2/8/10 room, post dinner- Today I got up and felt GREAT!! It was the aikido I’m telling you. Despite having bruises from the stone mats they have I still felt so good. I did stretches when I got out of bed and I was all sore from not doing aikido in so long. Even so I felt really good. :3 My host mom said I could wash my gi and any other laundry I had (which was very little because we had just done laundry on Saturday). After breakfast and laundry I talked to a friend on skype. Then my host mom took me to the post office because I needed to mail something.
When we got back from the post office I talked to my friend some more. Then it was lunchtime. After lunch my host mom and I went to the golf course she practices at (golf is really popular in Japan). It was more like batting cages, except for golf. My host mom is pretty good. She kept seeing her friends and introducing me. Everybody was going on about my eyes (sigh, not again : /)
My host mom and her instructor insisted I try my hand at golfing. So I stepped up to the tee (there wasn’t really a tee) and tried my best to do as the instructor told me. I’ve played miniature golf and wii golf but actual golf is pretty different. I swung and hit air more often than the ball, embarrassing. I managed to hit a few off into the 30 point zone (which is lame I assure you).
At some point we went and got tea out of one of the various vending machines. It was my first time operating a Japanese vending machine, pretty sweet.
The night before after getting out of the shower I was sitting with my host mom watching skiing. And she started asking about my family’s ancestry. Well, I informed her that I am half Italian and half German. (Consequently, Italian last name, German features.) I said that the reason I am so Aryan is because of my mom’s side of the family (German). She was really interested in all of this and kept asking questions.
Then today at the golfing cages she was showing me off to all her golfing buddies!! She was like, “This is Cathy. Her family is German and that’s why she has blond hair and blue eyes and …” Seriously, I became an exotic pet. And her friends fawned over me. BLUE EYES!!! :O :0 :o :C I guess I’m kind of used to it by now. Still makes me really self-conscious though.
After the golfing cages we went grocery shopping for the stuff I would need to make dinner. I was making spaghetti. I found everything ok except for the sauce. VERY limited selection of tomato sauce in the store. More on that later.
After the grocery store we went to a store to buy a new space heater. The one in the bathroom died. There were three full aisles of space heaters. With no central heating there is a big demand for them here. There were all kinds of appliances: tvs, washers, microwaves etc. What caught my attention was a washing machine with a glass door so you could watch the stuff being washed. In the store one of the machines actually had four glasses in it being washed. I was watching it for a while (I am easily entertained, seriously there were tvs a little ways away on and playing sports channels and I was standing there staring at a dish washer cycle). Then I joined my host mom as she picked out the space heater she wanted and was escorted the check-out by an employee.
Once home I wrote one journal entry and then went down to start cooking. The sauce really screwed things up. It came out of the jar tasting like straight watered down tomatoes. “Well fine,” I thought, “I’ll improvise.” Or so I thought. I tore that kitchen up looking for any spice that I could add to that sauce. There was no parsley, no garlic, no thyme, no sage, no barley, no oregano, nothing. All I could find was salt, pepper, and sugar. Everything else was a liquid like sake or soy sauce. I even sautéed some onion and put it in but it still tasted pretty thin to me. My host mom said it was delicious but I assured her that it is supposed to taste much different. O well.
After dinner I washed the dishes and my host mom dried and put them away. She thanked me over and over for cooking and doing dishes.
And now I am here just about caught up to the present. I am now going to do pilates and then shower time. I wonder how the new bathroom space heater will work… cheers for now (19:44)
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