June 14^th-New Things and What’s to Come

 

            So I guess I should just start talking about the thing that is foremost on my mind.  Today was my first day with my new host family.  I got to get up at 10:30 this morning instead of going to practice because I was moving to the new house.  I finished packing up my things and we ordered Pizza Hut pizza.  Of course it was weird, but it was edible and I was hungry.  One of the two pizzas was relatively normal (mushrooms and bacon) but the other one had tuna on it (with mayonnaise).  I tried both and they both tasted about the same, so it was all right.  One other good thing was that I thought I would have to ride my bike to the new house (about a 50 minute trip if I DIDN’T get lost).  But instead of me making the ride in the rain, we were able to put the bike in the back of the car with the rest of my junk.  Speaking of my junk…I’m pretty sure it’s been breeding in my drawers and closets since I put it there because I have about twice as much junk as I had when I came here.  Maybe I just did a lousy job of packing, but still, I know there’s a lot more junk.  I might even have to mail some junk home before I get on the plane because I don’t think they’ll let me bring that big bag on the plane.  Perhaps they’re right though; if I get on the plane, it will go down.  When I got here my host father (first one) stayed for a little while and just talked about some things with my new host parents.  This must be some sort of Japanese thing that has to do with being polite (like everything in this country does), but my host parents and previous host father talked about the same things over and over again.  When they discussed something and settled it, they would discuss it in a new way and make the exact same conclusion.  Then they’d discuss something else a few times in a few different ways, and then go back to the previous topic and discuss it again.  The only reason I can think of for this is perhaps…by changing the topic or introducing a new topic you make your own wishes to discuss something known.  So, what you do instead is just wait for the other person to change the topic or start talking about something that THEY want to talk about.  The reason this is a problem is because bother parties are doing that exact same thing for each other.  Another situation where this comes into play?  The act of sitting down!  Yes, waiting for the other person to sit down.  No one sits down because they are waiting for someone else to sit down who’s waiting for the first person to sit down.  Well anyway, he finally left and I was left with the new family.  My new host father went back to work a little while later and I played soccer in the hallway with my new host brother (4 years old) for a little while.  Then I broke out the NWSW rules and talked about them with my host mother.  Everything was pretty much the same.  I think all my host family really cares about is that I hang out with them on Saturdays after boat club is over.  They might plan some trip or some activity or I’m just supposed to play with the kid or help the mom go shopping or something like that.  Then on Sunday I’m allowed to do whatever I want pretty much.  I still have boat practice though.  It’s times like this when I wish we didn’t have practice so often, or when I wish that I didn’t have to go.  Like, it’s not like I have to go, but since I joined the club, it seems like going is the right thing to do.  I just want to sleep tomorrow and then I want to go hang out with Chie.  And when I hang out with Chie, I don’t want to already have been up since 7am and I don’t want to be sweaty or smell like seawater or be carrying around some bag that is full of dirty clothes. 

            Well, it’s the 16^th now.  I ended up not going to practice because, well, I just didn’t want to and I knew it would be almost entirely pointless.  I also have a good feeling that the only people who actually practiced were people that are going to compete in the Kyushu Conference (held in Nagasaki this coming weekend).  It was also raining, naturally, so it was also that I didn’t go.  Instead, I stayed in bed until 10:30 and tried to get some sleep.  At around 4am the roosters (yes, there are quite a few in houses adjacent to my new house) started screeching.  In my dream I vaguely remember there being some old women or something retching about something, and then I woke up in the middle of the night and the same screeching sound was the roosters.  I woke up this morning too at 4:37am because of that.  They make noise for about 10 or 15 minutes and then they shut up.  My host mother says that she doesn’t wake up because of it anymore because she’s used to it.  Well, I got completely used to the trains running by 52 Whitney Rd. at almost all hours so I imagine I can get used to this too.  It will probably take longer to get used to this because they aren’t screeching all the time like the trains went by all the time.  Well, if the roosters were screeching all the time…ooooooh lordy…they would definitely be murdered.  My host mother and I even talked about that this morning.  She said that sometimes she thinks that she wants to go over there in the middle of the night when they start making noise and strangle them.  I wholeheartedly agreed and pointed out that when they start making noise no one is around so it would be an easy crime.  I think everyone in the neighborhood would be a suspect.  My host mother also said that her husband doesn’t like to eat chicken and she thinks it’s because he’s sick of the roosters living next door.  Well, let me go back to a couple of days ago.  So after my host mother and I talked about the rules for a while I went to unpack my stuff.  It was a bigger job than I thought it would be.  In fact, taking the stuff out was a bigger job than putting it in.  Packing the things in was just a matter of stuffing stuff into bags and boxes.  I wasn’t even really paying attention to where I put things because I was planning on taking them all out anyway in the new house.  Buuuut…when I unpacked I had to find a good place for everything.  There’s no chest of drawers in my new room (just a plastic container on wheels in the closet with 3 drawers).  Also, on my desk in the last room there was a space on top intended for books.  That was very handy because I could just grab any book I wanted while I was sitting at my desk.  Sometimes I would have as many as three books open at the same time investigating some mysterious thing I’d received in e-mail.  Well, I found a place to put the books on a little night-table type apparatus that’s next to my new desk.  The new desk is smaller and the chair is pretty uncomfortable.  It’s not like it’s old or junky or anything like that, it’s actually too new and modern looking.  It’s also very Spartan…yeah, that’s the word.  The chair has no back except for a little metal bar and the only cushion is thin and appears to be tied on as an afterthought.  Yeah, now that I think of it…the furnishings do leave something to be desired.  My bed is pretty hard…and…my pillow is a traditional Japanese style pillow that appears to be filled beans…so…it’s actually more comfortable to sleep without it.  I guess I’ll get used to it, or I’ll break my neck in the process.  At least the pillow makes a good platform for the laptop when I sit on my bed (more comfortable than sitting at the desk) as I’m doing now.  Well, all this stuff so far is pretty superficial so let’s get to some more meaningful things that have to do with my new host family.  For the purposes of organization I’ll talk about the family using bullets!

 

Those With Whom I Live

• Mom-She’s in her mid-30s and is a housewife.  Aside from the labors of the domestic front she is unemployed.  She and her husband have hosted a number of exchange students, high school and college, before me.  Many of them were just for a short time, but there were some extended stay students too.  She speaks English relatively well.  I think it’s a hobby of hers because when she hosts students, I think she wants to speak English to them.  She is very nice and tries to be generous.  Thus far I have been communicating with her a lot compared to my previous host mother.  This morning when I had breakfast that she made there was no TV on, Dad and my little host brother were still asleep, and it was just the two of us sitting at the table.  It was a little weird and a bit uncomfortable for me at first.  At the last house everyone was running around to get ready and going crazy every morning.  In the last house the TV never went off and everyone but me was just talking to each other.  So, it was really easy for me to be quiet and not feel like I really needed to say anything.  I think it will be good here though because I will do a lot more communicating with my family.  With my last family I didn’t even know what to say to them!  I’ve also discovered in the past couple of days that my new host mother REALLY likes to talk.  Most of the time it starts with something important or something that we should be communicating about.  But, then the conversation goes to completely different topics that have nothing to do with anything.  She just likes to talk.  I guess it’s understandable though.  Her husband is at work every day.  He leaves early in the morning and when he gets home he has dinner and then he wants to go to sleep (around 8:30pm).  Kouki (4 year old son) is not exactly someone that an adult can hold a conversation with.  Last night she told me all about…errr…what was it…yeah, I think we started by talking about communication in general and what not and then she started talking about all the students she had hosted over the years.  I don’t even remember.  And tonight during and after dinner she was talking all about a trip she took to Australia about 10 years ago and how she had so many problems with the taxi and the plane reservation and the airport staff.  She conversation is almost entirely 1-sided.  It’s all right though because if I actually listen to her, I understand what she’s saying.  I’ve discovered more clearly, through listening to her go on and on and on, that I can understand Japanese pretty well.  Obviously if she were talking about politics or medieval Japanese history, it would be harder for me to follow.  But I’m certainly not complaining about the progress I’ve made.  If I listen to her and not just nod my head and smile, then I actually know what she’s saying.  The best part of it though is that I don’t have to think about what she’s saying to understand it.  When I was taking Spanish and got to the upper levels in high school (like Spanish 4 or 5), when I was listening to the teacher speak and I was understanding pretty much everything, except I could always here this little voice inside my head speaking English.  It was translating the Spanish for me so I could understand it.  It was almost impossible to turn off that little voice, and if I did, I would miss a lot of things.  For Japanese now, there is no little voice and I can understand perfectly well (if it’s something that would be understandable to me) without translating it into English first.  This makes comprehension much easier and much more like real comprehension because if you have to translate what you’re hearing into English before it makes real sense, then you’re GOING to miss things that are being said.  Also, when you’re just listening to what’s being said and not translating at the same time, you can focus more on the entire meaning of the sentence or thought without OVERLY concerning yourself with individual words.  In other words, when you’re just listening and absorbing the meaning of what’s being said, when you don’t understand a word or two, you can forget about them, keep listening, and then it will probably all make sense and come together when the thought is completed.  You can often tell though if I word is crucial or not and if it is, and you don’t get it, you can always stop the person and grab a dictionary.  Another ability that I’ve been able to develop from listening to people speak Japanese all day is the ability to separate words.  When you first hear a language you’re unfamiliar with or when you first start learning, it just sounds like noise or like one LONG word.  Where I am now is that even if I don’t understand most of the words that are said, I can pick out and separate the sounds and form words with them.  Then, I can look them up in a dictionary if I want.  So, it doesn’t just sound like noise anymore even when I don’t understand the meaning at all, I still hear most of the words individually.  That’s a big step in my opinion and anyone else who’s learned a language or been exposed to a language being spoken by native speakers will appreciate what I’m talking about.   

