これからどこへ？

日本の留学はまだ終わってないけど、私は次のやることのために準備をするのが好きな人です。次に何かするまでやることが何もないことは嫌です。例えば、学校で次の学期に何の授業が取れるか早めに知りたいです。大学を卒業したら何をするか知りたいです。（それはまだわからないけど. . . ）だから、日本語のことを考えると. . . 留学が終わったら、どうになるだろう？来年は、日本語の授業を一つしかとらない予定をしています。私の大学にはAdvanced Japaneseの授業はなかなかないです。日本語の勉強を続けるのは、ほとんど独学みたいな感じになると思います。日本に来る前に独学で勉強していたけど、それは留学向けの勉強でした。ホストファミリーとうまく交流したり、日本人の友達を作るっていう刺激で勉強しました。アメリカに帰ったら何のために日本語を勉強しますか？どのように日本語を使えますか？今はこういうことを考えています。

日本に来る前、会話練習のウエブサイトをたくさん使って、SkypeやLINEで日本語を練習しました。今の私には、日本語を練習することよりも、自分の考えやアイディアを伝えることのほうが大切だと思っています。「日本語を練習したい」という気持ちだけではなく、日本語を使って何か意味があることをやりたいと思っています。例えば、英語を勉強している日本人にいろいろなアドバイスをあげたいと思います。あとは、日本についての感想や留学して考えたことを伝えたいと思います。こういうことが日本語でできれば嬉しいです。

留学が終わったら、このブログはどうになるかわかりません。これを読んでいる人は何かアドバイスがあったら、教えてください！

Reading in Japanese

初めて日本で本を買って、今まで200ページを日本語で読みました。子供の時から本を読むのが大好きでした。両親が私を図書館に連れて行ってくれて、一回に本を10冊借りて帰りました。いつも手に本がありました。でも、大人になったらなんとなく他の趣味や興味を優先をして、授業の本以外は本を全然読まないようになりました。最後にいつ本を読んだか全然覚えていません。でも、この本を読み初めてから、止められません。電車に乗っている時には本が読めるので、通学を楽しみにします。帰宅後、夜ご飯を食べた後、本を読みます。本当は全部理解が出来ません。実は、ほとんどの漢字が読めません。時々、文脈で意味が推測出来ます。なんとなく読むのを楽しんでいます。完全に理解しているかどうかは関係ないです。読んでいる時には、全部の言葉の意味がわかるかどうかを気にしていません。

言いたいことは、日本語に関して、習うより慣れろっていう意味がわかるようになりました。辞書的にはわかっていたのに、やっぱり日本に来る前に実際的な意味がよくわかりませんでした。日本にいたら、全部理解出来ないって感じに慣れます。喋るときに、相手の言いたいことがほとんどわかったら、言葉の全部の意味がわかるかどうかに気にしなくていいと思うようになりました。毎日漢字や単語を勉強するより、毎日言葉を使うほうが覚えやすくなります。西武新宿線での急行電車の駅の漢字を全部知っていますが、その漢字を勉強したことないです。毎日通学する時に見るので、覚えました。習うより慣れました。

だから、出来るかどうかについて考えずに、読みたい本を読んでみて！絶対に後悔しないです。

I’m about 200 pages into reading my first book in Japanese. When I was a kid, I used to read all the time. I’d go to the library and take out ten books at a time and read them all one right after the other. I always had a book in hand. Somehow as I became an adult, I just started to prioritize other things until I stopped reading entirely, unless if was for school. I can’t remember the last time I read a whole book just for fun. But it’s amazing how I just picked up this book and started reading and it’s like I’m a little kid again. I actually look forward to my long train ride commute because it allows me reading time without distraction (if I can score a seat. I usually can’t read while standing). And the thing is, I don’t understand a lot of what I’m reading. Sometimes there’s sentences that I completely understand, and there’s a lot of guessing meaning from context, but there’s a ton of kanji I’ve just never seen before and can’t even guess the meaning. Sometimes I’ll pass through whole pages without understanding anything. But somehow I’m getting enough to hold my interest, and actually enjoying it. Usually, I forget about whether I understand enough or not and just keep reading and I’ll realize I’ve read 10 pages and have the general gist of what happened and not care if I didn’t understand every single word.

