understand almost anything at school, but Im making progress.  I can often understand little bits of conversations between other people...　not enough to fully follow along, but enough to know the general topic.

I might be doing something [I dont know exactly what] to help out at a Toy Story-themed country line dance party for 8 hours.  I really dont understand at all what this is, but it seems amusing.

I did an experiment in Chemistry.  As far as I can tell, all we accomplished was measuring different amounts of water into variuos beakers and contraptions [many of which I had never seen before].  One of them is like a big straw with a bubble in the middle that you suck water into.

I chose my classes for next year... [the school year ends in March, so Ill be a 2nd year high schooler for a while].  Im going along the English/Art track.  So Ill have those classes and also Japanese History and some others.

I saw an opera recital.  It was half in Japanese, half Italian.  The singer graduated from my high school 20 years ago.  At the end of the recital, everyone sang the Nagano song.  I will have to learn it!  It is really long, so it might take me a while.  All I could understand of it was "うさぎおいしい”　"delicious rabbit."

There is a big shrine festival tomorrow.  I saw them practicing today.  Its a really slow parade involving little kids with big umbrellas and little kids with fake swords and adults playing flute and drum and lifting big sticks with streamers on them in the air.

Thats all for now.

Interesting Interactions

My very first interactions with Japanese high school students are often strange.

Today:

• One girl asked me if I like pumpkins.  It was one of those situations where she kept looking at me and talking to her friends and giggling, so I know she had been planning/ working up her courage for a while.  She didn't say anything after I responded, she just ran away giggling...
• Another girl hand-fed me purple gum.  No conversation, just gum.  She seemed to be friends with my friends.
• Someone else said hello and shook my hand very seriously, but never actually talked to me or told me her name or anything.  Usually people run up to me and giggle and tell me their names and say "kawaiiiiiiii!" and then run away... this time it was quite the opposite.

Other days

• The first conversation I had with my friends was about whether I knew about "Vomit Tetris."  I still don't know what they were talking about.
• Actually that was my second conversation.  I just remembered that my first one was them asking me to go to the bathroom with them.  I was confused and couldn't understand them very well, so we didn't end up going...
• First conversation with other friends was right after a school assembly where the principal spoke.  They explained to me that the principal looked just like Dumbledore.  He's a short, muscular/stout Japanese man with no facial hair that wears collared shirts.  I guess everyone just loves Harry Potter a lot.  
• Now I'm forgetting all of them :(  

Anyway, I can't think of anymore right now and it is maybe not as interesting as I thought at first.  Short update:

Things are going well here!  I feel like I redeemed myself after looking like a complete fool in swimming by being good at running [we finally switched our PE activity!].  Of course, I do have the advantage of being several inches taller than most of them.  But I still feel like less of an idiot.

I've started riding my bike to and from school.  It is very nice.  Ever since freshmen year, when Molly started driving me to school, I have felt guilty having people drive me around. [except Molly] I enjoy being outside for a while and exercising a little.  People don't go outside a whole lot here, or at least in my family.  

I understood a tiny bit of a non-science/math class!!!!  It was World History, and the topic was the Trojan War.  I understood the part about everyone wanting the golden apple.  

Beans are mostly eaten as dessert here.

I'm going to a French restaurant with 6 Buddhist priests for dinner today.  

There was a typhoon yesterday, but it's sunny today.  It's finally not way too hot.  Hooray!

I guess that's all for now... Sorry everything I write is disorganized.  In the future, I might try to be more focused, or more thoughtful, instead of just dashing my thoughts down and not looking back on it.  I might just keep doing it this way though.  We'll see.

Short and Sweet. And Brain-dead.

Went shopping today.  So tired.  Took a train.  Basically the same as in the US.  I love trains.  Ate Ramen.  Had the words for "cheap" and "expensive" mixed up... all day.  So confusing.  Listening to Cat's Cradle on my ipod and I know I've read it before and I have no idea when and it is really disconcerting.  I feel like I would remember that I had read a Vonnegut book.  Saw Maiko for the last time [maybe ever?] today.  She was very helpful and wonderful.  Dinner time now.
PS [written after dinner]:  If you want your mind to be identical to my mind, first, set up an endlessly repeating background of "Dark Come Soon" by Tegan and Sara.  Then add a layer of "wakaranai," "sugoi," "kawaii," and "oishii."  Intermittently, throw in a thought about college applications and how that should really be happening right now.  For 6 hours of the day, add a sprinkle of "Mr. Frodo!" "pocketses?" "Gandalfffffffffffffffff!"  Every 10 minutes add the confusion of Japanese phones and translation and attempting to write back and 700 little animated pictures to choose from.  There's a lot more going on, but this is a good basic model.

