Flower Festival

My host-mom took us to a flower festival at a nearby park a couple of weekends ago. They had some really interesting plants on display as well as ikebana (flower arranging) and sado (tea ceremony) demonstrations.



Pretty interesting, huh? The tea was bitter, just like everybody says, but I thought it left a rather pleasant after-taste. Oh and the first picture is my host-mom's car.

Enchiladas

So, the other day one of my friends had a get together and he made enchiladas for us. They aren't really the kind that I'm used to, but they made me happy nonetheless. Here are some pictures from the get together with my friends. We all pitched in and helped make tortillas and dice veggies and stuff like that.



I think he'll be throwing another one soon.

Home

I think I have officially reached the stage of being homesick now. I've been here since September 11th of last year, with a little less than a month of a vacation back home in February. I think the main reason is that my schoolwork has reached an alltime high and I'm getting frantic. And I know for a fact that I'm not the only one.

So, one day in class when I found that I could not focus at all on what the teacher was saying, I decided to disctract myself with making a list of things that I've really come to miss since being here. And I thought I'd just share them with you.

Fruit (fruit is so expensive here)
People opening doors for each other (if you're walking behind somebody and they go through a door, they don't bother to care if anybody's walking behind them, and more often than not the door is allowed to shut in your face)
Steak (it's so thin and expensive here)
Baked potatoes with fixings
Sauteed mushrooms
Pie (oh my goodness, they have no pie here, and I'm going crazy. Of course, it doesn't help that people don't usually own ovens. Their cake is great, but it's so light that I can eat a whole cake by myself in one sitting)
Walking around campus (at first, funnily enough, I missed walking around UT than I did home)
Reading English (I really really really regret the fact that I did not have enough room to bring a couple of novels with me, because finding English books here is like trying to find a four-leaf clover)
Going shopping at the mall at home (I miss walking around window shopping for clothes that FIT me, what can I say?)
Going to the theater (I miss movies, and there are so many movies that I wanted to see, but couldn't because I was over here, and the theater is ridiculously expensive here)
Smoothies (strawberry smoothies...mmmmm...)
Freedom (Hah, unexpected, huh? I don't want a curfew anymore, I don't want to have to curb my social life because I have no real space of my own)
Internet (yeah...I'm only allowed one hour a day at my homestay, and the school kicks you off after 3 hours so I can't get any decent research done for my term paper at one time)
Breakfast tacos (the sausage just isn't the same here....)
Pancakes, IHOP (sob, pancakes!)
Waffles
Frasier (I love that show)
Meeting up with friends (and when I say friends, I mean REAL friends, the ones that talk to me and listen to all my complaining, sorry for that, by the way, guys)
Pizza ( a nice greasy, cheese and mushroom pizza with a deep pan crust...oh, yeah, none of this chicken teriyaki, mayonnaise, corn, and seaweed stuff)
Shopping for furniture (not necessarily to buy)
Butter pecan ice cream (ice cream over here is expensive like no other)
Pecan pie (need I say more?)
Wide open spaces (oh, how rare they are in Tokyo)
Singing while I drive (I can't sing to myself here, the walls are so thin everybody would hear)
Going to the office and visiting with everyone (I miss going to lunch with you guys! I'll have to drop in on you guys when I get back)
The farm (I really miss going down there with the family to visit...well, more family. To think all of my second cousins are probably all big now)

I'm sure there's more, but the bell rang, and I didn't have time to finish. And now I return to research on English language education in Japan.

Learning

So here are a couple of things that I've learned from my host-sisters.

In China, if you go to a restaurant it is considered rude to eat everything on the plate. I was very confused about this, but apparently what you don't eat, the people who work at the restaurant will eat once you've left. I found this out one night as we were eating dinner and watching a TV show about restaurants in China. My previous host-sister, Haru-chan, had held several jobs while living in Japan and apparently she had told my host-mom that she was so surprised when nobody left anything on the plates here.

And in Taiwan, women refrain from eating ice cream both the week before and the week of their menstrual cycle, because, apparently it prevents you from getting cramps. Maybe I should test out that theory...

Sorry about the wait. I've been super busy with school work and mid-terms are still going on for me.

But I gotta say that I cannot wait to get back to the states. The atmosphere has been a bit sour in my home stay for the past week or so, and I cannot figure out why. At this point I am very much looking forward to getting into my new apartment in August and not having to answer to anybody.

If anybody is looking to study abroad here, please be aware of a few things about host-families. While the home-stay is the cheapest and probably the most convenient option for the program I'm in, it does have its drawbacks. For instance, most of the people I've spoken to who stay with host families have a curfew. Mine happens to be 10:00 pm, which is fine during the week, but if you want to go out and hang out with friends on the weekends it gets really cumbersome. I can't tell you how many times I've had to turn down invitations to go out and do something because of my curfew. And it's not that I don't understand why the curfew exists, my host-dad has to leave for work really early in the morning and they can't have me coming home and making a ton of noise really late. But it gets very annoying. I've been able to sleep over at friends' apartments sometimes, but it's not always possible.

And the showers. You can't keep the water running the whole time you're in the shower. And the part that really gets me is that they don't want you to stay in the shower for more than 30 minutes. But if you're like me, you tend to like to wash your face and brush your teeth and stuff during shower-time. And since my hair is thicker than most peoples' rinsing out shampoo and conditioner takes a lot of time. However, I have to say that if I had lived in an apartment I probably would not have been as likely to try bathing after a shower, which is a really nice perk in a home stay.

A friend of mine said that a person she knew had tried a home stay. He got to the house fine and his new host-parents handed him a booklet of rules that he was supposed to follow. He took one look at the booklet and walked back out the door. And most of the rules she mentioned, I found, were exactly like the ones I'm expected to follow. Fortunately my host-parents had had a little more tact about it.

And I don't know about anybody else's host-parents, but mine tend to treat me like a child, but that could very well be my own fault.

However, living with a host-family can be very very rewarding. And I think that my host-family has been particularly generous. But, honestly, I am very much looking forward to not having to answer to anybody and living the way I want to.

I miss you, Texas!

Sorry!

Wow, I feel really bad about neglecting this site. Lately I've been ridiculously busy with school. However, I think I do have time for a good rant.

This past Monday I got a major culture shock. I had had to skip kendo practice that last half of the week before because of homework, so I had been really looking forward to going that Monday. Well, I went and at the beginning of practice, I was just about to do an exercise and I caught my toe on my hakama while I was moving forward....again.

But this time was much much worse. I couldn't even finish the exercise. It was so embarrassing. I hobbled off to the side and sat down, removed my armor and tried to swallow the tears that were coming. Of course the girls were pretty concerned and they brought me some ice. I had to sit out the whole practice, icing my toe, which very rapidly got swollen. There was a teacher there, as well. He's pretty young, though. From what I understand, he graduated from the school I go to a couple of years ago. He was kind enough to ask me how I was when he saw me sitting near the windows. When I lifted the ice to show him my toe (which was red because of the ice) he rummaged through his bag and gave me a couple of strips of this felt stuff with blue jelly on the underside to put between the ice and my foot. He even put them on for me, when he saw I blankly I was staring at them.

At any rate, practice went on as usual, but towards the end I had to think about how I was going to get down 2 flights of stairs, walk over to the next building and get up to the third floor where the locker room was. Because I was in some serious pain. I was sitting with my back to the windows, which were open because it gets hot when you're moving around a lot in all that armor. But even the wind coming from the open windows was making my leg spasm with the pain. And, of course, it didn't help that everybody was stomping, and with every shake, the pain flared up. The teacher asked me how I was going to get home, and offered me a ride as far as the nearest station. But, unfortunately, I had ridden my bike to school that day, and I was a bit reluctant to impose on him. At any rate, that meant I would have to cross the station, get on the bus, and then walk all the way to the house from the bus stop. It never seemed so far before, but I didn't think I'd be able to make it with that toe.

So when practice ended I sort of sat there, wondering what to do. Then my guy friend, Daisuke, came up to me and offered to help me up to the locker room. So he helped me up and helped me hobble to the dojo entrance. But as we were walking one of the guys yelled out "don't touch me!" in English. I know for a fact it wasn't a first-year because Daisuke is a second-year and therefore their superior, and I knew the second-years wouldn't do that to him. So, it was either a third- or fourth-year. And it made me inordinately angry. Daisuke was the only one who offered to help me and they were making fun of him for it. Sometimes I wonder how it is that they still have the mentality of a middle school student (no offense to middle school students).

Once we gain the entrance the second-year girls tell Daisuke that they'll help me from there. So Daisuke waited with me until the girls got ready to go and then I had to get up and put my flip-flops on. Unfortunately, I was only able to put one on. Then two girls got on either side of me and helped me hobble through to the stair landing just outside the dojo. There were a few of us, since they were obliged to carry my armor, so we were blocking the stairs for the most part. But the three of us had moved very awkwardly, and they were discussing how to get me down the stairs since the three of us couldn't get down there together. So one of the girls said something along the lines of "maybe somebody should carry her, maybe a guy..."

And that's when one of the fourth-year guys came up behind us, on his way back to the boys' locker room. He asked what was wrong. "What? She hurt her foot?" And then he brushed past one of the girls that was helping me and went right on down the stairs, not even bothering to apologize to the girl he had brushed aside.

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped.

I don't think I have ever been so shabbily treated by a man...except that time that my ex yelled at me. And I had never had such an urge to spit on anybody as I did that night.

In the end the girls put me on the back of the thinnest girl in the club (which is saying something because this is Japan) and she ran with me down the stairs, over to the next building, into the elevator, and into the locker room. And I know for a fact that I weigh more then she does. Once I got changed (that was interesting) and back downstairs, one of the third-year girls brought me my bike. Thankfully once I got on my bike I was fine, since I don't really put pressure on my toe while I'm pedaling. But, unfortunately, that day I had chosen to wear a white skirt...and it started to rain while I was a quarter of the way home.

But apparently most Japanese guys are not very gentlemanly at all. They don't hold doors open for women here, or even, it seems, offer to assist someone who obviously cannot walk down stairs by themselves. And it's at times like those when I really just want to go home.

More Money

So for my birthday I invited a few people to go eat sushi for lunch with me. After kendo practice we met up at a famous sushi chain restuarant (Kappa Sushi) and squeezed into a booth.



After we had finished eating we started talking about driver's licenses and such. (In Japan it costs about 3,000 US dollars to obtain a driver's license.) And then my Japanese friends asked to see the American money I had in my wallet. After I showed them one of my friends pulled out this REALLY REALLY old Japanese currency.



Awesome, huh?

Of course, when I went home later we went over to my host-aunt's house (okaasan was still in the hospital) and we had...guess...SUSHI and cake. But it was nice.