March 29-Second Home, Again

           

            Today was my first full day back in Nanao.  Like I said in the previous entry, it’s nice to be back here.  It feels familiar because, well, it is.  This is the third time I’ve been here.  And even though I’m only spending a couple of days here, I think it’s nice.  Wow…I’m being so descriptive here.  Ok, maybe next time I shouldn’t wait until 10:30pm to write these entries.  It’s ok for today since not too much happened.  I’m not really sure what I expected to get out of coming here. Well, that didn’t sound right.  That sounded like it’s the Mitsuhara family that owes me something, while in reality, it’s me that owes them.  This being the third time in a two year span that they’ve been my hosts, I think I should be the one trying to give, if there’s any giving to be done.  I don’t want to feel like I need to give and I don’t want them to feel like they need to give either.  I just want us both (me, and their family) to both feel like we’re getting something out of our time together, and I think we are. 

            Today started at about 9am when I woke up.  I still felt tired, but I wanted to get up before Saki, Yuki, and Hiroki came bouncing in squeaking, “Maikeru!  Okite!” (Get up, Michael!).  This being Saturday, there really is no reason for anyone to get up…they don’t even have a dog that needs to be taken out, but I guess in Japan it’s just not right to really sleep in.  So I got up, got dressed (in a sweater since it’s still winter in Ishikawa prefecture), and I went downstairs.  Of course, breakfast was predictable: ham, some salad with mayonnaise, scrambled eggs with butter, milk, and some pieces of toasted bread.  After breakfast, things really slowed down.  Like…really slowed down.  We were just watching cartoons for a while and then Yuki and Hiroki were playing video games for a couple of hours.  I had just been sitting there on the couch since nothing was going on, but then I decided that I needed to do something.  I didn’t decide to do something because I really felt so horribly bored; it was because I felt bad about what I was doing to Mr. and Mrs. Mitsuhara.  Every few minutes they would say to each other, “Nani suru?  Dou shiyou ka na~” or something like that, and occasionally ask me, “Shitai koto aru?”…all of this trying to see if there was anything we could do or if there was anything that I wanted to do.  I couldn’t think of anything though, and even when I DID think of something we could do, I was afraid to say anything for fear that they would take it as anything more than an idle suggestion.  See…let me explain something to you…in Japan, if you’re someone’s guest, and they ask you what your preference is or what you’d like to do, you have to be really careful about what you say because chances are, no matter what it is, they’re going to try to accommodate your request, and go to great lengths to make you happy.  So, by not saying anything, I was trying to be considerate because had I said something, even if it weren’t feasible or practical, we probably would have done it, even if it made them unhappy and then I would feel like a jerk and I didn’t want to put either of us in that position.  So, to keep them from feeling bad, and feeling the necessity to fill my time, I got my laptop and I wrote some journal entries, that you’ve probably already read….hopefully.  That made them happy…or…at least, they didn’t seem to be fretting nearly as much. 

            For lunch we had fried rice, udon (big thick noodles), radish salad, and barley tea of course.  After lunch, we did some more sitting around and then I think the decision was made to just get out of the house for the sake of getting out of the house.  So, we all got up, put our shoes on and piled into the family car.  I thought we might just be going for a drive, but then there seemed to be direction and purpose to the turns.  Eventually we ended up at the shopping center that we’ve been to once before on each of my two previous trips to Nanao.  First we went bowling.  That was fun, and Japanese bowling has some subtle yet crazy extras compared to American bowling.  Maybe it was just this particular alley, but I’ll tell you anyway.  First, there were cameras at the end of each lane that first captured a front view of the person rolling the ball.  When the ball got close to the pins, the view would switch to the pins so you could see them knocked down from close up.  The instant replay was also automatically shown.  Next, on the display screen, the speed in km/h was shown, so that was kinda neat.  Also, in the playing setup screen, one could select which players got to use bumpers to keep their ball on the lane.  When it was that bowler’s turn, the bumpers would automatically rise, and then lower when their turn was over.  The shoes were dispensed by a machine instead of by a person.  The balls were on racks, IN ORDER, by size and color so it was easy to find one that fit you.  And, at the end of the game, each person received a computer printout of every frame in each game so they could analyze their performance.  Pretty neat…

            After bowling we went to the shopping center and just kind of poked around for a while. Yuki won a stuffed dog, Hiroki bought popcorn, we bought some bread to have with breakfast tomorrow, and I bought a calculator so I could add up my massive expenditures (just kidding…).  After we got home, mom left to go to someone’s going away party, and I went with the kids and dad to the Fish and Chips place at Fisherman’s Warf for dinner.  I guess dad doesn’t know how to cook.  So that was all fine and dinner was nice.  Every year we eat at least one meal there hehehehehe.  When we got home, we all watched cartoons and I worked on my Website.  We also watched the news and I say President Bush come on TV and say something about the Iraqis being tougher than we thought they would be and that the war may take longer than we originally estimated.  Hmmmm….oh well.  I can’t say I’m sorry that I’m not in the country for this war.  First of all, I’m probably safer here.  Second, I don’t have to be bombarded by information about weapons of mass destruction, killing, terrorists, 9/11, or anything like that.  In fact, I haven’t even been really thinking about it that much, which is quite refreshing….I guess the war will be over by the time I get home.  Anyway…you will find a number of pictures in the media section.  I apologize for the lack of captions or explanations.  I tried to do that at first, but it didn’t work out so I’ll fix it later and you can get more out of the pictures.  Tomorrow, the only thing I want to do is to buy my ticket for my train to Osaka.  There’s a 9:57am train that’s an express (vastly superior to the local trains) that gets me to Osaka at just the right time.  So, I wanna make sure I get a seat on that train and I want a non-smoking seat.  I had a smoking seat in the Shinkansen and it was really unpleasant. 

-Maikeru