Not Much to Write About

I find myself having less and less to write about as time goes on. I suppose that’s why I’ve blogged much less frequently lately. Well, I’m also pretty embarrassed about my English at this point. I’ve forgotten a lot. Usually when it comes to grammar sentences either sound right in my head or they don’t. I never really learned the rules of English grammar, not until the SAT at least. But I’ve found myself unable to form grammatically correct sentences in English recently. I tell people I’m semi-fluent in two languages.

I went to the Ibaraki Prefectural Track Meet last week and have had testing this week so I haven’t had any classes in recent memory. If it were up to me things would stay this way until I left. I am so done with school. I finally found a new way to study Japanese that I enjoy and the close proximity of my departure date has lit a fire in me similar to the way deadlines inspire creativity. Learning Japanese when I want to is fun and after a whole year of trial and error I have a good system that works well. I figured out that I need to change methods every few months to keep from going crazy. Like with word cards. From about November to February I devoured flash cards like cupcakes but now I can’t stand the sight of them. So I’ve got the learning stuff down but I had to go through a rather long period of not doing anything. Apparently this upset my host mother significantly because we had a small confrontation last night about it.

I feel very fortunate to be with this host family for two reasons. There are more than two reasons but the two that come to mind are: 1 people tell me when other people are angry and 2 they talk out their problems. Deciphering Japanese emotions is like interpreting modern art. Everyone has a different opinion and it may or may not be the intended expression. But lucky Megumi told me, “Mom’s mad at you.” The ultimate reason was that I came home later than she thought I was going to and she waited for me in the house all day. But the underlying cause was that she doesn’t think I’m trying hard enough at learning Japanese. We worked it out though. At one point she suggested that maybe I should just go home early if I’m not going to study, which sent all sorts of warning bells off in my head. That’s what Watanabe-san said to me over and over again. If you don’t do things my way why don’t you just go home? I still don’t think we see eye-to-eye but I like this family and things are working out well. Plus I have less than four weeks with this family so things can’t get too tense.

I played in Tokyo with Marianne on Sunday. We saw a movie called The Crows II, which was a solid two hours of teenage boys fighting. Marianne was dying to see it. I find it somewhat annoying how much attention I still attract just from being a foreigner. It’s not like they’ve never seen one before. I don't resent them for it though because I also find myself gawking at white people. It’ll be nice to be back in America where people don’t stare at me all the time. Marianne and I tend to get a lot of strange looks when we’re together because we come across as a couple. The only thing that’s missing is holding hands. That’s about all the PDF that happens here. When it does it usually means that the hand-holders are sleeping together. I’m pretty careful to avoid contact with other people. It’s just not done. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone in any of my host families hug one another, with the exception of Momiji. Babies and old people are always the exception. When I asked Ishy last week what the biggest difference he notices in students who come back from America or Australia he said, “they hug me.”