Homestay day one, singing rocks, and oral squid

Last night a small group of us (along with our residential director) hopped on the subway and went down to Sanjo (which is a district of Kyoto). We went to a sushi restaurant, and one of the other girls and I had far too much fun reading the menu in English. I don’t know who they got to translate their menu, but I’m pretty sure that they didn’t mean to offer “oral squid.” Then again, it was a kind of strange restaurant, because they appeared to be selling “bacon” nigiri…made of horse meat. (One of the other girls tried horse meat sashimi and said it wasn’t too bad, but she never wants to eat it again, because it was still bleeding, and that was kind of gross.) Meanwhile, I had a rather unpleasant surprise when I discovered that the nigiri was made with wasabi underneath the fish, so I didn’t know that it was there until I bit into it. (Needless to say, there was lots of coughing and choking and chugging green tea on my part. Despite my love of spicy things, I have no tolerance for wasabi.) Fortunately, it turned out that you could order everything on the menu “sabi nuki” (without wasabi), so I got some saba, which was amazingly delicious.

After that, two of the other students and I wandered off to get school supplies. Once we’d picked up notebooks (and listened to the store’s Father’s Day song (Thank you, Daddy! Thank you…Daddy!) about fourteen thousand times), we met up with the rest of the group and got bubble tea before heading back to the subway (where we were serenaded by a guy with a guitar who apparently thought he was singing in English, although you could have fooled us).

And then I did homework, because I am a masochist. If you’ve ever wondered how to say “National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” it’s 高速道路交通安全局. (Our first article is about the Toyota recall.)

I think there must be something about Japan that makes me wake up far too early, ‘cause I got up at 5:30 this morning. (That’s not even properly morning. That’s more like the mythical hour between college students going to bed and high school students waking up.) My roommate was still unconscious, and the room had this bizarre feature where you couldn’t turn on any of the lights unless you put your room key in this special slot…in which case the main lights in the room turn on and stay on, so I wound up using my flashlight in the bathroom. That flashlight has been surprisingly useful so far, actually. So, thanks, Mom.

After breakfast, we all went downstairs and waited awkwardly for our host families to show up. Mine was actually the first to show up, which was both good (because I didn’t have to wait terribly long) and bad (because everyone else got to see me trip over my luggage and fail at simple Japanese phrases). And before you say, “You couldn’t have failed that badly at simple Japanese phrases,” my host mom asked me whether I spoke Japanese or not. I have been studying for four years. FOUR. YEARS. AUGH. Seriously, when it comes to speaking, I curl up and die inside a little bit, and everything comes out in staccato bursts of ungrammatical, incoherent Japanese. UGH. Fortunately, she was really nice about my total inability to form a complete sentence and didn’t throw me out on the side of the road.

It turns out that my host family’s house is not only really close to Doshisha, it’s on the same street as Doshisha. And they run a restaurant (right below the house) which made it onto a list of the top 100 restaurants in Kyoto. How cool is that?

Anyway, so far I’ve met the mother in the family and the younger of the two boys (and said hello to the father, but haven’t really had a conversation with him yet). The mom’s really nice, and the kid is super cute but very shy. He hasn’t said more than about ten words to me. Mostly he’s just been hiding behind chairs and grinning at me when he thinks I’m not looking. HMM, THIS REMINDS ME OF SOMEONE. OH WAIT, IT’S TOTALLY LIKE MY LITTLE BROTHER.

After lunch (which was totally delicious and there were these swoon-worthy pickles with ginger that I now know how to make…in theory) the younger brother and I walked over to a shrine complex nearby, which was awesome. There was a rock there that had one of the sacred ropes tied around it (to mark it as a kami) because apparently it had started singing the national anthem. At least, that’s what the sign said. I took a bunch of pictures, so once I figure out why the SD card from my camera won’t fit in my computer (even though it’s the right size…I’m seriously confused) I’ll try to upload some of those.

Anywhosen, I should get back to my massive pile of homework. So…many…kanji! Also, I need a three minute anecdote that says something about my personality and I’m completely drawing a blank. Hopefully I’ll think of something before my presentation tomorrow…

Random facts:

There are female boy scouts in Japan. You learn something new every day.

A lot of the other students who had done homestays told me that they wound up having to deal with a lot of weird American stereotypes. I haven’t run into any yet…except that apparently all Americans shower in the morning.

オパル、お前の男って？静雄くんはそれを知っているのかい？絶対に私を選ぶよ。お前は痛みが嫌いだそうだから。