 

• Dad-He’s also in his mid-30s and is a farmer.  He owns the farm and works it with his parents I believe.  He works every day of the week and comes home for lunch and takes a nap for an hour after he eats.  He gets up very early most days and drives his truck to somewhere in the area.  I’m not sure what he grows but I think he grows a number of different things depending on the season.  When he gets home he is very tired.  He showers and puts on a t-shirt and sweatpants and just relaxes either having dinner, playing with the kid, or talking to Mom.  He and my mother go to sleep early around 9 or 10.  Today and yesterday my Mom was kept up later though because my little host brother had too much energy and he didn’t want to go to sleep.  My host father, for all intents and purposes, speaks no English.  I haven’t talked to him that much.  We just talked my first night when we had dinner and tonight when we had dinner too.  I would want to hang out with him some time cuz I think he’d get a kick out of that but I don’t think he really has any time.  I feel more inclined to spend time with my current host father than my last host father because my current host father doesn’t really have time to see me at all, so if he did have time I’d want to do something with him.  Also, my current host father is less scary and intimidating and judgmental than my last host father.  My last host father was always second guessing me and asking me the same question twice and speaking to me in English when he didn’t think I understood his Japanese when I understood it just fine.  Well, it doesn’t matter because I’m in a new house now.

 

• Kouki-He is my little host brother.  He’s 4 years old and said he’s going to be 5 soon.  Kouki is a cute kid and has tons of energy.  He is very into TV programs that are like the Power Rangers or other costumed fighters from outer space that pilot giant robots that resemble dinosaurs in order to defeat interstellar demons.  He has too many toys and many of them make a lot of noise when you push the buttons or manipulate the parts.  I think he would most benefit from a sibling with whom he could play with.  Mom and Dad really don’t have time to entertain him as much as he would like to be.  Dad is at work most of the day and Mom has to take care of the cleaning and cooking and washing etc.  So, he always wants me to play with him.  I don’t mind playing with him a little while but the problem with playing with little kids is that he don’t pick up on when you have lost interest in the game.  They also don’t take a rest from playing once they get you started.  Kouki is also very talkative.  He starts talking to me and--He.  Just.  Does.  Not.  Stop.  It’s also baby talk so it’s really not so easy to understand.  Most of the time I just smile at him encouraging and give him responses like, “Oh really!”  “Is that so?!”  “Very nice isn’t it.”  And that seems to satisfy him most of the time.  So, I like the little punk but he can be annoying sometimes when I just want to be left alone to do my own thing (like right now) and he wants to play.  He’s actually not here now because he got hungry again about 10pm and he and Mom went to go get him something to eat. 

 

Ok, let’s go back to last week for a bit before I really didn’t do anything with journal entries then.  My last week at home went by without even for the most part.  One nice thing happened…maybe…on the Thursday before I left.  It was another rainy day.  In fact, it had started raining hard (it had just been misting before) a few minutes before I decided to leave archery practice.  I left archery practice about an hour or so early because:  I needed to go home to pack my stuff, I wasn’t doing anything but watching other people shoot off arrows down the range (I still haven’t even held the bow), and I was just sitting there getting bitten by mosquitoes, and the only practice I got was with that little fake practice bow with the rubber band (called a “gomu-kyumi”)  I decided not to change back into my school uniform…because…what for?  I’m going home anyway and it would just get soaked!  So I stayed in my shorts and t-shirt and just rode home like that.  When I got about half way up the hill I came up behind two high school girls walking up the hill sharing an umbrella.  Both of them were pretty thoroughly drenched.  I rang my little bell (that only occasionally works when it’s in a good mood) so they would let me by and as I went by one of them said, “Oh!  Maikeru!  Konnichiwa!”  I couldn’t recognize who it was at first because she looked like a drowned rat, but then I recognized her as one of the girls (Haruka) I’d met at the family friend BBQ parties.  She’s really nice and I exchanged a bunch of e-mails with her.  So, I got off my bike and just walked it while talking to her and her friend as we walked up the hill.  Apparently someone had taken Haruka’s umbrella so they were sharing it.  When we were almost at the top of the hill her friend had to go another way so she was left with no umbrella and of course I didn’t have one so we just walked and talked in the pouring rain.  There was no a single square cm of our clothes or skin that was not completely drenched.  Once we were totally wet though it didn’t matter anymore so we just ignored the rain almost entirely and just talked about all kinds of things until we got to my house and we said goodbye.  It was really nice to just not care about anything and just talk to my friend about anything and everything. 