And that’s the thing about being in Japan, I guess. In every aspect you just get used to sucking at things, to not understanding, to the point where you just don’t realize that you don’t understand. Like, you can have a conversation with someone and forget all the words you didn’t understand because you got the general idea and were just enjoying the conversation, not stressing about every single word. There’s this phrase in Japanese, 習うより慣れろ which translates into the English phrase “practice makes perfect,” but if you look at the kanji, you can see 習う (learn) and 慣れる (to get used to), and the structure of this sentence is something like “getting used to (it) over learning (it)”. And I think there’s a lot of sense to that, because you can practice writing kanji or studying vocab every day of your life, and maybe if you’re lucky you can pound it into your head, but the stuff that really sticks is the stuff you use every day and just get used to seeing around you. I know all the kanji for the stops between Takadanobaba and my station on the Seibu-Shinjuku line just because I see them every time I take the train. I never tried to study them, I just got used to them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wished I had realized this sooner in my Japanese learning process. I mean, I knew it in theory to be true and I guess it makes sense that until I was truly immersed I couldn’t truly understand it. But I wish I could tell my past self (and I guess I am now telling anyone who is like my past self now), to just relax, you know? Pick up the book at read it. Read it way before you’d ever think to claim “I can read a book in Japanese.” You’ll probably end up enjoying it.

ディズニー

水曜日に虹の会の人と飲み会に参加します。平日に飲み会をするのはちょっと大変だと思いますが、１年間しかないので出来るだけ日本で楽しみたいです！それよりも、今月はホストファミリーと予定がいっぱいあるので、週末に虹の会に活動に参加が出来ません。なので、平日でも飲み会をしたいです！また、1880円しかかからないので、普通の飲み会と比べて安いと思います。

日本語にどんどん慣れてきていると思います。日本語を喋っているときにいつも同じような間違いをするけど、最近あまり緊張してないし、日本に来る前の私より、今の私のほうが自信を持って日本語を話しています。思い浮かんだことを日本語に交感して相手に伝えるまでにかかる時間はだんだん短くなっています。また、英語から日本語に変えるのが簡単になっています、逆もまた同じです。

東京ディズニーについて書きたいと思います。昨日はホストファミリーとディズニーに行きました。今でも、なんでディズニーは私と同じような年齢の人にもこんなに人気があるか全然理解出来ません。子供や親だったら、ディズニーの映画をよく知っていたら、確かに東京ディズニーは楽しいですが、それ以外の人にとっての魅力がわかりません。私は朝8時ころにディズニーに着いて、入るまでずっと立って待ちました。で、入ってからホストファミリーと走って一番人気があるアトラクションに行って、そこで2時間待ちました。そんなに待ってたのに、アトラクションはたったの10分で、子供のためのアトラクションだったので大人にとってはそんなに楽しくなかったです。一日中は同じ感じでした。私はディズニーの映画をあまり見ないし、キャラクターを知らないので、子供と比べてディズニーを楽しめなかったです。でも、日本のテクノロジーは本当にすごいですね。本物みたいなロボットの人間はすごいと思います。本当の人間のように動いています。それから、最後に有名なお城の前でライトショーを見ました。本当にすごかったです。「すごい」をいっぱい書いたけど、他の言葉を知りません。笑

逆もまた同（ぎゃくもまたどうよう）vice versa

このフレーズをうまく使えるようになりたいなぁ。正しく使える人、例文ちょうだい？

アキバフクロウ、上野動物園・Owl Cafe, Ueno Zoo

今は宿題をやりたくない気分ですから、その代わりにブログを書きます！

Surprisingly, people I don’t know have started following this blog, which is cool, but it would be even cooler if you guys could leave a comment about why you’re following the blog and how you found it? I’m just curious :)

This past weekend was so much fun. I feel like from Saturday morning until now I’ve just been going nonstop. I will try to recap the adventures and keep it relatively short.

