Naka Yasumi (Semester Break)

(electronic dictionary = life saver [especially at 2 am and you just want to finish your homework and go to bed])

Everyone here is saying they thought they were going to lose weight when they came to Japan. While you can eat very healthy here if you want, it's not that easy. Most affordable restaurants serve either Ramen noodles or some type of curry, which is about the equivalent of a liquified fast food meal on rice. It's delicious, but I don't think your heart is supposed to hurt after you eat something, you know? Just joking, but at times the food selection here can feel surprisingly limited - most likely because we just don't know what is actually going on with the food situation here. The picture is of a meal bought at a combini store. A small cup of miso soup, rice, deep fried shrimp, and the true source of power and inspiration for a nation of 120 million people: curry.

The other night my host father's younger brother, two friends, and the host father's grandparents came to visit for a few days. The house now has 12 people living in it. It's really great actually - so far every night the adults sit in the kitchen and make alot of food, drink alot of beer and sake, and laugh and laugh and laugh...Last night I hung around and tried speaking with a guy named Toshige San. The first time I met him he was wearing a blonde wig. He is always making jokes and knows how to make anyone laugh. He is also very good at calligraphy.

The pictures are of the front of the house, and the one of the spider is a big spider that has taken over a section of the backyard.








One thing I often heard in my Japanese classes at KU is that Japanese has no cuss words. haha.

Tashige San has been teaching me many very colorful phrases in Japanese. Well, they are actually pretty tame compared to American standards, but it still never ceases to make the host family laugh when Sam and I say one of the words. Of course they are also adamant about telling us several times that we shouldn't use those words in public. Actually it's perfectly acceptable to use these words when speaking about yourself, but direct, confrontational speech is usually avoided in Japanese culture. That's not to say it doesn't exist because it certainly does, but usually people are a little more tactful with their insults.








The kids in the family like to play video games. They also like bringing their friends home after school. Then the friends try to talk with us in super fast Japanese, and when we say something, their eyes get really big and they run around and laugh and yell. As far as I can tell, that is the most common reaction the foreign students here receive from elementary school kids when we say something to them in Japanese. It makes your heart warm up, and feel thankful to see such a lovely display of pure innocent curiosity.








Last night, someone had the idea that Toshige San should write Sam and my name in Kanji (Chinese characters). That created a family unified effort to take the sounds of our names, and try to match them up with kanji of the same sounds that when put together, have a desirable meaning. Once again, the electronic dictionary pulled through. My name in Kanji, at least that picked by Toshige San, means I am a world traveller.



There have been some very interesting things written about power lines in Japan, but I'll save that for another time.

Oh, I put up a picture of the Japanese dictionaries written by Dr. Makino (see the previous post). It also shows my new haircut. My hair became long enough to donate it to lochs for love, so I thought why not - getting a hair cut in a foreign country in a foreign language is a fun time.

So tomorrow is the end of the first semester of this program. We've covered five chapters in four weeks. That's the same amount of material a Japanese class at KU covers in a semester. Tomorrow we have a three hour exam. I am about ready to collapse on my computer right now my brain and body are so tired...but exactly one hour after the exam ends, a group of five students and I will be a bus heading to Sapporo for a few days. Pictures to come...