February 25

Today was a bit interesting. Okaasan began to make scrambled (yaki) eggs for me, but when it came to putting them in the pan, she asked me to take over. She had set the oven too high though, so I made kogetamago, as far as I can tell. I tried to finish breakfast in time to catch my train, but I ended up having a hard time finding my kasa and had to change shoes, so I became a bit late for it. I was worried when okaasan went up to my room to get the kasa for me because the room is a bit messy (it looks more messy than it is though because the papers from studying are spread on the floor).

On the way to the train, it was raining pretty hard, but a lot of business men were running, so I jumped on the bandwagon and ran with them. I almost got run over by a porsche half of the way through the street after the crosswalk ended, but I stayed in the median and waited, so I was fine. When I had crossed, I followed a student’s example of running to the actual eki, and was able to beat the train to the station. When I got on though, I was really out of breath, so everyone looked at me on the train.

At school, I tried to study for the exam, but I thought it was kind of futile to study at the last minute, so I let the time pass until the exam began. It was in that passing time that I realized I had not turned in my kanji homework (though everyone else had).

In class, we had the mid-term. It was six pages in all. When I got to the end of the bunpou shiken, I realized I had forgotten to study da and de aru patterns, so I think I messed that (the last) section up a bit. The yomimono wasn’t very bad, but some of the questions were confusing, so there is a lot of margin for error.

After the exam, I went to Valor as usual, ate lunch with my friends, and used the internet for about an hour. Two people asked me if I was alright (mentioning that I looked down recently) in that time frame and I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with me.

So, I tried to study for the oral exam this afternoon, and I discovered Japanese radio. First, there was this station that was teaching Chinese in Japanese. Of course, the chinese was over my head, but I was relieved to understand about 90% of the Japanese explanation. You can also learn other languages on that station such as; Russian. As far as music is concerned, it seems that there is a mix of Japanese and English pop and rock (almost 50-50). I heard some Japanese Ska and an American rock song that was pretty great. I’m hoping I can somehow figure out who I’m listening to in Japanese and buy cheap CD’s at BookOff. We’’ll see...

Okaasan made delicious dinner for us tonight. It wasn’t curry (as she made clear) but it was another thick meat sauce over rice. I can’t believe how many dishes I could brush off but am now growing to like in Japan. She also made a yogurt and mayo sauce for salad, which had little flavor, so she just put miso in it and it was delicious. She told me she admires farmers because they only get to harvest once a year. We also talked about sushi shops and how seasonal the catch is, how expensive it is, and that she worries when she goes to the really fresh sushiya’s because she doesn’t know which are well-priced or not. I told her about the tabehodai and she wants to go. The only problem is, I don’t know if I can invite her. I will talk to Mike tomorrow...

For dessert, okaasan gave me manjuu (bean paste in a steamed bun). I love it! It looks like mochi, but instead of being chewy, it’s more like bread. Okaasan said she doesn’t like cleaning up (katazukeru no ga kirai) but she loves cooking because it’s so creative. I hope I will be able to cook once for my host family, but I really don’t want to waste their time if I mess up.