アキバフクロウ・Owl Cafe

今日はアキバフクロウというフクロウカフェに行きました。フクロウカフェというのは、生きているフクロウ達と触れ合うことができる場所です。雰囲気はとてもいいし、フクロウは穏やかだから、リラックスできます。フクロウには色々な種類があります。一番大きなフクロウは四歳の子供のような大きさです。一番ちっちゃいのは手のひらに置けます。フクロウの頭しか触れませんが、頭の羽はすごく柔らかいです。フクロウを手に乗せることも楽しいです。頭の動きはすごいです。ちょっと怖いですが、怖いというよりかわいいです！フクロウと触れ合いたい方にアキバフクロウを絶対におすすめします！フクロウはかわいいねー！

Today I didn’t have class, so after Kei finished his class we went to Akiba Fukuro, an owl cafe in Akihabara. We made a reservation for one hour, so during that hour they only allow about 4-5 couples inside. Basically, you walk in and there’s really soft lighting and soft music playing and there’s just all these owls sitting around. After you learn a bit about the owls and the rules for handling them, you can pet and hold any of the owls except the biggest one. It was so cool to get to hold them. I took lots of pictures! They even took a nice professional picture of me and Kei together, each holding an owl. It was totally the perfect date spot and the owls were unbearably cute.

上野動物園・Ueno Zoo

ところで、昨日は上野動物園に行きました。東京は狭い都市だから、東京にある動物園も狭いはずだと思いましたが、上野動物園は結構大きいです。ほとんどの動物は元気に動いていました。初めてパンダを見ました。昨日は初めてパンダを見ました。一日中寝ていましたが、一度、食べるために起きました。食べた後すぐ寝ちゃった。確かにパンダはのんびり生活をしています。（笑）寝ていても、パンダはかわいいね。日本の動物園はアメリカのと同じだと思います。

Today, Kei and I have been dating for exactly 1 year. We spent the whole day on Sunday together. First, we went to the Ueno Zoo. I got to see a panda for the first time, which was awesome, even though he mostly slept and only got up to eat one time. The zoo was pretty much the same as an American zoo, which was nice because I actually expected it to be really small, given that there’s not much space in Tokyo for anything. But the animals for the most part seemed happy considering being in captivity and a lot of them were moving around and playing or eating.

After the zoo we walked around in Ueno on a famous (and very crowded) street, and then hopped on a train to Shinjuku where we did some shopping and  ぶらぶら (cruising around aimlessly). It’s amazing how much time you can kill just wandering around an unfamiliar city. We hit up some Shinjuku karaoke for two, which we’ve been wanting to do since I came to Japan. It was super fun. Finally, we celebrated the occasion with a really fancy dinner out. The whole day was really perfect.

上野・Ueno

新宿・Shinjuku

その他・Other misc stuff :)

土曜日の夕方は私のホストファミリーのお母さんの誕生日パーティーでした。イタリア料理のレストランで飲み放題／食べ放題を楽しみました。合計で１５人がいました。私のホストファミリーはお酒を飲むのが大好きなので、みんなはとても酔っぱらっていました。面白かったです。パーティーが終わった後、私、私の友達、友達のホストファミリーのお父さん（２９歳）、私のホストファミリーのお兄さん（２４）、と一緒にボーリング場に行きました。それから、バッティングセンターに行きました。すごく楽しかったです！ホームステイの生活に慣れるのが難しいので、今まで、私は家族の一員になれたかどうかわかりませんでしたが、みんなと遊んでいたときに本当の家族のように感じました。

日本での生活は楽しいです。毎日何か楽しいことをしています。毎日、日本語をもっと学びたいと思いますが、とりあえず日本語を楽しんでいます。習うより慣れろっていうことですね。

On Saturday morning I went to Harajuku to put on a dance performance that I’ve been working on with people from my club. The venue was pretty small but it was cool to show the dance we put together. I had to leave early, though, to run back to my house for my mom’s birthday party. We went to an Italian restaurant for all you can eat/all you can drink, and of course my host family loves to drink so they all got very drunk. There were about 15 people in total, between my family and Youxi’s family and family friends.

