April 11

I haven’t been posting for a while because things seem so busy! I will try to make some sense of the last few days.

I went to Kakuozan with Nee and DonWong because it was Kakuozan matsuri. I wanted to go back to the bookstore that we had done the interview at because I thought I wanted to buy some of the Russian Lenin pins. It was really hot!!! It seems that the day it turned to June was the day the cold weather ended and the Summer heat began. At one point, I was worried about getting sunburn. D: I walked from Nagoya Daigaku eki (past Nagoya Daigaku, which I probably should have chosen over Nanzan judging by its campus’s resemblence to State).

After walking around the Kakuozan street to the jinja (which was filled with non-Japan-teki peddlers for the matsuri) I met up with Nee and we subsequently found DonWong and one of our other classmates. We walked around the booths (the peddlers recoginzed me as a foreinger and the girl who came by earlier) and up to the jinja. It was really pretty because the cherry blossoms were falling (like snow). On the way back down to the main street, I tried to make a final decision on a used furisoda (kimono with really long sleeves) I wasn’t sure about buying. It resulted in a kimono-clad Japanese girl getting the stall owner to put it on me. They kept telling me it looked good, but I was worried about the spots on it, so I told them, and they told me no one would notice and that was why it was cheap. I wasn’t sold. d: When it became three-thirty, I headed to the bookstore to check out the pins (the owner didn’t recognize me and I wasn’t sold on the pins either) and headed home.

I had to be home by five because ryoushin were taking me to a traditional Japanese restaurant and hanami. I didn’t know that that meant a fancy restaurant, (and okaasan didn’t suggest I change) so I felt a bit underdressed when I got there. We had delicous bento-style dentoutekinatabemono. There were about a billion small dishes, most of which I didn’t really know the contents of. What I could figure out was; a small scrambled egg, nigiri sushi, sashimi, greens, green mochi-like something, a slice of sweet potato, a fish, rice, water-like soup with a shrimp cake in it, dango, the egg-chicken thing, and some kind of seafood salad. I wanted to eat it all really slowly, but ryoushin eat fast and I thought it would be really awkward in public to eat by myself for much time afterward. I had a bit of trouble figuring out what to do with the soy sauce for the sashimi because the dish has what looks like a spout, so I figured you pour the soy sauce. Luckily, I gave okaasan an inquiring look and she told me to do it the opposite way. I guess the ‘spout’ is so you can put your hashi in the dish horizantal to the table. The sashimi dish was triangular and tall too, so it was really hard to get the food out. Okaasan decided that it was also the time to tell me that I was holding my chopsticks wrong, so I had 3x the difficulty trying to eat the sashimi (not to mention she told me not to pull it apart, which happened as an unfortunate coincidence of the meat under its own weight) as both of my parents tried to teach me on the spot. We had green tea ice cream with sakura mochi and strawberries on top for dessert, which melted too fast for the flat ‘spoons’ we were given. The dinner was delicious, but unbearably awkward.

Afterward, we went to the nearby river bank to look at the (unfortunately partially-spent and unlit) sakura. Okaasan was sad about it (I felt very bad too). She had to be at the hospital with Otousan or other engagements so much lately, that she hasn’t gotten to see the sakura this year. We did encounter a really friendly corgey which loved my host father and me (the first living thing in the pets/kids category since I got here that hasn’t been frightened by me). I think it made him really happy since he seemed to love his former corgey.