June 30, 2002
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I really don't need pressure like this.
I don't know if I mentioned this before (and being the lazy sot that I am, I'm not going to read through my previous entries and check), but on of the biggest FUBARs committed by students in the JCMU program was when a couple of bakayaro (give the 'r' a good roll, and you have got a _very_ insulting term for idiot) decided one day to take off for Kyoto for a day and a half without bothering to tell their host families. And guess who's now staying with one of those families?
Yeah.
Well, I wasn't planning on doing anything to violate sacred home stay
rule #1 but I think that one can see why I would be feeling a bit apprehensive now. According to the Director at JCMU, that little disappearing stunt almost made my family decide to resign from the home stay program (although they had housed several students before so they knew that that display of absolute witlessness was an isolated incident). Now I just have an abiding worry that I might do something to further tax their patience.Yeah, I worry too much. I know.
Anyway, what I didn't know about today was that it was going to be an all day barbecue. I slept until 11 (I asked first to make sure it would okay…) although my host mother still gave me some toast and scrambled eggs 'breakfast.' Shortly there after some family friends arrived, lugging (for all means and purposes) a giant hibachi. On this was set up a large metal tray, and a grill (at this point I was also clued in as to what was going on).
The grilling started in the early afternoon, with fish, beef, egg plant, shishkabob, and what have you going onto the grill. The tray was used to fry up a plethora of vegetables and um… meat stuff, like pork, squid, octopus, which once noodles were dumped on top of and fried up, made a very tasty yakesoba. As a desertish snack food, there were little sweet potato cakes lying around and pickled vegetables… pardon my scattered narrative, but I'm still feeling a bit over stuffed. At some point after lunch I kind of lost track of all that I was eating, only that it was tasty, and I really had no idea to how to politely decline (not that I usually decline food anyway), so I ended up eating a _lot_.
I met quiet a few interesting people too, as a multitude of family and friends stopped by (this wasn't done for my benefit, but I was a frequent topic of interest). For the most part I was able to communicate really basic concepts, like, "this tastes great," but that was about it. I had a few interesting (i.e. unintentionally hilarious ) exchanges, including with one guy, a self professed 'ecchi' (pervert, although the context made it much less negative) who upon noticing my tennis shoes, stared a short exchange about shoe size, cumulating, although it took me a few seconds to understand, a joke about… um… wang dimensions (why do I think that's such a great word? Go
here).I spent a good part of the afternoon just sitting unobtrusively trying to follow the conversation going back and forth over the grill, coming to the realization that fluency is still far far beyond me. Oh well, I was able to avoid most embarrassment by keeping my mouth otherwise occupied.
By evening, I had just about reached my limit of language input (my brain was literally tired out), and retreated to the house along with the children, so that I could do my… Japanese homework (by the time I was done with that, I just wanted a whole lot of quiet). After that, can anyone guess what I did? I watched Stuart Little, dubbed in Japanese (a wonderfully cute movie to begin with, but kawaiiiiiiii (cute, in this case written with an annoying squeal) beyond belief. After which I presented the gifts I had brought along with me to my host family. (just for simplicity, I'm going to start using their Japanese titles). I gave Otousan (father) a package of ground gourmet coffee; Okaasan (mother) a container of dried Michigan cherries (apparently something of a rarity over here); Kenta (since I have two younger brothers, I’ll just refer to them by name) a pack of dried apples; Shohei: a package of dried apples; and finally Imoutosan (little sister) a carton of fudge Oreos (little girls love Oreos- that's universal, right?). They all seemed to go over quite well.
And now I am very full of both tired and food.