After the party, the older adults went home and Youxi and I went out with my host brother and sister, her host dad (who’s 29, so close to us in age), and his friend. It was really cool to get to hang out with them. We went to a bowling place and a batting center. For the first time I actually got to talk with my host brother who I’d literally had 3 one-word conversations with since I moved in here. He’s super nice, just not much of a talker. It’s been really hard adjusting to the home stay life but when I was hanging out with everyone for the first time I felt like part of the family. Maybe it’s because it was people around my age, and they were drunk, but I don’t know. It suddenly was just easy to hang out and chat and I didn’t have to worry about anything. I feel like I have really good people around me.

So that’s the latest of my Japan adventures.

Video coming soon!! I promise!

What do Japanese think of foreigners in Japan?

As I walk through the narrow streets of Higashi-murayama to the station each morning, I pass maybe 20-30 people walking about, a good 75% of which are age 75+ and 100% Japanese. With this demographic I can’t help but wonder what each person thinks when they see my lovely foreign face walking through their quiet countryside (and did I mention completely Japanese?) town. Each morning I join the Japanese salarymen, school children, and business women on the station platform and wait in line to shuffle onto a crowded train and literally brace myself for a 45 minute ride. (I’m going to develop some serious balancing skills and eradicate my motion sickness after spending a year on these trains). Every time I make eye contact with somebody on the train I can just hear, “What business does this foreigner have out here? Why isn’t she hanging out in Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku?” Chances of seeing a fellow foreigner increase as we approach Takadanobaba, but most days I make the commute without seeing a single other foreign face. When I do come across a foreigner on the train, we give each other a quick, “whoa, didn’t expect to see someone like you here,” and then go back to our business of ignoring the people around us, because we’re nonchalant like that. Nonchalant foreigners in Japan.

Because Japanese people don’t tend to show their feelings about strangers by facial expressions, at least as far as I’ve noticed, it’s hard to tell what people are really thinking. Once you get off the train, where everyone is silent, you can overhear tidbits like 外国人多いね (gaikokujin ooi ne) which sounds a lot like, “holy shit there’s a lot of foreigners here.” Of course at Waseda there’s lots of foreign students so I barely notice it there, but once you get out to the more countryside areas you’re on your own.

Today, Kelly and I went for a walk, departing from Waseda in a random direction, and stumbled across a small stationary shop. No one was inside except an elderly Japanese couple who were probably the owners. We went in and scoped out some of the cute notebooks, pens, and stickers that they had, and they shyly watched from behind the counter. After a few minutes, however, the elderly man mustered up the courage to come out and greet us with nervous English and a big smile. Gaining confidence, he managed a halting pitch to Kelly about how great the pens write, how they write smoother than any other pens. Then he came to me and asked me what country I was from. When I told him I was from America, he was really surprised and told me he thought I was Australian! I have no idea why. I asked him if he’d ever been to America, and his whole face lit up. He told me about all the places he had visited, how he loved Chicago and especially the East Coast, because there’s a lot of American heritage sites there. He said it had always been his dream to go to the Smithsonian museum, and he was so happy when he finally got to go. He looked so excited, and even though his English was broken, he was trying really hard and clearly so excited to talk to a foreigner.

Then, he started talking about how lots of foreigners were coming to Japan to work. I immediately assumed he was going to say something negative after that, because I’ve heard that Japanese people, especially the older generation, don’t always have the best impression of foreigners coming here to work for obvious reasons. But he proceeded to tell me how great he thought it was that people were coming to Japan from other countries. He slowed down and really thought about his words and told me, he wanted people from all around the world to be able to share ideas, “to improve the future.” Even though I’m sure his thoughts were much deeper than that, hearing that from him made me so happy. In the end, Kelly and I both bought some small things from their store and he gave use each a pack of really cute stickers for free. It really made my day.

