Family #3

I'm switching families again tomorrow.

This is my new address:

6-58 Akazuhigashi

Komagane, Nagano

399-4105 Japan

With my new family I'll have a little sister!!

Gotta go finish packing.

Write me letters! :P

Cultural Blabbering.

I realized I almost never tell y'all about Japanese culture.
I guess there is just so much of it that I don't know how to even begin to explain, so I just avoid the whole thing.
But it would be terrible to go this whole year without writing about the culture.
So I'll do it little by little.

At the end of every mandolin/guitar club practice, we all stand up and say "おつかれさまでした。”
This means "It was honorable tiredness."

We also stand up and bow at the beginning and end of each lesson.

I had a strange moment the other day during a lesson.  The teacher was talking and writing on the blackboard, so I was looking at him and the board.  Which I assumed was normal.  When a person talks, you look at him or her, right?  Apparently not.  He noticed and made a silly face at me and said I was strange.  I looked around and noticed everyone was staring off in a random direction, not at the board or the teacher.  Oops.

See why I feel overwhelmed when I think about explaining Japanese culture?  It is so different that I can't even configure my eyeballs correctly during a lesson.

That makes me sound so dysfunctional.  I promise I'm am actually a capable person and I've gotten quite used to Japanese culture.

Which is another reason I find it scary to explain it.

Little by little.  Sukoshi zutsu.


Random Note:
I really wish I could understand school.  My brain is starving.  I've started writing sonnets during chemistry and thinking up haikus [in Japanese] during math.  I also tried to make up my own related rates problem to solve, but that didn't go so well since I haven't taken calculus in 2 years, and I'm forgetting it really badly.
Dad, if you're reading this, you should take note and send me a math book.
Future exchangers: You may think your brain will be happy and fulfilled because it is taking in all this awesome language knowledge and culture knowledge, but I have found that there is still something missing.  The interacting type of knowledge.  There is plenty of the soaking-in type knowledge, but I suggest you bring books or some sort of thing to help you satiate the other type of knowledge.

Once again, I am realizing I should probably not write blog posts when I'm exhausted.  Sorry.  Again.

PS:  Also, I'm sorry to anyone who reads the Current that I've been neglecting you.

Normal? Also, kanji battles.

Sometimes I can't tell if people in a photographs are Asian or not.  They just look "normal" and my brain can't get beyond that.  Since I have two definitions of normal now, I end up not being able to tell.  Strange.

Studying Kanji.  I have 17 pages in my notebook like this.  I WILL BE FLUENT!! 

I won't be writing in my blog for the next few days because my dad and sister are visiting and I'll be in Tokyo!  After that, I think I'll attempt to write every day again.

More rambling about stoves. I don't really know why I write about them so much...

You know how I was worried about mixing high school students and super hot stoves?  I was somewhat justified, but not entirely.  No one has been severely wounded yet.  BUT at least 2 of my friends have gotten little burns on their fingers. This probably has a lot to do with the discovery that they can melt their fingernails on the metal chimney pipe.  Also, a few days ago my friend's hair was smoking because she was leaning down next to the stove.  I, too am guilty, of nearly setting myself on fire.  My socks started to smoke when I was trying to warm my feet.  These things are seriously hot.

Yet for some reason, all points in the classroom more than 2 feet away are still freezing.   I can see my breath.  I've taken to wearing at least 3 shirts and a sweater and wool socks or 2 pairs of socks.

The ridiculous thing is that it isn't even cold here.  It's about 30 F degrees everyday.

But sitting still all day in school is still cold.

♪ ♫

Today was just a normal day, so here is a video.

This is one of the songs my mandolin group plays.

Since I am 2nd mandolin, my part is more similar to this video's guitar part, but with some of the mandolin part mixed in.  I'm so impressed by my friend [Nanako, I've written about her before] who plays 1st mandolin.  [Unless you listen till about 2 minutes in you won't see the impressive part.]  We play it even a little faster than this video, and she never ever makes mistakes.

If I ever have a video of my group playing, I'll share it, but for now all I can offer is what I found on youtube.

