01/11/10 my room, evening - Back from dinner. After leaving the house we walked for a little while to a bus stop. We took the bus to a train station and took a train. My host mom was explaining stuff and pointing stuff out all the while. Then we took a subway train to a department store. It was ENORMOUS. It was the biggest department store I’d ever been in. It had 10 floors. We rode the escalators up and down for a while because my host mom couldn’t find what she wanted to find. Which I later realized was a restaurant. It was called the Tea Room or something like that. It served pasta dishes. So we each ordered one and tea to drink afterwards. I ordered milk tea because I have been jonesin’ for milk and I’ll take what I can get. (Actually I forget to mention that we had half a mug of hot milk this morning for breakfast in addition to tea. It was good, but gone too soon. I am afraid to ask for milk because I don’t want to be ungrateful for my host mom’s hospitality.) The pasta was good, as was the tea. The tea came in a little teapot and the milk was in its own little separate pitcher. I beat down the urge to pick up the little milk pitcher and drink it by itself. I did however use only a tiny bit of the milk and drank two cups of tea. I left about a spoonful of tea in the bottom of the cup and poured the rest of the milk in it and then drank it. (A person’s gotta do what a person’s gotta do.) If my host mom noticed this she didn’t say anything. After that we looked around the floor we were on. My host mom loves books so we went to the book section. I stared at the manga (comic books or graphic novels) wistfully wishing I could pick up a Soul Eater or a Tsubasa (two different manga or comics) and start reading. Alas, I could not because they were wrapped in plastic. L My host mom asked if I knew any of the manga there. I said yes and started pointing. After I indicated 7 or 8 she said a Japanese equivalent of ‘wow’ and I think I impressed her. ;3

Then we went and got the tickets and rode the elevator this time to the cinema floor (yeah, the tickets and actual theater were not on the same floor…). The elevator was cramped but cool because the wall opposite the door was a window and I enjoyed looking down at the street and around at the other tall buildings. The elevator talked too just like I’ve seen in movies. It told us when it got to a certain floor. :o Actually my host mom might have noticed that I was looking around with eyes like saucers because she asked me over lunch if I went shopping in department stores often. Once again I had to answer her in the negative. She was surprised. “But doesn’t New York have a lot of them??” she asked me. Then I realized she thought I went to school in New York CITY. I explained that I go to school in New York STATE and that New York City is like 5 or 6 hours away from my school by car. She was really surprised and said that America is so big. She asked if I had a car. I said yes, but not while at school. I leave my car in Missouri when I go to the University of Rochester. She asked how I get to New York from Missouri and I said plane. She once again said that Japan is so narrow and not wide like America. She said you can get all over Japan by train and it takes only a couple of hours to get to Tokyo from Nagoya. I said that that’s really convenient. And she has it’s convenient because Japan is small. We had a good talk.

Anyway back on topic- We got to the theater and went in and chose seats. My host mom said she would be right back and then returned with bottled teas for us. She kept paying for everything: the bus, train, subway, lunch and now this too! I felt so weird about it. My thank you’s didn’t seem to be enough. The movie was good. I have read the book “My Sister’s Keeper” so I pretty much knew the twist was coming in the end. However they did leave a lot out of the movie and changed the ending so I did have a couple of surprises. It’s basically about cancer, sacrifice, quality of life, family relations in tough times, and parental favoritism. Anyway there was a lot of sniffing going on in the theater all throughout. My host mom was crying too.

We visited the toire (toilet) after the movie. I actually stared at the toilet controls for a whole minute trying to figure out how to flush it. Toilets are not all uniform here. Each one’s kind of different. If I could understand more kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) it would be much easier. As I stood over the controls examining the different characters I was thinking, “Hmm, maybe it’s this button… Nope this one simulates the sound of a flush but doesn’t actually flush it. This one? Nope, that one didn’t do anything. How about… Well that just made the toilet say something to me that I didn’t quite catch.” I finally discovered that this one had a motion detector that you ran your hand over to flush it. On the way back, as we were walking through the subway, I saw a little girl with a long braid down her back (just like mine, except, you know, it wasn’t blond). I had to point her out to my host mom and she agreed it was really cute. I tend to notice braids. I hone in on them or something.

Anyway, let me attempt to describe the subway a little. It is big with lots of people and even though today was a holiday and there wasn’t school I still saw school uniforms on middle school and high school kids. I saw a girl with a cell phone charm that was a kewpie (type it into a search engine if you don’t know what it is, I can’t do it justice by explaining). Actually it was the third or forth kewpie doll I’ve seen here (pictures, in stores). I don’t know what the weird craze is. There was even one on my host mom’s toaster oven next to the logo. : 0 There are a lot of old people in the subway pushing carts and some women pushing strollers. There are lots of people wearing masks (the medical ones) because in Japan, if you are sick, that’s what you do. There are “women only” cars during rush hours. (Because sometimes groping is a problem.) The trains have their own little chimes that go off when they are about to pull up to the platform. A disembodied female voice is constantly saying things like which trains go where and the like. There is an employee at the end of every train in a little compartment dressed very professionally (white gloves and all). They poke their heads out when a train is pulling in and when it’s pulling out. Not sure what they are doing… making sure no one gets squished maybe? It is really clean.

On our way out of the train station we passed a bread shop. My host mom lead us in and she bought four different treats for us for later. I would tell you what they were, but I have no idea. One was a roll shape covered in granulated sugar. One looked like a section of a baguette with chocolate chips in it. Two were bright yellow, one shaped like a cupcake and one like an éclair. In the check out line we walked by cartons of milk and I bit my lip. :..( We got on the bus and then walked back to the house. I got another whack at the front door. It took me a few tries. I am thick as a brick.

Inside my host mom said to wash my hands because she was making tea. Turns out we were also having two of our bread thingies. I chose the bright yellow cupcake one (for no other reason than yellow is my favorite color). It was good. It might have been lemon…not really sure. My host mom had the one covered in sugar and we each had a piece of the other’s. Hers had red bean paste on the inside. I love red bean paste so I was very pleased with it (even though the outside had a bit too much sugar for me). After that I went to my room to check email and write these entries.

I have to go take my shower now because 8:30 is nigh and that’s when bath time is for me. Gotta work on pushing that back a little actually… Shower is usually the last thing I do before I go to sleep but gotta be flexible I suppose. 20:25 (J time)