i am apologizing in advance for the obscene amount of bracketing i do in this entry, it is probably a grammatical nightmare

01/24/10 room, morning- After I finished my last entry I organized my stuff, hung my laundry out to dry, and studied. I ate lunch and continued to organize until 4:20. (I have a lot to get sorted through so it was taking a while.) At 4:20 my host mom told me we would be leaving to go out to eat at 5 o’clock. I had mentioned at dinner the night before that I had heard of sushi restaurants where the dishes are all on a conveyer belt and you pick out the ones you want. They figure out the price by the color plate that the food is on. My host mom immediately called up her daughter Megumi san (right there in the middle of dinner) and set up plans with her for all of us to have dinner at just such a restaurant the following night. My host mom is awesome. :D

When she told me we were leaving I immediately stopped what I was doing and started to re-braid my hair because I hadn’t combed it yet that day. We left at 5 on the dot. The restaurant was really cool. The conveyer belt was huge and laden with every kind of sushi you can imagine. There was also edamame and different desert choices. Megumi san and her two sons were already there. The older boy, Tomo I think, did pretty well. He had about 7 or 8 plates of food. The younger one, Ko maybe?, only had about 5. I think my host mom was calling the boys “Tomo chan” and “Ko chan” but I am still not sure. Those are probably shortened forms of their names. “Chan” is another kind of honorific in Japanese like “san”. “Chan” is for more intimate relationships. I had about 10 or 12 plates stacked in front of me when I was finished. :d I had nonconventional stuff like caviar sushi, squid sushi, tentacle sushi, and egg sushi. And also had common stuff like toro, salmon, and tuna. My host mom kept getting plates and giving me half of them. I guess she knows my eating habits now. :3 I asked her if it was ok to take anything and she of course and kept encouraging me. I had edamame and some sort of breaded meat thing, which were good but so hot. I don’t mean spicy, I mean they were taking forever to cool down! I don’t know why but I let them sit for 10 minutes and I was still burning my mouth on them. ;0 Some of the sushi had wasabi mixed in. It was fine b/c it was a small amount. At the curry house on Friday the curry I had was way spicier. I actually got the level 2 curry. The spiciest is the level 3 and I was too scared to try it. I have a friend who LOVES spicy food. I knew she would have taken the level 3 curry and loved it. As I ate the edmame at the sushi place I thought of my parents who both love edamame (Japanese soybeans).

I find myself being reminded of the people I know in America fairly often. There is a fellow IES student who wears a fedora all the time. I have a friend from High school who often wears a fedora too. And the other day as I was coming out of the Kozoji train station to catch the bus I saw a stuffed panda bear sitting on a landscaping retention wall. I couldn’t help thinking, “Awww, poor orphaned baby!” But it also made me think of my friend and once roommate who loves pandas. There are pandas (pictures and merchandise) everywhere here so I think of her every time I see one. The stuffed panda was lying on the retention wall as though someone deliberately placed it there in plain site. And on the way home from the bus stop I saw an umbrella hung neatly in some shrubbery off to the side of the walkway. This is a very common site in Japan that I have read about and now am seeing first hand. When a Japanese person comes across something on the ground that has been dropped that person picks it up and places it somewhere nearby in an obvious location (preferably around eye level). This is done so that if the owner retraces their steps in search of their lost item they are more likely to see it and recover it. This is one of my favorite cultural characteristics of the Japanese. They will either optimize the chance of the owner finding their possession or (if it is money or something more valuable) they will take it to the closest kōban or police box (which are everywhere). It is such a simple and considerate thing to do.

Anyway I was talking about wasabi, which lead me to curry, which lead me to reminding, which took me to lost items. So getting back to the sushi restaurant, after I finished gorging on sushi and the like I got two desserts in a row. The first was a matcha parfait. I love matcha and it is SO versatile! Matcha is green tea powder. You can bake with it and make ice cream with it and all sorts of things. The parfait was beyond awesome. But I was surprised to find corn flakes at the bottom of it. That was what they used for the crunchy part; that works I guess. It made me smile. The second dessert was a chocolate cake slice. As I have mentioned before I do not really care for many American sweets or desserts but Japanese candy and confections are brilliant!!! :D This probably means I am going to eat way too much of them. :o We told the waiter we were finished and he counted the plates on the table to calculate the bill. He counted all the black plates, then the green ones, then red, then yellow (2^nd highest to cheapest) then counted the one gold plate which is the most expensive type of plate. And no, it wasn’t mine. It was Tomo chan who had had the one gold one. I was surprised when my host mom paid for EVERYONE!! I thought she would just pay for herself and me, but it looked like she took the bill and paid for all of it. My host mom is so generous. She was faster than me this time and hid the bill from me before I could see how much it was. I felt a little bit bad. I hadn’t had the one “king plate” on our table but I did have the most plates stacked in front of me. I shouldn’t have gone so crazy I think. If I am being treated I should try to be a little more conservative. Food is my weakness. You could put me in front of a million beautiful items and I could pass all of them up. You could put me in front of shelves of manga or anime and I would simply say, “Eh, I can find them online.” But if it’s food that I like, I want it. :( Probably me + a conveyer belt of delicious food = expensive. I am going to work on that.

