It's been too long!

Ung, I suck at updating. I've been putting this off for days now. Here we go.

I think my host family is rich. Or at least QUITE well-off. Reasons:

1: They live in a western-style house.
2: Fruit here is heinously expensive; strawberries are about 400 yen (roughly $4) for a little package of about twelve. My host family has strawberries at breakfast every day.
3: My mom is a housewife; she has no part-time job like many women.
4: We went to Osaka to meet one of their daughters on Saturday. While there, we went to this hub/mall of all these really expensive brand-name shops, like Bvlgari, Gucci, and the like. My dad bought a wallet there, and my mom decided he needed a sweater, too. The cheapest wallet I saw was 12,000 yen.
5: In Osaka, we went to this expensive Italian restaurant, and they would buy one plate of something, and everyone would share. The plates kept coming, and there were five of us total. There was SO much food.
6: And my family has two rather large dogs who require a lot of care.
7: And they have a huge, beautiful TV.

So! They're rich. Aiee.

Risotto, some kind of cheesy rice that came in an ENTIRE BLOCK OF CHEESE.

The front of the house!

Cheru's many outfits! My host mom made the necklace.
She kept saying, "Go-jasu!" (~gorgeous!~)

I went shopping the other day and actually found clothes that fit! Just a few. I was proud. Although using changing rooms in Japan is very difficult, at least where I went. The rooms were just standing there, in the open, and the door really just covered my shoulders to my shins. I very nearly felt like I was stripping for all of Japan to see. Right now, really loose shirts with lots of layers are really popular, but I've found that this kind of clothing doesn't look good if you've got boobs. I've got boobs. So I was hard-pressed to find a shirt that doesn't look silly on me. I also found a cute little skirt, and by little, I mean little. It's longer than a lot of girls' skirts, though, so I'm lucky I found it. Seriously, girls either wear short-shorts or teeny skirts. These are also things that don't work when you've got hips. Sigh. Also, the other day when we were in Osaka, I told my host mom that I wanted to buy boots in Japan, and she said, "I think it will be hard for you, because your feet are pretty big!" I asked how she knew, and she told me she'd looked at my shoes. Sobsobsob.

A teeny tiny hat that you clip into your hair!

Seriously, these changing rooms were itty-bitty.

Engriiiish

I prefer to walk to and from the train station, but some mornings I don't have enough time, so I take the bus. It can get expensive, I think, but I didn't want to buy a bus pass (it was around $100 for one month, no thanks). I had to stalk a junior high student last week to find my way to the station from school. And it seems that Japanese people have a less-than-average sense of personal space. Cars all squeeze together in traffic, and bikes and motorbikes all ride on the shoulder, veritably INCHES from the cars. Houses and buildings are all clumped together with maybe a foot or two in between. There always seems to be room for a rice field, though. They just stick em in between apartment complexes and next to schools.

There's just a rice field there. Because they can.

The weather this week has been totally up and down. It seems that this sector of Japan is rather rainy. Sigh. My host mom called me an Ame Onna the other day (Rain Woman), someone who brings rain wherever she goes. Tuesday and Wednesday were absolutely lovely, but yesterday was abysmal. And of course yesterday was the day I went to Nara with a big group of people. Augh. I'll post about that later, though, after Rachel's posted some of her pictures so I can steal them.

Japanese classes are sort of fun, because my teachers are adorable. My spoken Japanese teacher is all jumpy, and whenever a student gives him a wrong answer, he sort of falls to the side and laughs. Ceramics is rather difficult, and I seem to suck quite a lot. I keep making little pots on the wheel and then finding a way to destroy them before I can take them off. =( I'm really slow, too; everyone else in my class seems to be churning out several pieces while I'm still working on my first. Sigh. I'll get it, I hope.

Yankumi condemns drugs.
Another shot of Hirakata's manhole. It's people rowing a boat! And Rachel said the flower at the top was a lotus blossom.

Hirakatashi
Kid Bar serves alcohol?
...there's a glove.
Feed the birds, and what do you get? FAT BIRDS
Yes, do.

The... river? In Hirakata.

I ate taiyaki! It's... not bad, but I guess it's a little bland. I had chocolate-filled taiyaki!


Oh! The other day I was just sort of standing around my station, looking for a place to eat this lovely cream puff thing I'd just bought, and a woman walked up to me and started speaking English, just things like, Are you a student, Do you live in this city, When did you get here. Then she got all embarrassed and apologized for just walking up to me like that, and she asked if I would teach her English sometime. She was so adorable that I said yes (which surprised her quite a bit), and I'm going to meet her at a coffee shop on Sunday. Huzzah! Japanese friends! Her name is Yoko, and she sends me cute little e-mails in English. I'm excited.

Well, Imma head out now. I went to Nara and Kyoto with Rachel and some Japanese friends last week, so I'll share about that soon. I'll also have a special on Japanese bathrooms! Huzzah!! Honana!

Osaka's manhole. It's Osaka Castle.

MMMMM JAPANESE VANILLA SHAAAAKES
My mom made sardines last week, and while it took me at least ten minutes to pick around the damn bones, my host dad expertly peeled his fish from the skeleton in about thirty seconds. Sigh.
Last week was Setsubun! It's the Japanese first day of spring on February 3rd. On this day, you're supposed to eat maki-zushi (picture) facing a certain direction, and people throw mame-beans outside to drive away demons.

One of my host family's cups.

They made okonomiyaki last week, but it was "Hiroshima style," which apparently means putting EVERYTHING in it and making it taste much different from what I expected.

Also, I finally saw Mamma Mia, and I think it's kind of stupid. And when Pierce Brosnan sang, my mom and sister would say, "hetakuso" (he sucks). Well said, ladies.