Learing Japanese

Whew, learning Japanese is hard. I keep a piece of paper in my pocket all the time with vocabulary written on it but words are coming slowly. It's hard to remember them, and all the cultural rules, and my house rules, and all the kanji. I think I pick up a little bit of each of it. I have to keep asking my host mother about the same words over and over. She's very patient though and is extremely willing to chat with me. She talks with me the most, because her English is the best and she has the most patience for it. I usually have to say the same thing several times in several different ways before it can be understood. I'll say, "Should I last room clean after making a bath?" This will confuse her, because I confused the words for first and last, and because I have the word order wrong. So we'll together figure out what I mean and either I'll remember how to say it properly or she'll tell me. You mean "Should I clean my room first and take a bath afterwards?" Yes.

My host family is really great, and they let me participate in everything, almost everything. My host father is difficult to talk to because he speaks quickly and uses lots of words I don't know. He usually throws me to the mom. But I like listening to his conversation. I find it very satisfying to try to follow along. I can understand almost nothing but then I'll pick out one workd and feel very good about myself. My host brothers are great too. They're very active, but also study very hard. For hours every day. Whenever Ryohei walks anywhere, he dibbles with an invisible basketball. Very funny. He and Daichi are absolutly obsessed with basketball. But they're very generally athletic. I was shocked at how fast they caught onto Frisbee. They left last night with Katsunori (host father) for the basketball game in a faraway city. I didn't go because the team booked a bus and didn't have room to take on an extra, unnecessary person on short notice. My host mother is gone tonight. She's at a orchestra rehearsal far away. She thought it best if I stay behind at the house, so she asked her daughters to come up and house sit. Mostly to cook for me. Her daughters speak no English. They know a few spot words but that's it. I can still converse and it's very exciting.

Today I practiced getting to my high school. I did it all on my own, biked to the train station, caught a train to Ushiku, then found my way to the high school. I had no idea where to go so I asked the bike attendence man where the high school was. I realized after I asked that while I may be able to ask where something is, it's very hard to understand directions beyond, first, second, intersection, left and right. Even then it's still pretty hard. So he had me wait for a student to come by and I followed him to the school. Then I rode around the school and got a better look at the facilities. They're athletic fields are mud/gravel instead of grass. I guess it's easier to maintain that way but I would imagine it hurts more. I also saw no track, neither indoor nor out. Running is one of those sports you can practice anywhere, but I wonder what they do for meets. The baseball team was out practicing, and they were funny to watch. They were doing chants. Like something out of a karate film. It is Japan.

Then I rode around Ushiku for a while. It's a very nice place. If Tsuchiura is like Evanston then Ushiku is like Oswego (where my cousins live, subdivision). It was much more spread out and clearly planned and built all at once. It was still dense, like all of Japan, but there was more open space, and some really nice parks. I sat down at one for a while and watched some little children play. Then I went back to the station and caught at train for Tsuchiura. I rode around Tsuchiura for a while, without any particular destination in mind. Then I decided to go to Kojin Park. I would ask where it was, get a general direction, head that way for a while and ask again. It is very effective and I soon found myself in the middle of an old castle ruin. Cool. I went home and tried on my school uniform which, surprisingly, fits. They're going to have to do something special about my shoes, but at least my pants are long enough. They're scratchy and dorky. After lunch we picked up Aiko (host sister) at the train station and I went for a long run down to the mouth of the river by my house. It was really cool and next to the path at the lake were some swans grazing. I was suddenly very disapointed I hadn't brought a camera.

Every day I notice something new about this place. It's the smallest differences that are the most interesting to me. They drive on the left side of the road, but something I didn't expect would spawn from that is that they're bicycle breaks are reversed. The back break is the left hand. That throws me off. And bicycles are treated more like pedestrians. They're expected to ride more slowly, without any helmet, and not in the street. The emphasis is on transportation, not recreation so all the bikes are fitted with baskets and they feel very much like granny bikes. At the grocery store, they don't have carts and baskets. They have small carts that baskets fit into. They shopping is done on a nightly, or bi nightly basis, not every week, so the carts don't need to be huge. And all four wheels swivel, not just the front two. This makes it easier to navigate corners and then the grocery store aisles can be closer together. The recycling is very efficient here and the garbage men won't pick up large items. You've expected to separate combustibles from non combustibles. The lack of space and conservation of energy and resources is an overpowering theme in everyday activities.