            All right, I think there were more things but I should probably get to the more recent past so I can make some progress.  I can’t write for too much longer though because tomorrow’s practice is supposed to be a tough one and it’s already 11pm.  I was originally supposed to go to archery tomorrow, but I don’t want to miss the tough practice so I’m going to boat club anyway!  Hhhahahha.  So this morning I left the house at 7:30.  I got a little bit lost on the way to school but it was nothing tragic and I got on the right track soon enough.  It took just over 30 minutes to get to school.  Of course it was raining (why would it be doing anything else?!?!?  I don’t know!).  Before long I got very disgusting inside my rain suit and felt very nasty.  I was also in a bad mood this morning because of something that I’m not going to write here (I’ll put it in my private journal section with all the other top secret stuff).  HAHAHHAHAHAHHA…that reminds me…for some reason, most Japanese people know the phrase “Top Secret.”  AHHH…it just cracks me up when I think of the situations when Hiromi (Osaka friend) or Kozue (Tokyo friend) or Ippei (boat friend) used it.  AHHHHHAHHAHAHAH….OMOSHIROI!!! (面白い！！！) (Really funny!)  For some reason when I finally got to school I felt like I hadn’t been there for a really really long time and it felt like I was coming to something different.  Of course everything was exactly the same, but I still had the feeling.  I was smart when I left the house and I took my socks off before I put my shoes on.  Soooo….when I got to school I dried off my feet, put my socks on, and then put my school slippers on so I wouldn’t have to walk around with wet feet all day.  Wet cold feet feel so yucky!  Today was a pretty standard day.  I didn’t have lunch today because my new host mother only makes me lunch 2 days a week.  Well, that’s not true—I DID have lunch.  I meant that it hadn’t been made for me.  What did I eat?  I had…a couple cold hotdogs (mom made that for me), and then I bought a can cold coffee (because I wanted it to wake me up) and I got a Danish roll and….is that it?  Well, I wasn’t hungry.  At practice today we went to the weight room (more like the weight area) for about an hour.  I was tired today so I couldn’t do much damage (I had intended to totally destroy myself) but it didn’t quite work out that way because I was already partially destroyed before I even got in there.  I still got in some good sets of things.  I did really well at one workout last week.  I even did a small set of dumb-bell bench presses using about 31kg (a little less than 70 lbs) in each hand.  I didn’t do that many, but it was still good.  Today, I did like 7 reps of a little less 60 lbs.  I didn’t have anyone spotting me today though so I couldn’t do as much.   I did the rowing machine for 20 minutes and…errr…did some sit-ups…and…200 tobashi.  What are tobashi you ask?  It’s that thing where you strap your feet into the rowing machine, sit on the seat, keep your legs straight, lean forward about 45 degrees and then throw your torso back until your back is at a 45 degree angle to the ground (about 90 degrees of movement).  You stop your torso as abruptly as you can and throw yourself back the other way.  It gets pretty hard after about 150 of them now.  At my first practice I could barely do 50.  Then next day I couldn’t hardly sit down or stand up because my stomach muscle hurt so much.  Well, I want to go running soon again so I can start working on stripping away some of this unnecessary fat that is weighing me down (and has been for about…err….roughly 12 years).  My new rule is something like: I have no time for fat, lack of energy, or slowness.  The only thing that I will accept now is muscle, power, and speed.  Well, we’ll see how far I really take this.  Talk tends to be much bigger than reality.  Every scale here gives me roughly a different answer, but I think I’ve lost about 10 or more pounds since I came to Japan.  If I could take off another 10 or 15 maybe I’d really be in the money.  We’ll see.  I’ve got another 6 weeks or so before I go back to the land of the 3 L’s:  Lard, Lethargy, and Liposuction.  What would be really hot is if I could actually continue the good habits that I’ve been developing here.  On my way home from school today I had time so I stopped at a convenient store and bought a little box of cookies, some fruit juice, and an onigiri (triangular rice ball).  I can get away with eating this stuff now because I actually get exercise.  That’s the nice thing about actually getting exercise—your body actually uses the energy you put in it!  In America, if I ate a cookie, my body wouldn’t even digest it, it would just be deposited directly into the spare tire around my mid-section.  Speaking of my mid-section, it’s certainly improved since I got here.  You know my “nikapoka” pants?  Yeah, the giant white pants that flare drastically at the bottom and look really cool?  Well I tried those in America when I was packing and I definitely wasn’t able to fasten them.  The other night when I was packing them I tried them on for the first time since the time when I left American and I had absolutely not trouble getting them on.  Yay!  I also bought a t-shirt here about a month ago.  For some reason I find it HYSTERICAL!  It’s a little orange t-shirt and on the front in big letters it says “Let an X-Ray Technician Expose You.”  The only problem is that it’s just a little big snug and when I put it on it looks rather funny.  So, I decided that that’s another great reason to get in shape—so I can wear that shirt.  If I were actually in good shape, I could put the shirt on, and it would still be snug, but it would look good at least and not awkward.  Know what I mean?  Ok, I’m blabbering now.  I should go to sleep since it’s already 11:30.  I have a bunch of other things to talk about but I’ll have to save them for another time.  I can’t post this journal entry tonight anyway so it doesn’t make much of a difference one way or the other.  Ok, I’m going to stop typing right……now!

