March 3

Today was hina masturi, but it was not a very pretty one because despite forecasts of snow, it rained most of the time. I learned a bit of new Japanese from okaasan, but I regrettably forgot most of it. We were talking about the bread for breakfast and she said it was atsui, but I didn’t understand because it had just come out of the refrigerator. Apparently, atsui (in addition to meaning hot) means thick. She also taught me an onomatopoeia for food becoming hard (in reference to the sushi from Saturday), but I forgot it. ):

I was a little late catching my train, so I had to run, which wasn’t easy because my shoes became untied in the process. We started class with a kanji quiz, which was relatively easy. The rest of class was very long and I had a hard time paying attention.

After class, I ate my (hina matsuri) sushi and went to hanga class. I had a hard time carving a corvette on an 8x5-ish block. Class wasn’t really interesting. Afterward, I saw (thanks to my friend) that the Toyota tour for next week had an amendment; the assembily line has been stopped due to the economy, though the tour will go on. I wonder if it will still be interesting...

To get home, I had to run to my train again. Once there, a few Japanese ladies stared at me (maybe for running, maybe for my foreign appearance). Either way, I didn’t care very much. I was able to get home rather quickly (though it was raining considerably.

At home, I finished my homework for the week and helped okaasan with dinner. She told me again to talk more. Specifically, I guess I’m not making it clear if I like things or not. The truth is though, that I’m embarrassed to speak Japanese because I am so bad at it. Not to mention, okaasan and her family talks fast!

We had daikon and fish in miso sauce as well as gohan (with bamboo and chicken in it because it’s hina matsuri) and clear soup with flower-shaped fish-marshmallows (also because it’s hina matsuri). Okaasan gave me what looked like two pancakes stacked on top of eachother for dessert, but as it turns out, they had cream in the middle. It was almost too pretty to eat because it had a bird and a flower stamped on it. Dinner was pretty quiet. Ryoushin discussed okaasan’s trip a bit (I think she’s going to Tokyo to visit family) and showed me how to use the dishwasher.

After dinner, I watched excerpts from Departed (I want to see it now) on a game show with okaasan.