I definitely want to get out more and explore places around Tokyo. I’m taking this class, Tokyo as Social and Cultural Space, and the professor is absolutely brilliant. He reminds me a lot of my dad, in his way of teaching and explaining things. He’s really inspired me to go explore the lesser-known places in Tokyo and take an interest in the place in which I’m living. This week, I took that class for the first time and my linguistics class for the first time and I feel so lucky to have such good professors. Both professors made the classes interesting and engaging. My linguistics professor likes to call on me to ask about the American way of thinking. For example, he often asks, “Is this different in America?” or “What do you think this is like in America?” I think I’m the only American in the class. I don’t think I should be the one to represent my entire country but anyway I have to stay on my toes so I know what he’s talking about when he calls on me.

This concludes my long post. I thought I owed everyone a long post in English because I’ve mainly been focusing on writing in Japanese. I would let you all know what I’m doing in the upcoming days but I don’t want any stalkers to stalk me so you’ll just have to hear about everything after it happens!

PS. I know I haven’t uploaded pictures and videos in a while. Starting tomorrow I’m going to work on making a video of my daily life in Japan. Until now basically my videos have just been from orientation, which isn’t really an accurate representation of what Japan is like on a daily basis. So I want to create a video so that my family and interested friends can have an idea of what I’m up to. Look forward to that sometime next week! :)

ありがとう・Thank you, everyone<3

最近ブログをあまり書かなくてごめんね！急に忙しくなりました。

今日のブログの投稿で、ホストファミリーと日本にいる友達（アーラムに出会った友達や日本に来た後に出会った友達も）に感謝を伝えてみたいと思います。今年の目標の一つは、日本語をうまく話せるようになることです。私の間違いをわかる人も、私を応援している人に会えて本当によかった。時々、日本語で話すのは難しくて、言いたいことを伝えられません。特に最近、銀行でトラベラーチェックを交換したり、日本の保険に入ったりするときに、日本語より手話みたいな言語を使っていると感じます。でも、失敗しても、頑張ったら達成感を感じます。今日の日本語の授業に、日本語がどれだけ話せないと感じたかをお父さんに話をしたら、お父さんはたくさんアドバイスをくれて、応援してくれました。私の周りにそんな優しい人がいるから感謝します。

I’m sorry I haven’t updated the blog in a few days. Things suddenly got really busy.

I just want to express how grateful I am to my host family and all my friends here, those who I met at Earlham and those who I’ve just met since coming to Japan. One of my main goals for this year is to become better at speaking Japanese, and I am so lucky to have found people who are patient when I make mistakes and encourage me to keep at it and have confidence. Sometimes it’s rough, when I can’t explain something or what I’m trying to say just doesn’t go through. Especially lately, doing things like getting health insurance, updating my residence card, and exchanging travelers checks at the bank, I feel like I’m using more sign language than Japanese, but the struggle is fun and even when I fail I feel accomplished for having tried. Today I was venting to my father about how I felt like I couldn’t speak in my Japanese class, and he gave me lots of encouraging advice. I’m so grateful to have people like that around me here.

