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Published: October 8th 2010
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October
Hello! We’re now pretty well into October (half way through the first term according to the exam next week entitled ‘mid-term test’ - yikes!) and despite the fact that the elementary school kids that I see every morning have started wearing their school jumpers, im still plenty warm enough in just the one layer! I was thinking maybe Japanese people like to keep themselves always at maximum temperature until my host mum said to me yesterday how cold it was in the house. I looked at the thermometer it was 25 degrees! So we really are very different.
An exciting thing for me last week was getting a package from home. I had forgotten my bikini (theres a nearby beach that I still havent found time to visit) and a jumper, and my brother enclosed a handmade bear from his recent expedition to Mongolia! But even after receiving that I still havent found myself at all homesick so im doing pretty good 😊
Last time I wrote about how granny (okaasan) had broken her leg mountain climbing. Last week I was absolutely gutted to discover she would be in hostpital from Monday to Sunday for the operation/recovery which
is so much time! Anyway Tuesday evening after the op I went to visit her, with some flowers and grapes and general ill-person things. (Obviously not having to cook for myself I’d never properly examined food prices but I was very shocked by how expensive fruit is over here! For example, I found a special offer in the supermarket today of 2 nashi (Japanese pears) for ¥798 which is around £3 each-doesn’t seem that much of a good offer to me! I made the mistake of eating a whole apple to myself at home the other day when after I realised that since they cost so much its normal to just eat half and save the rest for another time/person-woops!) Anyway, I met some other lovely grannies in her little hospital room who were all fascinated by me and very complimentary so was very happy to go back and visit 2 more times last week. 😊
Also the daughter of one of the other grannies happened to be visiting the same time as me and she was just sitting on her mothers bed making origami quietly-the mother who appeared to still be strongly affected by her painkilling drugs was watching
in awe. It appeared that she might have been there for hours already by the amount of origami I could see proudly displayed on the table. This was interesting as id never actually seen a japanese person doing origami, let alone enjoying it-even though its always something brought to us in England as one of their arts I never could imagine who in Japan actually did it. But apparently hospital visits are the time and place for that one.
Finally okaasan came home on Sunday so we celebrated in the evening with sushi and we all drank beer to toast her good return to health (even though both the mum and granny have told me they don’t drink, half a can of beer appeared to be acceptable on this occasion!) 😊 I also made a chocolate biscuit fridge cake type thing that seemed to go down very well.
Also Sunday morning I had a lovely day with the mum and her brother who had come from Osaka for the weekend. They took me to the nearby Arimatsu festival (in the same little village that granny had taken me to 2 weeks previously). It was particularly interesting for me
Oversized man that i was made to have a picture with...awkward!
So this guy and his other giant friend go around the festival during the parade stroking all the children on the head with their paper leaves...this is supposed to bring health to the children. now that I am studying such things in my festival class and could understand some of the symbolic things represented in the dashi parade. Okaasan has told me that in the spring she’s going to take me on a mini trip to include visiting her son in Osaka as well as Kyoto and Kobe; two cities I had told her I would like to visit.
Before I came to Japan I was warned by Leeds Uni that girls generally put on weight whilst in Japan and to that end we were given many contact details for pastoral care for depression that we would encounter after putting on such weight…! Anwyay I am now totally seeing how that works-even though I eat very healthy breakfast and dinner at home, lunch time I am free to explore the university’s catering and when all the food is so exciting and new I have that massive urge to try it all, at once! For once its not even because im hungry- its just because im curious! So even being big, in England I never have felt particularly uncomfortable with my size, but here I am starting to feeling like a rather massive monster
in any crowd-partly because of my height, and partly due to the new ‘cushioning’ I have acquired since being here by keeping the convenience stores and 100yen store in business!! I literally deserve a loyalty card. So for that reason im very happy that it is finally becoming cooler as it makes everything that little bit more comfortable and its almost the stage when I can wear jeans again so that the Japanese population don’t have to cope with seeing my thighs, thighs being something that don’t seem to exist amongst females over here!! Still, im enjoying the food way too much to want to cut down just yet…😊
This weekend our festival class teacher is taking us to the nearby rural Asuke festival up in the mountains where we will spend the night in a ryoukan, a traditional Japanese style inn…the kind where there will be one bathtub for all customer to use in shifts I believe. So that’ll be exciting, also expecting to do some hiking in the mountains over there…maybe.
Every Wednesday we only have class til 11am so im currently waiting to go off to Sakae for lunch in an ‘English pub’. Ive been
dying for a jacket potato and salad for a long time now so hopefully all will be well by this afternoon.
Also I have finally managed to acquire some postcards this week (mission impossible finding any!), if you think you deserve one then please send me your address because at the moment they’re just sat on my floor and its very sad 😞
Happy Autumn!
xxxx
OH ALSO i received mail to my phone this week from my Japanese friend Ayaka with whom I did an exchange program back in year 10 (age 14) to Yamanashi prefecture near Mt. Fuji. Her family has offered to come to Nagoya to pick up me up (several hours in the car i imagine) and take me back to stay with them for a few days at the end of October when my university has a break....so as you can imagine im SUPER excited to see them again and really looking forward to re-visiting Yamanashi 😱
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