Earthquakes Hit Japan

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A couple of nights ago, the otou-san (father) of my host family was looking at my hair and, interestingly, complementing it. He vaguely communicated that he thought that his was poofy, but mine was "weivu" -- an attempt to say "wavy" in English. I found it amusing.

There's another typhoon (taifuu) coming. This country certainly is prone to natural disasters, but the people here are accustomed to it. There are no tornadoes in Japan, but they make up for it.

Last night, apparently the country moved by about half a centimeter as earthquakes struck twice. I do miss spacious, modern, heavily air conditioned, geologically stable America, but I'm still enjoying my time here. We have no idea how good we have it. Unless we live somewhere else -- even in a country as advanced and as modern as Japan -- we don't realize how great America really is. There are many things that Japan does better than America. Since I've been here, however, I have personally noticed more things that America does quite a bit better, in terms of everyday life. For example, doing something as simple as cashing travelers cheques can take over an hour in Japan. I discovered that today. Also, America has a premium of space. The roads are very spacious, and we can actually drive in a straight line, whereas driving in Japan is more like some kind of videogame in which you have to dodge people, cyclists and other cars. There are no sidewalks, either.
"Two lanes" in Japan, at least, outside of the highway is about the size of one lane -- perhaps ever so slightly wider -- in the US.
In Japan, every call is a toll call; there is no unlimited phone service. I have a prepaid cell phone, so I can budget my calls home pretty effectively, even though calling home is ridiculously expensive.
I recently bought a Canon Wordtank IDF-3000 electronic Japanese dictionary after doing a bit of research. It should be here within the week, and my communicated with my host family considerably easier. Hopefully, that in itself will speed up my learning process. In the past week, I've been studying about 300+ vocabulary words, in addition to my school assignments, in an attempt to cram as much Japanese in my brain as possible. I'm sick of not understanding most of what I hear around me or on television. If I learn 300+ words per week, numerically speaking, it should be very difficult for me not to learn the language faster.
Mike and I are planning to go to the Tokyo Game Show (videogame conference) later this month. I've wanted to go to it for several years, and now I have the chance, even though Tokyo is quite far from here. A shinkansen (bullet train) ride is pretty expensive, so we'll probably just take the bus, or perhaps the keihan (regular train). Admission to TGS is only 1000 yen ($10), so I can't pass it up.
I'm retaking the Japanese language placement exam tomorrow, so I must go and study for that.

Oh yes... How could I forget this? Yesterday, I went to a neat sushi restaurant, where the sushi is on a sort of assembly-line style trolley. I probably ate about 8 pieces of sushi, only to confirm that, in general, I don't like raw fish. Raw shrimp and raw octopus are okay, I think.

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