Home Sweet Home Stay

Ah, Sun weekday sun (日曜日), I woke up at like 8:50, which made for a short night, but that's okay. I packed the remainder of my stuff, stuffed my face with the remainder of my food, folded my futon and put it on the hall, took my
Sheets to the lobby, said my farewells to, well, Christina (everyone else was still sleeping D:), and signed out.

I had my luggage all set to be picked up from the lobby and looked outside and saw rain... I was like "Noooooooo," and I borrowed an umbrella (to keep from unpacking mine) from the seminar house and made my way downtown to school.

When I got there I stored my umbrella at the entrance of the CIE, praying no umbrella thieves were on the prowl today. I went upstairs and sat in a room for like, 2 minutes or so, before they came in and told me my host mom had asked if I was here yet (I actually watched her ask through the open doorway). So we went to a separate room with an interpreter and went over our agreement sheet.

More or less this sheet covered curfew, how to get into the house (with a key, someone will let me in, etc.), breakfast and dinner times, letting my parents know if I'll be late coming home or will miss a meal, shower usage, laundry, room cleanliness, pretty much everything. In fact, almost everything was the same as at home, except my mom could probably tell you I'm not the best at contacting her when I'll be late. We'll see if I learn from this experience. :)

Once it was all said and done we went downstairs and walked to Okaa-mom's car. (I'm just kidding, it's okaa-san.) She drove us to the same store I visited yesterday to buy me slippers, which are these super duper cute polar bear slippers!

Then we went home to meet Otou-san! He said he was hard of hearing and had some aches so that was why he wasn't at school. His English seems to be a little bit better than Okaa-san's. (He probably knows as much or more than I know of Japanese).

Their house reminds me a lot of my grandparents house. :) It's super cute. The first thing we did was sit and eat lunch. Okaa-san brought me an energy drink to have while she cooked. She made spaghetti! It was really good! It wasn't tomato sauce, and had this squishy meat-y pieces in it. It was seriously really good! I think it's funny how it was my last home cooked meal in the U.S., and my first home cooked meal in Japan.

We also had I guess cups of sauce and thin noodles to put in the sauce, that was good too! In addition to these we had grapes that were massive and dark purple or blue in color. Their skin was really sour so after watching Otou-San peel like 6, I tried and it made it a bit less sour.

After lunch we went to seminar house 3 to get my luggage and drop off my umbrella. We thanked seminar house Okaa-san, and returned with my very large, very heavy luggage. Okaa-san and I carried it up the tiny steep stairs together, and she showed me how to work the lights and extremely confusing air conditioner remote in my room. I know how to turn it off and I know how to turn it on and that's all that is important. :) After that I set about unpacking for the afternoon and by unpacking I mean mostly messaging friends back home while occasionally getting up to unpack, in between the modern warfare between my roommate, a mosquito, and I. Okaa-san also brought me two matcha Popsicles filled with red beans. They were really good.

Around 7:00 Okaa-san came up to get me so we could go get Unagidon (Eel) for dinner. I wrote unagi as one of my favorite foods on my application so I was excited. Especially because I couldn't really find any in the supermarket other than stuff that needed to be prepared.

Okaa-san and I went to a place called Yoshinoya and got our unagidon. It was VERY good and delicious. We also bought some to bring home to Otou-San. The restaurant had these buttons you could press and the waiter would come to you. It's not like I know that because I accidentally pressed it or anything.

Before going home we stopped at a super market called Raifu (ライフ/Life) and bought some bread to eat in the evening and for breakfast. We watched a historical drama about Tokugawa Ieyasu becoming the Shogun and those who opposed him. It was hard to follow but cool, and I mostly knew who was who.

After the show I took my shower and used the shampoo Okaa-san had pointed at. I'm like 30% positive it said SPF somewhere on there and I'm low key sad because I totally got sunburn on my head earlier this week. Also, as an aside, it smelled like cough drops.

After my shower I sat down with Okaa-san and started writing this post. She poured me some wheat (barley?) tea for my room tonight if I get thirsty and wake up at night. That seams really nice. Then I worked with her to figure out the wifi password. It was a familiar feeling, except every menu I entered was in Japanese...

So after this long day, I now know what it feels like to be spoken to in a language, and surrounded by, a language I don't understand, without any English to fall back on. It's kinda hard. There'll be lots of looking up words.

-The Amerika-Jin