15 good things about today.

1. I can eat tomatoes with ease!  At first, getting tomato slices from the plate to my mouth with chopsticks was always... an adventure, but now it is just eating.  
2. I can wake up at 7:27 and get out of bed and dressed and pack my school bag and be downstairs for breakfast at 7:30.
3. School doesn't start till 8:50.
4. Art class
5. Got to skip swimming class
6. Remembered the word for "put away" -- surprisingly, it came up twice today.  I had only heard it once before.  Usually I need to hear words a few times before I remember them, but maybe my language-learning skills are improving!
7. Read 68 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring
8. Got a 90% on an English test.  Half of the test is spelling English words correctly when the teacher reads them aloud [super easy for me...they're words like "develop" and "maybe"], but the other half is writing down the meaning in Japanese, which is hard.  So I feel like this is an accomplishment.
9. Lots of fun with friends in school... laughed more than I have since I've been here!
10. Going with friends to get Ramen on Sunday!
11. I have to go to Shoudo right now!  I'll finish this later, because there is more. 
12. Talking to a woman [in a kimono.. I don't know why she was wearing it, but it was pretty] in Japanese about why I came to Japan and when I started school and my favorite foods in Japan and NH and making friends and general things like that. 
13. 200 year old library filled with 200 year old books with a 200 year old mural on the ceiling and a 200 year old key to the door [I wouldn't have known what the key was! Very strange looking] and 200 year old book smell and a 200 year old statue of the text god.  All of the books came by horse from Kyoto.  The books are long and skinny and accordion folded.  
14. This library is in a tiny little building next to my house.
15. All of these things happened in the same day... the giggling with girls who have hot pink phones that they check obsessively and the art-drenched old book-room seem completely unrelated, but they are both part of life here.  They are both the output of this country's culture. 

Tidbits.

Hello!
Sorry I haven't written in a while.  I haven't really felt like writing... sometimes keeping a blog makes it feel like a vacation, when it should just be life.  So when it just feels like life, I don't want to write.
Life has been good!  School is pretty boring, but I'm making friends, which is fun.  There are windows in my classroom!!!  Such a new idea, after dwelling in the caves of Conval for three years.  School is just starting at home and I am SO GLAD that I am no longer stuck there.  Yay.
It's starting to cool down slightly.  It's still really hot, but I could see all of the mountains for the first time yesterday!  I really am excited for autumn.
I went to my first Rotary orientation.  There are only 2 other exchange students in my district!  Only one was there though.  I'll meet the other next month.
Swimming class at school is so bad it's funny... They have all been taking swimming classes in school since the beginning of time, and I never learned how to do all the fancy strokes.  I don't even know the names.  It should have been embarrassing, but once again, my tendency to not be super emotional helped me out and I was fine.
I've been playing guitar.  Please don't tell my banjo... I feel guilty enough already.  I don't like it nearly as much as the banjo, but I like it more than not playing music, and I am making progress!  I have new calluses on the fingertips of my left hand.
I've gotten 3 letters so far!  They really brighten my day [hint hint...]  Getting an actual letter is completely different from getting an email or some internet type note.  It's so much more personal.  I feel like I am looking over the person's shoulder as they're writing it.
I feel like I should be writing about living in a temple.. there is so much to tell! But it is also hard to describe it well enough.  I don't know how to relay the experience fully.  I think I'll just have to do it a little at a time.  Often, at 6:30 pm, I'll go out with my mom to the bell nest to the temple.  There is a large stone base, with steep stairs leading up to a platform.  The platform has a large decorated roof, held up by pillars.  Hanging from this roof is the bell.  The bell is gigantic.  It is maybe a meter across, and its sides are maybe and inch and a half thick.  Hanging next to it is a heavy hexagonal log.  It always makes me a little worried... it is held up by a rusty old chain and some wire.  I feel like it's going to crash down at any moment.  There is a rope hanging from this log, and I pull it back and then let go to ring the bell.  The bell makes a wonderful noise.  It is deep, and it seems that the vibrations set other objects around it vibrating too.  After 11 strikes on the bell, the whole atmosphere is vibrating.  It's like swimming in sound.
Interesting food stories:  shrimp cookies, barbecued wild boar, green tea ice cream [in the box labeled "Classic."  The other flavors in this box were vanilla and rum raisin.] and eggplants... they show up often and are only 4 inches long.

