New Family

It's now been two weeks since I moved to my new family, and it's totally different than my first one, but really good. It was hard to move, and weird standing with my old sisters looking at my new sisters, and realizing how comfortable I was with the Takano's. My host grandma surprised me, since I didn't spend that much time with her, by running after the car, since I hadn't said a final goodbye, and seeming almost about to cry as she gave me a book and insisted I read it. I think it's a book of fairy tales, but unfortunately it's full of kanji and I can't read it, but it was really sweet anyway. I missed them a lot the first night, but I knew I had an odori lesson with them in three days. Now I'm glad I switched families, because I'm experiencing a completely different way of living in Japan, which is the whole point. Also they're a lot of fun :) When I did go back for my odori lesson, walking there from school, it was very strange. On the one hand it felt extremely familiar, but on the other hand it wasn't my home anymore. I'd also just had a bad experience at school. I was told that the principal had decided to move me to a different class, one grade lower, the next week, although it had been brought up and I expressed my extreme dislike before winter break. I feel I've been really lucky with my class, and they're one of the reasons my exchange has gone so well. Also, there's already an age gap and I really didn't want to be put in with 15 year olds. So I went and talked/pleaded with the principal, and he said he'd think about it. So I wasn't in the greatest mood that day. In the end he let me stay for this term, but I'll have to move in April to the grade lower. Also instead of English Lounge periods, now I sometimes have periods with different classes, all in the first grade and one with the middle school. But it's kind of fun, and at least I have a few more months with my class.

This family is a different one than I had thought, with 3 girls, 11, 9, and 6, and a 4-year-old boy. I like them a lot, the oldest girls are smart and mature and the little ones are adorable. The boy, Taichi, has quite a personality. I'm good friends with the mom, who's really cool and much younger than my first one, so we both decided it would be weird if I called her "okāsan" (mom), like I did at the Takano's. The dad is super nice, but he comes home late and leaves early, so I don't see him much. He's an important person, possibly CEO, of I think a grocery company? I'm not quite sure. But they're very well off. It was a little intimidating when I first walked in to a gigantic flower display and 5 foot wooden bear statue in the entryway, and other expensive-looking decorations everywhere. There's a full suit of samurai armor. I was about to begin hauling a suitcase up the stairs, when Masako (the mother) is like, "oh, use the elevator." There is an elevator inside the house!! It's three stories, but we don't use the first one. My room is huge, with a random six person dining table in the corner, but it's kind of annoying because it takes time to walk across (ok, not that big a problem I guess). And it has it's own heater!!! The rest of the house is still usually freezing though, but at least I can sleep and change clothes without fear of frost bite. The house is in a complex with two other relatives' houses, and there are two guards that are always there. I think they help with other things too sometimes, and twice one of them has driven us to the train station for school.

That's the one downside, school is much farther than my nice 10 minute bike ride from the Takano's. The two oldest girls go to Kenmei's elementary school so we go together in the morning, but theirs starts half an hour earlier than the high school, making the mornings even earlier. We leave at 6:30, and it takes 20-25 minutes to drive to the train. The train ride's 10-15 minutes, and from there a 10 minute bus ride to pretty near the school. Altogether with transitions it's a bit over an hour, but it doesn't feel too bad. I've been able to read a lot, working my way through Game of Thrones :) And it's kind of peaceful having the classroom to myself for 25 minutes before anyone else comes. The bus fare system is really smart! You enter at the middle door and either swipe a bus pass or take a ticket from the dispenser there. Then at the end, up front there is a ticket reader/money taker machine and another sensor for cards. But with the commute and the driving around to people's various lessons, all the time in the evening somehow disappears, so I feel like all I do at home is prepare/eat dinner, shower, and sleep. I'm helping cook a lot more, which is good because I don't know anything...

On the weekends though, there's more time, which is really nice. Also I can run, which I can't during the week because I get home too late. My first day with them, a Sunday, we drove to a temple in Nara, which isn't so far anymore, so the dad could pray for a successful year. Then we went to a park to fly kites, except they were really cheap and never worked, but it was fun anyway. We went to a different shrine in the middle of Osaka for a business god later in the week, and there was a whole festival around it with the same game and food stalls that are at all the festivals. I won a shitajiki, the plastic sheet you put under paper to write on, with pictures of the most popular male idol group on it, and I was pretty excited. Last weekend we went to the zoo, which was decent although cold (I thought about you, Grandma Betty :)). So it's really cool getting to see Japan from a younger perspective, and getting to know the children's TV shows. I also discovered that children's books are really cool because they don't use kanji, and I can actually understand a lot. It's so fun how my Japanese is getting better! I felt completely confident in it for moving families, since I can understand most things relating to daily life. My biggest issue is vocab, which will come more and more I guess, so I still understand barely anything in classes. But now sometimes I forget easy English words, and it's kind of terrifying.

We just came back from the grandparents' house, where all the relatives gathered for a ceremony honoring the ancestors. There were about 40 people packed into a room, all wearing black, and a man chanting at the family shrine. There was a group chant, which was kind of fun, then incense dishes were passed around until everyone was choking. It lasted about 40 minutes. After the ceremony everyone mingled around, and it was fun hanging out with the cousins and talking to other relatives. It's so nice being able to speak Japanese! We ate huge beautiful bentos, and there was so much food. At one point, when people were getting kind of bored, someone was like, "it's time for a konbini date!" and everyone's like, "yay, a konbini date!" and all the cousins and a couple uncles with the wallets walked to the nearest convenient store and loaded up on snacks (like we needed more food). I'm really going to miss konbinis!

Last weekend I went back to the Takano's again and stayed over Saturday night because on Sunday we had a special ceremony at the tea ceremony sensei's house. It was less weird going back the second time. I'm not quite sure what the occasion was, but it was an annual thing. We got up a couple hours early so okāsan could dress my sister Hirona and I in kimonos, which is quite a process. There are so many layers and ties, I don't know how people wore these things regularly. But once in a while it's fun, although uncomfortable by the end of the day. There was the usual group of about 15 ladies, all wearing kimonos. First Hirona performed the tea ceremony, and it was very pretty. Then we had an awesome traditional bento lunch, and it was so hard not to eat everything and take some home. And then it was kind of confusing, two ladies took my little sister Yuzuki and I out to sit in a little traditional-looking bench shelter in the freezing backyard. After a while I'm like, "Soo, what are we doing here?" And they're like, "We sit here. And then we listen." And eventually someone rang a bell or gong or something on the other side of the yard, and we went over to a little connected building there, after putting our seat cushions back just so, and opening the gate just so. There's an exact way to do everything in these traditional things, and every move matters, but I can never remember how. There we had a different kind of tea ceremony that I think was related to the New Year? They were telling me all about the architecture of the little building, but I didn't really understand. After that there was, of course, Bingo, and I had the honor of rolling the thing and calling out the numbers. It's not a party without Bingo. By then we were ready to go home and get the heavy obis off our backs.

Also in the past couple weeks, I had the lovely experience of going to a cat cafe with my exchange student friends. This is literally a cafe full of cats, where you pay by the hour. Oh my god. It was a very chill place, with cat structures everywhere, and didn't actually smell bad. The cats were friendly and mostly big and fluffy.

Another great New Year's tradition I forgot to mention in my last post: otoshidama. Young people get money from their relatives, in pretty little envelopes. I was really surprised when I received money from 5 different relatives, several of whom I'd only just met, so that was really generous.