January 27, 2004

• It’s About Loving Your Family

  
  

  Ten points if you catch that movie reference. Anyway, it’s getting kind of late so I can’t head over to an internet cafe to upload a few things just now. So I figure now’s a good a time as any to talk about my host family. Later on, I’ll get around to uploading more pictures, talking about my daily life, and discussing my classes. But for now, it’s about my family.

  
  

  For starters, I don’t know how IES did it, but I think they fit me in with a perfect host family this time. I don’t know how to describe it, really. I mean, to give an indication, my host father keeps hot mango pickle in the fridge and likes to eat it with rice. See, my host father’s work takes him around, so he’s spent some considerable time in China, Indonesia, etc., but plenty of time in Calcutta in particular. So, he can eat with his hands and his taste in food has similarities to my own, heh–except he happens to enjoy warm sake. My host mother, though she doesn’t have an occupation, does work around the house and in the family’s orchard (I’m not sure exactly how to translate ”¨, orchard’s the best equivalent I figured). So, there’s some fresh food on the table–like shiitake, kuromame, etc…

  
  

  Beyond the food, though, my family is very eØ, you know what I mean? Besides my parents, their daughter, 32, lives here but is usually out. Their son and his family live next door in an adjoining house–his son plus his wife and two sons, 1 and 4 years old. The 4Î is real active, and the 1Î is so cute (I’d rather not mention them by name, for some reason it feels a bit rude, I dunno). Oh yeah, the other day (like a week ago) the 4Î was watching me use my electronic dictionary–with the handwritten lookup–so I let him use it for a little. He’s learning to read kana now, so he wrote in his name. The lookup isn’t perfect, so instead it was something like:

  
  

  ‚SÎF@::writes in name, dictionary recognizes it as ‚Æ‚µƒ}ƒ“
  ‰´F@‚Æ‚µƒ}ƒ“HƒAƒ@I‚Æ‚µƒ}ƒ“‚Æ‚¢‚¤‚ËH
  ‚SÎF@‚Æ‚µƒ}ƒ“‚¶‚á‚È‚¢I
  ‰´F@‚ ‚ÌA–l‚Ì‘åŠw‚Å消êl‚Íu‚¨‚É‚¬‚èƒ}ƒ“v‚Æ‚¢‚¤
  ‚SÎF@‚¤‚»I
  ‰´F@–{“–I

  
  

  So anyway, besides that they live in Kasugai. I’m about a 40-minute train ride from Nanzan University directly, and it takes me five minutes to bike from my home to the station, and about five-ten minutes to walk from the station to Nanzan–so anywhere between 50-60 minutes total commute. It’s not so bad, and I do quite enjoy having a home away from downtown where I can relax.

  
  

  Anyway, that’s it for now about my host family, before I ramble on too much. In other brief news, I got me a cellphone. Japanese cellphones are nice, too–this can receive email as well; though, I won’t be putting my email up here, sorry. Plus, I’m in the business of hunting down Lunar novels. Two down, five to go–more on that later, perhaps.

  
  

  For the next episode, hopefully I’ll be able to talk about my daily life and perhaps my classes at that. Plus, I should have a more proper Engrish gallery–while I’m at it I’m gonna need to update that site list on the left to add a few of the “ìŽR¶ blogs. Anyway, ’til then. KF

  • 2:29 am
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