Little random thoughts

I've had three days of school.  It is fine, the people are nice and all say "Kawaii!!!!" whenever I walk by.  I don't understand anything, so I just sit there and do nothing during class most of the time.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch on eventually.  I'm with first year high schoolers, so everything they're learning in math and history and classes other than Japanese and Japanese Classics I have learned before.  I kind of don't love the idea of being in high school, because I was trying to get out of that, but at this point it's more something to fill my time and a way to make friends than a stressful depressing routine, so it's okay.

Language:  I can't talk.  I kind of feel like I'm a cube of ice, and all of the words and things I learn in Japanese are heating me up, but I won't start to melt until I hit a certain temperature -- once I understand some magical amount of Japanese I'll suddenly be able to communicate a lot, but until then I am just soaking it in without really making a lot of visible progress.   A logistic curve.  This is my theory.

Kind of homesick today.  Played piano, and playing Imagine was sad.  Then I discovered that I left my most loved grey tattered sweater at home.  Really sad... that sweater makes me feel so cozy.  It's my equivalent of a baby blanket.

Went to my first Rotary meeting on Monday and made a speech.  I was really nervous about it, but everyone said that it was good Japanese, so I think it went well!  I'm going to an orientation thing on Saturday and meeting the other 2 exchange students in the prefecture.

Analyses

Got notebooks for school this morning.  Even something as simple as that can be quite confusing in another country...
The Problems:
1.  I don't know how many I need.
2.  Do I need one for every class?  [which presents sub-problems. listed below.]
3.  Will I be taking notes in class?  [underlying issue:  what is the purpose of the notebooks?]
4.  Will I be doing homework in these books?
5.  Will I be doing homework at all?
6.  I don't know what size is normal for school.
7.  I don't know what thickness to get.  [underlying issue:  i dont know how much work i'll be expected to do, and i don't know how much japanese students use notebooks.]
Anyway, I ended up getting 3 thin little notebooks.  My host-mom picked them out-- she said they were the same as what her kids used.

I went out to the country today!  It was beautiful.
My theory about beautiful surroundings in Japan:
The nature is beautiful...mountains, rice fields, flowers, valleys, etc.
The town is not... lots of fading signs, grey buildings without any decoration.
The houses are nice-looking...those roofs that look like/ are made of bamboo, etc.
Inside traditional houses is really beautiful...sliding paper doors with paintings on them, tatami floors, art, statues, etc.
My host-mom, host-grandma and I went to an old woman's house for lunch. [I think she was my grandma's sister...she had a little area set up in honor of my grandma's dead brother... or perhaps she is my grandma's sister-in-law?]  The house as way off in the country.  The roads were clearly not made with cars in mind.  Driveways are at very acute angles to the road, and the road is very narrow.  The house had flowers all around it and gardening equipment and out back there were potatoes and pumpkins in the shade under a piece of canvas.  [We had a pumpkin at dinner].  Inside, it was cluttered and smelled like cats but the windows were open and the curtains were fluttering and there were little fascinating things tucked everywhere.  And a HUGE cat.  There were also framed pictures of various cats. We had bitter tea and sushi [i cut raw squid with chopsticks] and little grapes [but the peels are not eaten here].

lunch

Later, I walked around by myself for the first time.  I went to the little park my host-mom showed me earlier and explored and read and walked barefoot for the first time in a long time.  It was very pretty and nice.  I've always wanted to be the kind of person that reads in parks alone.  There is also a playground there.  I very much want to use the swings...but I think I'll wait till there aren't lots of little Japanese toddlers and their parents around.

in the park

I kept track of how much tea I drank today.
Today I drank less tea than usual, because I was at the park during afternoon tea time, it was really hot, and I was not at home for lunch.  But, even so, I had 11 cups of tea.

Miso soup.  At the beginning, it was scary.  Drinking chunks of tofu and seaweed and little mushrooms intimidated me.  Now, it is comforting.

My house.