February 19

I started the day out better than some. I had a normal morning (even caught the first train) for the most part. Okaasan said I seemed more genki today than usual and asked if I had slept well to get that way. I didn’t see it, but it was a nice start to the day. When I saw my friend on the train from Yagoto, I tried to stick to my no-English resolution. It worked for the most part until lunch time.

Japanese class was kind of interesting, but for some reason, despite my genki start, I got really tired half of the way through our four-class marathon. The first was started with Japanese tonguetwisters, so it was fun. Second, we had to start writing a letter in the computer lab (I much prefer the Japanese input system on my mac to the one on the college computers). It didn’t get very far before we had to head off to the third class. There, we just read the passage from the textbook. It was mostly boring (which might have been part of the reason I was so tired).

Afterward, I headed to Valor’s for my daily pan. I’m running out of interesting things to try though, so tomorrow’s lunch will probably be onigiri or something similar. When I got back to school to eat lunch, I decided to read the paper to see what was up in the US (and the world in general). It was here that my all-Japanese resolution broke down because David came in to read the paper too and he brought up some interesting conversation I didn’t have the vocabulary to conduct in Japanese. I’ll have to figure out something else to give up.

I spent a lot of time carving my next hanga (because I really didn’t want to do my other homework or go home). There’s something fulfilling about it.

I got home around six because I made some stupid mistakes on the way home. I left school around 4:30 or something similar, but I decided to accompany my friend to Nagoya Daigaku eki. This was a mistake (for saving time) because she takes a long (as compared to the direct route) to the eki to avoid the hills. It was an interesting walk, but long. Once we got to the eki (and the platform), I forgot that my friend rides the chikatetsu in the opposite direction, so I waited for her train (and missed mine). I had to wait a bit for the next one, which wasn’t that bad, but once I got on, I thought I was riding from my normal stop, which means that I transfer at the next station. Wrong! I got off at the next station, which was my normal station, so I had to wait again for the same train to come by so that I could ride it for one station. That took a bit, and when I finally did make my transfer, it was to an akaike train, which takes the right route for me to go home, but stops its service one eki before mine. I had to wait (again) for the toyotashi line so I could ride it for one length to nisshin. When I got home, I was happy to not have to ride trains and climb hills any more.

Okaasan made a variation of chicken cordonbleu today. She made one for me with no cheese (just tomatoes in the middle and breading on the outside) since the general belief is that I don’t like cheese in the least. It was delicious. At dinner, we talked about the tongue twisters, my tour on Saturday (ryoushin were surprised that the college would have an event on the weekend), and the cooking class at the gaikokusai center on the next Saturday. It seems my communication is getting better with my family, but they’re pretty quiet too, so I find it kind of funny that they want me to talk but they don’t seem to have much to say themselves. For dessert, okaasan gave me a tokyo banana (apparently, they are too sweet for her ): ) and green tea. I think she was worried I don’t like it because I drank it slowly (it’s freaking hot when it comes out of the teapot) and she said she had other kinds of tea. I guess I just need to speak up more, but I get tongue-tied when I speak to my family and I feel so stupid when I can’t speak Japanese well.

After dinner, I used the internet (hayaku, as okaasan has recently started requesting) and we watched a cooking show. They made corn dogs and I told okaasan that I had liked them a lot as a kid. Apparently, if you scramble your eggs with marshmallows, they will be bigger and more pillow-like. Sweetened eggs still creep me out. I’ve had them in bento and sushi, but there’s something weird about sugar instead of pepper when it comes to eggs. They did have Shinichi Osawa playing as the music on the show (which no Japanese person seems to recognize) so I was hooked. There also seemed to be Franz Ferdinand music in a car commercial, so I got my American fix.

I used the internet really quickly one other time to send an e-mail to myself, and I found Okaasan watching an old black-and-white American movie with Japanese subtitles. I wanted to ask her about it, but I had things to take care of.