NanachanのV！: New Home =)

I’m finally getting used to my new home. ^^ My house is awesome; it has a genkan (entranceway), of course, to take your shoes off when you enter the house, as is custom. It’s also quite modern. It has an “aircon” (air conditioner), though they only air condition a room or two at a time because otherwise it would waste electricity. (I think I mentioned this before) There are two floors, which is a bit more rare in Japan than it is in the states; a lot of homes are just one level. The toilet in my house is also like the ones we had in the hotel. It washes, massages, and dries. Apparently there are also some that make a large rushing water noise when you’re going so that no one can hear you but I haven’t seen on yet. =P I think that’s more of a public bathroom thing. Though the rest of the house is modern, my room is decked out with traditional tatami mats and shoji sliding screens. It’s so cool! Two of my walls actually open up behind the shoji screens; they have automated covers that can open and close (kind of like a garage door), which goes to the outside and lets in a great breeze at night! ^^

There are also some interesting house customs worth mentioning. For example, everyone takes a bath at night and one after another. There’s a shower, but it’s located in the same room/area as the bath. There’s no separation like a stall or anything between the two like we would have in our typical bathrooms. Also, everyone uses the same bathtub water. Which is why before you enter a bath of any type in Japan, you clean yourself first outside the tub and then go in and soak. Weird, right? While on the topic of bathrooms, you have to put on a special pair of bathroom slippers when using the toilet. Everyone uses the same pair; they’re just the bathroom slippers. Subsequently, they prefer guys to pee sitting down. Because apparently when they go standing up they leave residue on the floor, and Japanese people can detect it somehow? o_O

Japanese homes have really thin walls. Even as I sit here now, I can here my host sister from upstairs, and the next-door neighbors talking. That’s why you shouldn’t listen to music or anything very loudly late at night; it’ll keep the neighbors up. Also, Japanese people clean. A lot. My host mom even cleans the dog when he comes in from outside: paws, butt, mouth, everything. Wiping paws I’m used to. But wiping his butt? What service.

I regrettably do not help much with the chores around the house. I should do more! But my host mom doesn’t ask much of me because she’s so lovely! But I try helping with the cooking a bit, which was fun, and then when they ate it they were like “Oh you’re such a good cook!” When really all I had done was mixed what was already in the pan while my host mom added spices to make it taste better.

I don’t do much with laundry either (really feeling guilty at this point). But a note to mention about laundry is that Japan doesn’t use dryers. They always hang all their clothes on a line on a balcony or in the yard or something.

This Monday was the first time I went to school! So my host mom took me part way and then we were left on our own. So I basically walk 10 minutes to the train station, ride the train for 10~ minutes and then walk up to school from there which takes like 15. My total commute is about 35 minutes which is not too bad! I got a bit lost the first time coming back but now I’ve got it down pat! (Yoshi! – No I don’t mean the character, Japanese people exclaim Yoshi pronounced Yoush when they mean like “alright!”) Anyway…

School is really good so far. We had placement tests the first two days that were based mainly on Kanji and grammar. Even in the “speaking interview” we had to read off a paper out loud. The different placements go from A to E; A being the lowest level and E being the highest/most difficult. My Kanji is super weak so I was put in D class. It’s more of a review at the moment but I don’t want to miss anything kanji wise so I’m going to stick with it and hopefully be placed higher by next semester where they separate us further into different reading/writing and speaking classes.

In addition to Japanese class in the morning (9:30-11:30 or 12:30 depending upon the day), we have Japanese studies courses in the afternoon. I had signed up for Human Rights in Japan, Japanese Linguistics, and the Joint Seminar, which doesn’t count for anything at Pitt but allows you to interact with regular Konan students. Linguistics was of course, really interesting. I love the topic and the teacher was engaging. Though he will have difficulty accommodating people who have taken no linguistics courses with those that have taken up to 3 or 4! Human Rights I think just isn’t my cup of tea. It was very political science oriented and I personally cannot pay attention to that sort of thing so I think I may try to switch to a different class.

Then after classes we (the exchange students, that is) usually hang about school chatting or go out into Okamoto, which is the town right near our school. One day after school I went to my friend Jessica’s house, who is from England. It was her first time going home alone because her mom usually drives her so we promptly got lost. We rode the bus part way up the mountains (her house is more up there) but when we got off we went up the hill instead of down the hill. And then she called her mom to ask her where we should go but just as she was telling us, Jess’s cell phone lost power and we didn’t have enough time to copy her mom’s number into my phone so we asked at a local shop. I think they’re meant to show people where to go because they had a pretty detailed map. We were like all the way up the hill from where we should have been! We were exclaiming how it was so far that the guy who worked there actually drove us there… Alright, I know. I was completely freaked out to get in a car with some random stranger. A guy, none the less. But I was armed with mace and knife at the time, and I had Jess with me so… Well he took us straight to her house. So maybe people here aren’t always as creepy as those in America. Worked out OK, but not an experience I wish to repeat. Anyway when we got to her house we took a tour around her house. Her house is a mansion style. Which in Japan is like an apartment. They call it a mansion (マンション). Apparently, they had given Jess the girls’ room so they were now all sleeping together in one smaller room on futons! Japanese people are so accommodating! We played with Jess’s sister, Ayana chan (9) when she got back. She had run all the way to the station to find us and lead us home but we must have missed each other due to the car business (poor Ayana!). It was really fun! We played DS games and watched Japanese kids shows (which are adorable). Then I had to go by the time Jess’s mom and younger sister had gotten back. Her youngest sister is just 3 though and she is SO frickin cute. Her name is Mai-chan. She would shuffle her feet along when she walked and then do really cute things like pick up a piece of trash, hold it in front of her and yell “GOMIIII!” (“Trash!”) and then quickly place it in the bin. Oh my, I just said bin. That’s the other thing is I’m picking up Jess’s accent. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it when I try (I can speak the Queen’s English now!) but sometimes random British words will just pop out.

I think when I was at Jess’s house I got a bunch of mosquito bites. We walked outside for a while so I’m thinking maybe that’s where I acquired my collection… Mosquitoes in Japan are DRIVING me NUTS. I must have like 7 or 8 of them by now. Ahhhhh!

I also burned my arm on my straightener the other day. And so today at school I kind of scratched some of the skin off with my nail so it came open and it kind of hurt so I asked for a band-aid, right? Well they took me down to the infirmary and told me they “can’t” give me a band-aid for a burn so they put this hole waterproof skin thing on me that’s 10x the size of a band-aid and looks like I’ve just been in recent battle. All I wanted was a band-aid and maybe some Neosporin which I had at my house just not with me! Arg! This bandage apparently releases water or something out of the wound and helps it heal faster but we’ll see…Curse you Japan!

My host mom is an English teacher for kids aging 4-15. So today we had a student who was 14 years old and I got to help out! It was so much fun. We were correcting her homework and there were many words that she only knew one meaning of which made her answers wrong. Like “left” as only the directional left instead of the past form of “to leave.” Things we never think about as native speakers that were interesting to see.

There was this one story about a big tomato festival in her book where everyone throws tomatoes at each other. Afterwards, the streets are cleaned and then everyone does other fun things like eating, going to parades, dancing, etc. She had read "streets" as “sheets” and "parades" as “paradise.” So when she was reading it she had this image of everyone dressing up in sheets and dancing around in paradise throwing tomatoes at each other! “Paradise! Paradise!” XD

Good times in Nippon! And now I’m all caught up so I’m gonna hurry off to school!

Also this amusing comic that I saw in my text book: