September 3

My host mom is basically the nicest person ever. 

I AM SO TIRED right now, though.  I totally understand what Samy was talking about now when she said her first days in Switzerland she just slept all the time.  Granted, I woke up at 6:30 after going to bed at 10:30, but I’m more tired than even that really accounts for. 
I’ve been speaking in pretty much only Japanese since about 1:00 and it’s 6:20 now.  Soon it’s dinner time. My host mom keeps coming up and asking if I’m okay with this and that and I’m like “Seriously, I’m okay.  I like Japanese food!”  I know she’s making something with miso and with rice because I saw her making rice and she asked me if miso paste was okay.  I’m getting really hungry~! I wonder what it’ll be. :)

Okay, back to the beginning.
This morning we checked out of our ryokan in Inuyama and got on a charter bus to Nagoya.  Because of the typhoon there was a strong wind warning in place, but we still were able to leave our ryokan at 9 like we’d planned.  The wind didn’t seem that strong... until we watched it blow a sign off of some building and across the highway!  It narrowly missed our bus.  After that the drive went without incident.  We arrived at Nanzan University, at the international studies building, and sat in a classroom to wait for people’s host families and for students living in the dorms to arrive and take us to our  homes.  Lots of people were delayed because of the strong wind warning.  It causes classes to be cancelled and public transport to be stopped or delayed.   So, we were in this classroom from about 10 to 1.  It was nice to get a chance to talk with everyone, and to get everyone’s cell phone numbers, since we’d all go our separate ways soon. 
Everyone’s host families arrived before mine -- my host mom couldn’t get there until 1.  So the people who were left were me, Satoshi and Masae (our program coordinators), and 5 students living in dorms that were far away.  After I got picked up, Satoshi and Masae would take them to their dorms by taxi, since the high wind warning prevented students from those dorms from coming and picking them up.
We walked down the street to a convenience store and grabbed some lunch, and then there was more sitting around and chatting about what clubs we’d join and stuff.
I might end up joining the fencing club! It only meets once a week, Sunday mornings, and you don’t have to go to all the meetings or have any equipment or anything.

Anyway at one my host mom arrived.  She’s basically the cutest thing ever.  She’s like in her fifties, almost sixty, but in the fashion of (it seems like) all Japanese people she looks really young.  So does my host dad, but he’s like 65! They’re both retired.  Apparently I’m the 10th international student their family has hosted.  Wow.  She walked me from Nanzan to the subway station, making sure to stop me to turn me around once we got there, point the direction we’d came from, and check to see if I remembered how to get back to Nanzan from there. 
We took the subway to the stop where we transfer to the JR train.  At that stop she set me up so I could buy a subway card, so that I wouldn’t have to pay fare each time and could just swipe my card.  She even set it up so that the card covered not only from Ozone (where I transfer from JR to subway) to Yagato Nisseki (the stations I’d take to school), but also from Yagato Nisseki to Sakae, the popular student district.  She said I’d be going there a lot if I went and hung out with friends, so this way it was cheaper. 
We took the JR train from Ozone to ... Kozonji was I think the name of my station.  I’ll figure it out soon...! 
On the train we talked about a bunch of stuff, like how many students she’d hosted, where they were from, places she’d been in America, how I was going to Tokyo to visit Shaun in December, and how right now my Japanese was very pretty since I’ve only met teachers, but once I start going to Nanzan classes and joining clubs and making friends with Japanese students it would get more slang.  She said that some of the guys at Nanzan like to tell exchange students, especially those who are in lower levels of Japanese, dirty slang and then say it means some other, everyday thing.  She said to be careful and research any slang someone teaches me! Hahahaha.

Once we got to the station by the house, she helped me buy a JR swipe card, too.
I almost wish we hadn’t talked so much because I paid no attention to how long the whole train commute takes.

Then we met my host dad at their car at the train station.  He didn’t really talk to me much, but I was also being really quiet because I was a little overwhelmed. 
Their car was super adorable.  Inside it had lacy seat covers, and Winnie the Pooh floor mats, and some Snoopy stuff too.  It must be my host mom’s car.  She seems to really like Snoopy.

We got home, I unpacked, gave them my gift, and then my host mom sat me down and started explaining stuff to me.  She’s so nice, seriously.  Their only rule is that I call them and let them know my schedule if I’m going to miss dinner or be home late or something, and that I make sure if I call them if I’m taking the train home when it’s dark, no matter how late it is, so that they can pick me up from the station.  It’s a 15 minute walk from the station to home, and they don’t want me doing it in the dark.
I don’t have a curfew or anything “because I’m an adult.”  She did say she’d worry if I don’t communicate, but that if I do miss the last train and tell her I’m not coming home until the morning just to be careful because there are some not safe places in Nagoya. 

Seriously, my host mom sat me down and said that while studying is important I’m in Japan to have all kinds of experiences, and that studying was one experience and one way of learning about Japan, but Japan is full of Japanese people (「日本人ばっかり」って）so just taking the train is studying, so is going on trips, meeting friends, going out for food, getting lost, and even going out drinking and drinking too much and throwing up.  She then told me a story about another student she’d hosted who called her, said she wasn’t able to get the last train because she was with a friend who was throwing up.  My host mom went to pick them up and it was actually the student who was throwing up and her friend had texted for her.  My host mom had figured this was what had actually happened, drove all the way to Nagoya to pick her up, and even brought a plastic bag for her to throw up.
Not that I’m planning on doing this, Mom, don’t worry!

She then talked about how I need to go to izakaya (Japanese bars, with food, kinda like the Japanese version of a pub) and talked about 飲み放題　(nomi houdai -- all-you-can-drink). 
(Okay, ‘My host mom’ is getting cumbersome.  I’m going to call her “Okaa-san” because that’s what I call her, mother, in Japanese.)

After warning me that Japanese hotels charge per person and not per room (so even in a twin room you get charged double the room price for two people), and I explained that since Shaun was staying with a host family in Tokyo so I found a cheap hostel to stay at, Okaasan said that if you come visit me here in Nagoya, Shaun, you are more than welcome to come stay with us.  There’s a tatami room, or there’s my room, and either one is okay.  早く来てね！(come soon!)

We talked a bit more, about Amanda and how she dated a guy here and it was cute. We ate some yummy eclairs! And then she said there was a Softbank (Japanese phone company) cell phone in the desk, the one Amanda used last year, that I could use.  I explained that I already had a rental Japanese cell phone and that I had researched the Softbank phones but I went with Piccell like the program recommended because I wasn’t sure whether I could get one without my alien registration card yet.  She said she would have done the same thing if she were me.  But we compared rates and the Softbank phone is much cheaper.  It’s seriously 9 yen a minute, and you can get unlimited messaging for 300 yen a month.  Whereas the Piccell phone is like 63 yen a minute with a 20 yen connection fee or something.  I also have noticed I have like half a bar of service on my Piccell phone here.  And that’s only in my room.  When I was in the kitchen I didn’t have any service at all.  I was like “Well this is a raw deal.” 
I just need to get a phone card for 3000 yen and then I can use it.  Right now it can receive calls but not make them, until I input another card.  Even if it wasn’t a cooler phone (which it totally is) I’d want to switch anyway just because I don’t get service here and I can’t not get service at my home. 

My family has provided me with so much! I have my own room, and it’s a pretty sizeable room.  And my own bathroom (just a toilet and sink up here -- we all share the shower/bath). They gave me slippers, and I have a whole drawer full of bath towels I can use.  Buying towels in Japan was good advice -- I now have these towels taking up space that I’m not using.  Same with the slippers.  But the ones I brought are warmer so I might want to use them in the winter. 

That reminds me.  No air conditioning in this house.  That’s the one thing.  I’ve got a very nice fan in this room, though! It’ll be better once I can open the window, too.  Okaasan said not to do it today because of the typhoon, but I think the strong winds have mostly stopped by now.  It sounds calm outside.
Still, hopefully the heat won’t last very long... Hopefully...

Guys Okaasan’s even doing my laundry for me.  I told her I could definitely do it, but she said that when school started up I’d have homework and be too busy.  “If I had a job, well then...” she said, kind-of winking at me. Then said that since she didn’t have a job she didn’t mind doing it. 

We had dinner and Okaasan made rice, miso katsu, some salad, eggplant with bonito flakes on top, and these kind of salty tomatoes with egg.  It was all very tasty... except for the tomatoes.  She told me to tell her if there was anything I couldn’t eat so she wouldn’t make it again, and I felt rude doing it, but I did.  I tried putting the tomatoes on the rice and it helped a bit, but they were just too salty and the flavor was too strong, the way canned tomatoes sometimes are (maybe they’d been marinated in something).  Maybe it’s because I’m tired and not relaxed into my surroundings yet, but my stomach just couldn’t really handle it. 
She offered me another eclair but I was so full...! Now I kinda wish I’d taken it, haha.

Tomorrow’s Sunday and I don’t have any orientation or anything until Monday (which is the placement test!) so I was assured that I can, and should, sleep as much as I want.

Okaa-san keeps making fun of me for saying “はい” (yes, but in Japan it gets used a lot more than just as ‘yes’ - gotcha, uh-huh, roger, I’m here!, I understand, etc.) to everything.  Like she’s explaining something, like where drinks are in the fridge or how to use the shower and I’m just like “はい。はい。はい。はい。”　Like “uh-huh.”  So she was like “はい〜” at me in a kind-of silly voice. Okay okay it’ll get better when my Japanese gets better all right stop teasing.

But I like the teasing, really.  If they were serious and strict I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.  This way it’s more comfortable.  I feel like they’re treating me like actually part of the family and not so much of this “うち／そと　inside the family/outside the family” boundary stuff.  That’s what I was really worried about -- people being really cold to me.

Otousan (father) and Okaasan had some kind of meeting with friends this evening so they’ve both stepped out for an hour or so.

In the meantime, now that it’s 8, it seems like a less ridiculous time to go to sleep.  I’m gonna shower and then see how I feel. 

おやすみ！(good night!)