We said goodbye to Megumi san and the boys and started toward my host mom’s car. Suddenly she jumps and exclaims, “Oh, it’s raining!” and starts running to her car. The Japanese are a little rain/precipitation phobic from what I can tell. If there is a 5% chance of light rain EVERYONE you see is carrying an umbrella with them. It could be bright and sunny and everyone and their mother is holding an umbrella b/c the forecast said it might rain. And just then when we walked out of the restaurant my host mom quickly started running to the car urging me behind her. People, I tell you, it was BARELY sprinkling. Some people in America don’t like rain at all but most are pretty tolerant of it. Most would rather not carry around an umbrella unless it is really raining hard or there is a big change of showers in the weather report. I am actually at the farthest end of that spectrum myself. I actually LOVE rain and snow and delight in it. I really don’t mind getting caught in the rain and I certainly don't start running to the nearest shelter when it starts to lightly rain. I never take an umbrella with me when I leave my house or dorm unless it is raining hard when I leave (and sometimes even then I am too lazy to go get one. That is probably why I forgot my umbrella somewhere last semester. Since I don’t usually have it with me I didn’t remember to pick it up.) Sometimes standing under an umbrella in moderate to heavy rain is pretty cool and exciting for me. But if it is really windy the umbrella becomes more trouble than it’s worth.

{I also can’t put my hands in my pocket if I am holding an umbrella. I might be able to do one but at least one will be holding the handle. Which, if it’s cold and/or windy, will result in one or both hands getting cold b/c I can’t put them in my pockets. Even with gloves they still get cold. And I HATE it when my hands feel cold. I am kind of weird about my hands. I irrationally freak out it I scratch them or if they are in the wind for a long time or if I bang them against something. (It doesn’t help that I am a total klutz.) But the absolute worst is when I accidently crack one of my knuckles. If you are ever around me and I suddenly let out a blood curdling infuriated screech there is a good chance I have just accidently popped one of my knuckles. I get so angry when that happens. My ultimate pet peeve is when someone cracks their knuckles. I just want to climb the walls at that sound. [I actually, after many years of yelling at her, was ecstatic when my sister decided to quit cracking her knuckles. My happiness was, unfortunately, short lived because when she returned from her first semester of college at the Air Force Academy she had picked the habit back up again. She said every one at the academy does it and so she sort of unconsciously started doing it again. DARN YOU AIR FORCE ACADEMY!!! At least she doesn’t deliberately do it in front of me anymore, which used to be one of her favorite methods of torture.] When one of my knuckles pops it’s ten times worse. I hear it AND feel it. I usually sulk over it for several minutes at least and pathetically rub my injured knuckle. Yes, I am weird about my hands. If I accidently hurt any other part of my body or if any other part feels cold I’m like, “Eh, it happens.” And I crack my SPINE a million times a day and think nothing of it, doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s just my hands. Actually one time during freshman year I absent-mindedly cracked my back in front of two of my friends (one was Japanese actually) and they jumped a foot in the air (b/c it was loud) and both shuddered in complete unison. We all three started laughing and laughed for several minutes. One of our other friends was standing a little ways away and asked what happened. My friend Tiff said, “Cathy just cracked her back really loud and Mona and I both jumped at the same time!!” And we started laughing again. Good times. I also don’t like to touch anything rough or dirty with my hands either.} So believe or not I actually have a point, and it is this; I would rather get wet than hold an umbrella if holding the umbrella means my hand or hands will get cold. I thought of all this as I bemusedly jogged with my host mom through the gentle precipitation to her car. I can’t be annoyed at the Japanese for this behavior; it’s too precious. Even their quirks are endearing. And some Americans are like this too. It’s all good with me. As long as no one judges me for liking the rain I certainly won’t judge anyone back.

Once we were back at her house I started organizing again and then it was shower time. After shower time I worked on stuff until 10pm and then I talked with some people on skype. I have weekly meetings with a group that I am a part of at the U of Rochester. It was 8am for them. After talking to them for a while and doing more work I then went to bed at 1am. I was happy I’d already written one entry for that day so I could save this one for the next day.

Well I got up at 8:30 and went down for breakfast. My host mom told me a few days ago that she was going out today to a temple. She invited me but I have a thing I have to go to tonight. My program for study abroad is IES and all those students have periodical excursions that they go on together. Tonight we are going to a traditional Japanese music concert, which starts at 5 sharp. I have to catch the 3:45 bus. Since I still have so much to do I couldn’t be out the whole day and get nothing done. It is my intention to get a lot done before the concert, have a great time, and then get a lot done after. The ticket is paid for and I do want to do cool things like that and spend time with my IES friends. Plus I need to tell Satoshi Sensei that my commute costs over 6000 yen a month (means I get reimbursed the difference). I love that word “reimburse”. I actually will have to email him the exact figures later.

Man, this is the “get off topic” entry. As I was saying, I went downstairs and ate the breakfast my host mom left for me. She also left lunch and tons of extra stuff. I love her!! ^_^ I finished eating and then came up here to write this and it has taken a little too long probably. I got to do work until 2:30 and then get ready to leave. Yikes, I am going to be up late again because I also have to eat lunch too and it’s already 11:53. I hate going to bed late. Ah well, such is my life. Where did the weekend go?