日本の田舎・The Japanese Countryside…

今日、学校を６時に出発しましたが、８時に家に着きました。事故があったので、ヨーシと一緒に乗った電車が止まって、別の電車を探さなければなりませんでした。それから、ヨーシと別れて違う電車に乗りました。駅で降りましたが、家まで歩いて１５分かかります。駅から家に向けて歩きましたが、まっすぐ行かなければいけないところを左に曲がってしまいました。道を１０分くらい歩いていました。暗かったので、何も見えませんでした。１０分くらい歩いた後、道に迷ったと思って、左に曲がったところに戻ったほうがいいと思っていました。そのときに、自転車に乗っている人が私の前に止まって、「どこに行くの？」と聞きました。知らない人と話すのは危ないと思いましたが、多分その人は私に手伝ってくれると思いました。だから、住所を教えました。その人はインドネシア人だから、日本語があまりわからなかったので、携帯を借りて、ホストのお父さんに電話かけてみました。でも、どこにいたかよくわかりませんでした。ついに、自転車に乗っていた人は私を家の近くに連れて行ってくれました。誘拐される可能性があると思ったのに、自転車の後ろに乗りました。結局家に安全に帰ることが出来ました！
Oh my god the craziest thing happened today… Youxi and I tried to get home, and first one of the trains stopped because of an accident, so we had to figure out how to get home, and we ended up having to get on separate trains. So I got off at the right stop but by that time it was really dark and I have a 20ish min walk home, and everything is dark and looks the same, and I’ve never gone home alone before. I made one wrong turn and walked in the wrong direction for a while, and finally decided to turn back and go back to the last place I turned. But I guess somebody who passed me on a bicycle noticed that I looked lost, cause he stopped and asked me where I was going. It was so dark that I only could see from the light from a vending machine nearby. He was indonesian, so his Japanese was really hard for me to understand because of his accent, but I tried to tell him where I was going. Finally I just ended up borrowing his phone to call my host dad, except when I called him I couldn’t actually explain where I was, so I gave the phone to the other guy. I guess my dad told the guy to bring me to a place he knew, because the guy hung up and told me he was going to bring me somewhere close to my home. He also insisted on buying me a pepsi from the vending machine. After that we started walking and he asked me if I wanted to ride on the back of my mind, so I was like ok sure (MOM DON’T FREAK OUT OK I’M FINE). So I got on this guy’s bike and it was super scary cause he was biking super fast and the roads are super narrow, but in a few minutes we reached a brightly lit place. I got off and he waited with me while we waited for my dad, who came on his bike a minute later. When my dad saw the guy, it turned out they knew each other! (small town I guess). We thanked him a lot and then I got on the dad’s bike to ride back. My dad rode all the way back to the place where I made the wrong turn and went home from there to make sure I knew the right way back to the house. So now I’m home, safe and sound, and I haven’t ended up in a different town or kidnapped. I guess I could have been kidnapped or something, and regardless of any reason I could write about why I decided it was OK to get on the guy’s bike, my parents are gonna freak out anyway, so I’m not even going to try to defend my decision, lol.

パーティー・Party :)

今日はすごく楽しかったです！

Today was really great! After the mind-numbingly boring opening ceremony for SILS, Youxi and I went home to have Welcome Party Part 2 at Youxi’s family’s house. There was lots of delicious food and I got to meet Takuma, Youxi’s super cool host dad. He and I joked around a lot and had a good time. He’s only 28 (?) so he’s more like an older brother than a dad. Everyone was a lot more relaxed than they were last night, and I felt like everyone opened up a lot more to me and we could joke around, laugh, and really have fun. I felt a lot more like I could be a part of the conversation rather than just observing, like I could actually join in the conversation even when I wasn’t directly being asked something.

Also, otousan and I were talking about alcohol, and was telling everyone that I didn’t like to drink, so I was like no no, I just don’t like beer, and I said I liked more like fruity kinds of drinks. And he said he was going to buy some fruity stuff for me next time lol. I’m fine with not drinking, but I think it would be fun to drink with everyone together. He also has never heard of mixing beer with orange juice so he’s gonna try that next time lol.

ホストファミリー・Host Family!

今日はホストファミリーに会いました！お父さんとお母さんは私を大学に迎えに来て、それから大学から電車を４０分くらい乗って、１０分くらい歩いてホストファミリーの家に来ました。家は結構大きくて、庭でかわいい犬がいます。家は電車のtracksの後ろにあるので、フィラデルフィアの近郊に住んでいた家に懐かしいです。今まで、ほとんどお父さんと話しました。お父さんは電車の会社に勤めています。優しい人です。時々、お父さんは難しい日本語で話しているのに、英語で簡単な言葉を言ってみます。大学から家に通について説明していた時に、難しい説明をしていたのに時々英語で「four minutes」とか「straight」とか言いました。例えば、「駅から家に歩いて four minutes」を言いました。お母さんとまだあまり話していませんが、もうそろそろ晩ご飯を食べます。電車でお父さんは私の好きな食べ物について聞きました。私は親子丼やお好み焼きが好きと答えたので、お父さんとお母さんは今晩私の好きな食べ物を作ると思います。まだ色々な緊張していることあるんですが、お父さんとお母さんは優しいので大丈夫だと思います。

