I've managed to reassure myself about the whole home stay situation since yesterday. After the rather negatively themed orientation, it was very easy to think of staying with a host family as this horrendous invisible mine field, forgetting that really, they are still people, and people learn and forgive. Part of this change in mindset came from the fact that I finished reading Thomas Rohlen's excellent (if mildly dated at this point), Japanese High Schools, which prompted me to return to the library, where I then I picked up Elisabeth Bumiller's The Secret's of Mariko: A Year in the Life of A Japanese Woman and Her Family (an impeccably written book that I can highly recommend as a casual read to everybody; along with Bruce Feiler's Learning to Bow it is almost required reading for anyone who is curious about what the Japanese are like on a personal level). I read this once before for one of my sophomore classes and it was a pleasure to do so again. I realized that while here, with the exception of my teachers, I had kind of solidified my perception of the Japanese people around me into an singular entity possessed of alien ambivalence. I had forgotten that the people around me are merely different (as opposed to Different), and that it can be overcome. So thanks to Ms. Bumiller's for the good book.

One of the other two books I checked out is definitely not going to get the accolade of being called 'good.' To balance out Rohlen's generally positive assessment of Japanese schooling, I got Shogun's Ghost: The Dark Side of Japanese Education, by Ken Schoolland. If I ever meet this guy in person, I'm going to punch him in the teeth. I'm not really sure if I'm qualified to make such accusations, but right in the introduction, he cited data and statistics that struck me as either being outright wrong, or so old as to be meaningless (for example, the statement that only 30% of high school students continue on to college strikes me as being impossibly low, so either he was mistaken, or using figures from the fifties), but I don't have the resources at hand to immediately confirm my suspicions. Also, he emphasizes the 'dark side' so exclusively that if one's opinion were based solely from this book, they could not help but picture the Japanese School system as anything but a bottomless well of utter despair and misery. Not that the education system here is without flaws (some quite critical), but it is not nearly so pervasive as Schoolland presents it. Comparably, it would be like me writing a book on the American schools that focused solely on events like Columbine and the conditions of the worst inner city schools, to the point of forgoing mention of anything even remotely positive.

The last book I checked out was Modern Japan Through Its Weddings: Gender, Person, and Society in Ritual Portrayal. It looks interesting at least, and I really doubt it can piss me off as badly as Shogun's Ghost is.

On a high note, I didn't have any homework today, because there are no classes tomorrow. Instead, it's a field trip to Kyoto for the day. I was debating how much money to bring with me, thinking, 'I'll just bring it all; I'm sure I'll see lots of cool things to buy, and that way I'll be prepared.' I have since decided just to bring about a hundred dollars, because if I bring it all, there is a very good chance that I will spend a good portion of it. Right now all I really need is film, and like I said a few days ago, I went through a third of my funding in two weeks. Since getting a fistful of yen the other day, I've started recording every expenditure in my checkbook (and I mean EVERY expenditure. I have three entries yesterday for Y120 - vending machine). Anyway, I'm looking forward to the field trip, which is going to take us on a circuit of all the important sites around Kyoto. I'm debating whether or not I want to join the group that is coming back in the evening, or the one that is staying over night in Kyoto to sample the night life.

If there's no update tomorrow night, that's probably a good indication of what my decision was.