            Ok, what else do I want to talk about before I post this journal entry (which I intend on doing tonight).  Oh, let’s talk about the rain and how it’s truly making me insane.  I might burst into tears or have a fit of some kind why I type about this though.  Maybe it would be better if I didn’t delve into such a painful topic.  Well, I think I owe it to my loyal readers and to myself (in the future) to talk about these things that play such a big part in my life here.  So essentially I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun.  I have honestly never seen so much rain or so much water in my entire life.  This is no exaggeration.  It simply does not stop raining.  Actually, that’s a lie.  It rained non-stop for about 5 days or so (as far back as I can remember) and today when I was coming home from school it actually stopped for about 30 minutes or so.  Even though it was still very overcast, it felt almost strange to be able to ride my bike and not be pelted with water.  It felt like something was really missing.  Not that I minded it though!  The rain is definitely the most annoying when I am on my way to school.  I have tried a couple of different strategies for keeping relatively dry and they seem to be deteriorating in effectiveness.  Today I gave up on the top part of my rain suit and traded it for my windbreaker that I brought to Japan.  I thought it was at least water resistant, but after about 3 minutes, my arms were totally soaked.  My torso remained relatively dry though.  Yeah, this morning I was in probably one of my worst moods ever since I got here.  Yay!  I was soaked, tired, had no food to eat for lunch and ahhhh…the list goes on and on.  Actually, I wrote a list of all the things that I was fed up with, but I will spare you all from that.  I really think the rain is getting to my head.  Yesterday when it was raining on my way home I started grumbling, ranting, and raving to myself…in Japanese.  No one else was around and I was babbling like an idiot in Japanese.  Yeah, the situation was pretty bad.  And today when I was coming home it actually wasn’t raining, for once, so I was in a better mood, but I was still babbling.  Today when I was coming home I was speaking English to myself, but with the accent of a Scottish pirate from Italy.  Try to figure out how that would sound.  Think….Scottish accent, but role your r’s with gross exaggeration and say things like, “Arrrr…matey…man the gangplank we’re throwing the louse over the side to the fisheeees!”  And to make things even better, a grade 6 typhoon is coming tomorrow!  That should be a real joy to ride my bike in for half an hour tomorrow morning and afternoon.  It’s supposed to go west and hit more of Fukuoka than Miyazaki, so I guess it could be worse.  They were talking about canceling school tomorrow if the storm is too strong.  So many kids ride their bikes to school and many kids also take the train (that could be delayed) so it could be dangerous.  I don’t think school will be canceled tomorrow and it will just rain like hell (does it rain in hell?) and I will get drenched again.  I still have to try the umbrella strategy.  Hold the umbrella with 1 hand and ride with the other hand.  It sounds kind of dangerous and I wouldn’t be able to ride as fast, but many people do it.  I guess the idea there is to prevent the water from hitting you instead of it hitting you and being repelled by something like a raincoat.  I don’t have an umbrella though, so I dono.  I think I need to buy one.  Ok, there are more things I really should write about, but it’s getting late and I can always put them in another journal entry so this will have to satisfy you for the time being.  Good night. 

 

-Maikeru