家のルールはほとんど自由でよかったです。私の部屋にはベッド、机、大きい押し入れがあるので完璧です。まだ部屋を駆けつけていて、電気は強くないので小さいデスクランプを買おうと思っています。それから、壁で写真とか、ポスターとか置いてもいいのか、後でお父さんとお母さんに聞いてみます。まだインターネットをどうやって使えるかまだわかりないので、今日の夜にそれについてもお父さんに聞いてみます。

今日の晩ご飯を食べた後、家族の全員は集まって、ウエルカムパーティーをします。家族は、私の家族だけではなく、ヨーシの家族もいます。それは、私のお父さん、お母さん、お兄さん（そういちろう）、妹さん（さきこ）、私のお父さんの娘さん（ヨーシのお母さん）、ヨーシのお父さんと妹さんの二人です。全員は１０人です！パーティーはどんな感じなのかまだわかりませんが、楽しみにしています！

昨日はたくさん観光しました。まず、江戸東京博物館に行きました。たくさん学んだかどうかわからないけど、
展示を見るのは面白かったです。江戸時代のレプリカがたくさんあり、面白かったです。でも、日本人の年上の人の隣で第二次世界大戦の展示に見るのはちょっと気持ち悪かったです。今、アメリカ人の若者は、日本とアメリカの歴史の関係についてあまり考えませんが、年上の人はどう思うかわかりません。

江戸東京博物館に行った後、相撲のトーナメントに見に行きました。日本人の大学生のようにみんなは相撲を見たことがありませんですた。すごく大きな場所で一番上の席から相撲を見ました。相撲は神道という宗教に関係があります。面白かったです！１５分くらいに試合は３０秒しかありませんでしたが、色々な儀式を見るのは楽しみました。

相撲が終わった後、浅草の仲見世通りに歩きました。遅くなったので、店はもうほとんど閉まっていましたが、きれいな神社を見たり、レストランで美味しいラーメンを食べたりすることが出来ました。

今日はホームステイの生活が始まるので、昨日の夜はみんなが簡単に一緒に喋って飲むチャンスなので、居酒屋に行って、飲み放題をしました。すごく楽しかったです！ホームステイの生活が始まったのに、オリエンテーションに出来た友達に絶対に会いたいです！虹の会に入ったら会えると思っています！

今回の投稿で日本語でいっぱい書きましたね！家族と英語がわかる友達のために英語で書きます〜！

I’ll write in English now for English speaking people reading this blog~!

Today I moved in with my host family (aaah!!!). Everything is still kind of overwhelming. I can’t believe I’m actually going to be living here for a year. Right now my host parents (idk how I should refer to them when I write in english? I guess otousan okaasan?) are cooking dinner. Basically I’ve only really talked to Otousan and he seems pretty cool. He’s very talkative which is good cause sometimes I have a hard time coming up with stuff to say. It’s funny because he’ll be explaining something in Japanese and then suddenly throw in an English word. Like he’ll be explaining how to get to the house by train and say the word “four minutes” or “train” or something. I don’t know if he thinks that using English helps me, but it’s not like he’s explaining the difficult words in English, just the simple ones. lol. It’s funny. I haven’t met my younger sister yet. I briefly met the brother, as he was walking down the hallway to the bathroom. We just said our names and “nice to meet you” but I guess we’ll talk more at the dinner tonight?

We’re having dinner pretty soon and after that is the welcome party and the whole family together. This family is huge because my otousan’s daughter is Youxi’s host mother so their whole family will come over. There’s lots of names to remember and how everyone’s related but I’m looking forward to being able to talk to everyone more tonight.

