Wow, a full week without blogging, that is the longest I’ve yet gone without a single post. In some ways I’m sorry for not writing to you all sooner, but to be honest I think I would have bored you if I had.
Due to testing at my school, the first three days consisted of me lying on the Kobayashi’s couch watching the Olympics, the movies Ironman, Pirates of the Caribbean I & II in Japanese, and breaking up the afternoons by going for long walks in the rice field filled countryside. It was a relaxing way to waste my days away, but unfortunately that’s precisely what I feel that I did. Thursday wasn’t much different. My school day consisted of the library, library, calligraphy, math where I read a book because they were returning the tests they’d just taken, library, and sitting at the fishery alone reading my book for two more hours due to even more test checking. Those were my classes throughout the day. Clearly my schedule has taken a serious hit ever since the seniors have stopped attending class. Their graduation ceremony will be held tomorrow, but for all of February and March I am spending nearly half of my day reading in the library.
This means I’ve gotten through a number of different novels. Thursday I read The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (did everyone know that it’s actually an assortment of stories and Mowgli and the Disney storyline is only the first part of it?!) and then on Friday I started the first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet after having read a different one last week. They really are exciting reading. I enjoy simply lying back and trying to use my brain in a way that isn’t trying to understand Japanese. Once again I feel as if I’ve hit a bit of a roadblock period in my language learning. I can tell that I’ve improved since moving in with the Kobayashi’s but it is still not up to the level that I wish it were at. I know that I should be more patient yet as I’ve stated before: it gets tiring constantly improving. The greatest challenge of learning a brand new language on exchange is that the more you improve, the more your host family, teachers, and friends upgrade their speech with you. When I first arrived they knew I understood very little so they used simpler language, I improved slightly so they stepped up again, and each time I make progress they keep upgrading and upgrading. I’ve recently hit the full extent of country dialect and it’s far from regular. More than once have I listened to a whole sentence by the Kobayashi’s grandmother and understand barely a fraction of it. She’ll laugh at my glazed over eyes and empty expression and then try to rephrase it (*Note: this doesn’t always work, she usually just switches from one idiom to the other, or one slang term to the next! The grandkids laugh and her and can usually point me in the right direction but it’s true, the elderly and young children, are certainly the hardest for me to understand.) Still, it is rewarding to look back on how far I’ve come but I can think of few challenges I’ve faced in my life that have left me so exhausted.
Luckily long days such as these always pass by and are replaced by exceedingly satisfying ones. Saturday was an exceptional day spent with the Kobayashi family driving down to the prefecture of Saitama just north of Tokyo. We went to the old city of Kawagoe that has a famous district built back in the Edo period and still maintains the same air of quaint shops, food stands, temples, shrines, architecture, and history. We walked, window-shopped, enjoyed different local specialties (I had grilled teriyaki pheasant and sweet potato dumplings), and enjoyed the day. Today, Sunday, is Hiroshi’s birthday and we went out to eat with some of the relatives in the evening. During the morning I went to a music concert but was back in time to celebrate Hiroshi’s birthday. A funny story, at dinner Hiroshi and Sumie (my host parents – who are really more like good friends rather than parental figures) were talking and Sumie wished him a happy 46th birthday. He looked at her and said, “Honey, what are you talking about I’m 45!” She laughed at him and said, “No you’re not! I just turned 46 last month, we’re the same age. Hiroshi, you’re already going crazy?” Everyone then started to make jokes about how old age was beginning to set in but Hiroshi looked at everyone and said, “This is a joke, right? Sumie, we’re 45.” He then proceeded to count backwards only to prove that they were in fact 45 years old. Sumie was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. She’d been going around for a whole month telling people that she was 46. Now she suddenly realized that she had gained a whole year of her life back. It meant for a good laugh and I’m guessing that Hiroshi enjoyed the whole exchange almost more than any of his presents or cards. I was left chuckling at my good luck; what a funny family!
I’ll try to upload some pictures of tomorrow graduation ceremony tomorrow and compare the ceremony to that which I experienced last May. I can already tell that it will be quite different. We’ll just have to wait and see how they compare.
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