Anrakuji is a magical place.

Today was really nice.  I spent the whole afternoon and evening at Anrakuji with my old host family and Annika!  I truly love spending time with my old host family.  They feel like my real family, and are so wonderful to be around.  I think it is because they are all genuinely happy people, and that happiness spreads to the people around them and creates an atmosphere of comfort and acceptance and love.
And it is nice to spend time with Annika, because no one can really understand the life of an exchange student except another exchange student, especially one in the same country.  She is also just fun to be around :]
It was the first time Annika had been to Anrakuji, so I got to show her around and explain all the murals and customs.  We played New Year's games [one where you flick little round chips across a horizontal dart board, trying to knock off the other person's pieces and get your own into the high scoring areas, and a card game] and ate yummy food [I forget the name, but it is a big pancake made of cabbage and lots of other things with Japanese sauce and mayonnaise.]

Today was simple and happy.

I love the kotatsu!

Annika in the grocery store

Things that have been happening recently:

•  Skiing! Downhill.  I hadn't gone downhill skiing since I started Nordic.  It was nice to discover I can still do it, and I can also skate ski on downhill skis.  Skiing is one of the few things in Japan that is pretty much the same as in the US.  Except it's a lot less expensive, and lifts don't have the safety bar things, and no one wears a helmet.
• Bowling.  It was the non-East coast kind.  I lost.  Still fun though!
• Table tennis has begun in PE.  So far I'm keeping up my reputation in that class.
• Winter break ended, which I'm strangely happy about.  I didn't know what to do with all of my free time.  It was nice, but I think I was starting to go insane.  
• I'm still ridiculously happy about Brown.

I was looking through my journal, and I found something I wrote from a while ago saying something along the lines of "I think I'm at the point where I think I can speak well but no one actually knows what I'm saying..."

I now think I'm at the point where people know what I'm saying, but I often don't say it exactly right.  If someone said to you "Wait a little, sweater is second floor!" you would get it, even though it isn't perfect.  Although, after trying to think of an example and not having one come to mind easily, I think I am better than I thought when I started this paragraph.  I think most of the time I speak correctly, but often I get little things wrong.  I don't know.  It's hard to judge my own progress.

I never know what to write any more! Life is just normal!  But I will continue to do my best to seek out the little things that make life interesting and Japanese.  

I was considering attempting to write here every day, but I don't know if that would be a good idea.  Quality v. Quantity?  Any input from my readers?   Maybe I'll try it for a week or so and see how it goes...

Brain, where did you hide my English?

My friends and I were talking, and they were all saying this word I had never heard before, and I really couldn't understand the conversation without knowing the meaning of the word.  The word "shaiboi" just kept coming up!  So I asked "Shaiboi no imi wa nan desu ka?" [what is the meaning of "shaiboi"?] and as I said it out loud, I realized what I was saying.  Yuuka and I had a little movie-moment where we both kind of froze in the mutual confusion, and then burst out laughing.  "Ohhhhhhh eigo desu!!!"  It's English!  "Shy boy."  Silly me.  My brain assumed it was Japanese; it didn't even occur to me that it was English.

New Year's

Sending cards.  Gathering up last year's straw ropes and paper streamers and charms from the temples and shrines. Bringing those things to the temple on new year's day [I think they are burned].  The temple is crowded with families.  The people slowly progress up the path to throw a coin in the bin and ring the temple's bell.  New charms are bought.  Mochi [chewy white stuff made from rice] is eaten in abundance.  Traditional card game.  [Japanese cards, not the ace 2 3 4 kind.]  My family watches the yearly music show on New Year's Eve.  [I'm a little disappointed I missed the more traditional cultural new year's eve event: the temple community taking turns ringing the bell 108 times over the course of 3 hours.]  Special holiday food for breakfast [even Japanese people admit that even though it is pretty, it doesn't taste good.]  Cleaning Grandpa's gravestone and bringing new flowers and incense.  Dinner with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmas.

Kozenji.
[I actually found this picture on the internet because I forgot my camera!  
This whole area was filled with people.]