The house is really big which is cool, although I don’t know how to use the internet yet so I guess by the time you read this it may be the day after all of this is going down. I’m thinking of buying some things for the room, like a small lamp for my desk and a small mirror for makeup. I also need to ask my parents if it’s okay to put pictures and/or posters on the walls and stuff. I’m guessing it’s a no, cause it looks like easily peelable wallpaper, but we’ll see. Otousan said his house rules are basically like, contact him if you’re gonna be home late but otherwise you’re free. On the one hand it’s good that he’s lenient, but also I’m now paranoid of like accidentally messing something up that isn’t a “rule” but that he just didn’t think to tell me… so I’m trying to ask as many questions as possible and be really polite.

Yesterday I did a lot of sightseeing and stuff. We went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which was cool. I don’t know if I retained anything I learned really but it was cool to see the old stuff and models of things. It was kind of weird because there was a WWII exhibit and I was looking at it alongside a bunch of my grandparents’ generation Japanese people. I know people my age don’t really think about it so much but I don’t know what older generations think. After that we went to see a sumo tournament. Like most Japanese college age people none of us had ever seen sumo. I was interesting, aside from the fact that there was only like 30 seconds of fighting every 15 minutes, but the whole thing is tied to the Shinto religion and there’s lots of rituals in between the matches. Next, we went to Asakusa. It was really late so most of the shops were closed on the famous street there, but we got to see the famous shrine and stuff. I definitely wanna go back in the daytime. Finally we concluded the night by returning to Ikebukuro and going to an izakaya for nomihoudai (all you can drink) for the final hurrah before we all split off into our host families. Everyone had a really good time and I don’t know, my parents are reading this and probably don’t want to hear all the details about me drinking so I’ll just leave it as it was really fun. I hope I can still hang out with the friends I made during orientation even though we’re all split up now.

      

水族館、チキンの軟骨・Aquarium and Chicken Cartilage…

今日は最高でした！

今朝起きて、日本語の授業に行きました。詰まらなかったけど、日本語で話すことができてよかったです。そして、お昼に地震について発表を見に東京のどこかに行きました。面白かったですが、日本の地震は怖いと思います。そんな大きい地震を起こる可能性があるのは怖いですね。それから、池袋の水族館に行きました！日本の魚を、いろいろな特別な種類を見ました。ペンギンとsealも見ました。小さい水族館ですが、面白い魚を見たり、日本語で魚の名前を学んだりすることは、すごく楽しかったです。

日本で、チキンの軟骨を食べれると知っていますか？居酒屋で軟骨を注文することができます。普通です。今までそれが日本の一番驚いたことです。本当にびっくりしました。どんなチキンなのかを知らないで食べてみて、すぐ口から吐きました。textureが気持ち悪かったので、食べられませんでした。確かに日本で、食べられないものがあるので、気をつけなければならないかもしれないですね。

明日はホストファミリーについて説明をもらいます。どんなホストファミリーとか、どこに住んでいるとかの説明をもらいます。私は、英語があまり話せなくて、緩いホストファミリーが欲しいと言いましたが、そんなホストファミリーと合うかどうかわかりません。ちょっと緊張していますが、ホストファミリーに関連して本当に何でもいいと思います。このプログラムでのホストファミリーは全員が優しくて、日本と日本語について教えたいと聞いたことあるので安心しています。ホストファミリーについて説明をもらうのを楽しみにしています。

Did you know they eat just straight up cartilage in Japan? Like you know when you eat chicken and you like, don’t eat the cartilage? They actually straight up order it and eat it. I was at izakaya with Kei yesterday and I just let him order everything since all the chicken looked the same to me, and they put down this plate and Kei’s like, “I love this!” so of course I tried it and it was straight up CARTILAGE. Just cooked pieces of CARTILAGE. I couldn’t even eat it, I spit it out. It was like 10 pieces on a skewer. There was also skewers of just straight up SKIN. I can’t believe people can eat that!! Aside from ikura this is the only thing I actually physically have not been able to eat here. What the heck Japan!!! It comes from the idea of not wasting any part of the food I guess. But holy shit man.