New Home

For the last time i moved families on Sunday. I was again filled with sadness in regards to leaving but full of exciting anticipation at what lay ahead. This family is lovely! I share a room with my host sister, sayumi and it is a really pink room filled with disney characters and hello kitty. I have two younger sisters who i talk to more than anyone else and my mum is so caring! My grandparents are great and my host dad is really nice and also has a good taste in english music which i discovered when we were driving on my first day when we were listening to `footloose` and `eye of the tiger`.

I ride a bike to and from school again, this ride is 5km each way and it goes through the busiest parts of the city so the ride is really interesting but i admit i almost got hit by a car today. I am grateful i had so many driving lessons before i left to come here because it really does help and i think it has saved my life!

Today we had a dancing test which was actually so great. I had no idea we were doing a test but turns out we were so we all had to get up in our groups of about 5 and perform this one disco kind of dance to the class. I was so embarrassed at first seeing that i don`t understand instructions and hence i only know how to do it by copying so i am not very good at all but i love my class so much and me and aki were stuffing up a lot but the girls watching just kept clapping for us and everyone had an awesome time.

My english has become terrible. I talk so stupidly and yesterday we were eating tea when on the news we all heard an english voice. The thickness of the Australia accent hit me and i was like, `How Australian does he sound!`. It was kind of awkward though because he was having a massive go at the Japanese `scientific` whalers and what he had to say wasn`t so friendly and i was wishing so bad that there weren`t Japanese subtitles translating every word he said, but of course, there were. They then went on to ask me if we ate whales and i said no because the whales are our friends. (That was the only way my Japanese could explain it!) But they were quite... i forget the word, oblivious to Australia`s outrage and told me that they eat whale often except it is unfortunately a bit expensive....

On Friday I am going Kareoke-ing with my friend from school and doing Purikura, it should be great but means i have to find my way home which again could be interesting. I have also been given my shinkansen tickets for getting to the airport! How terribly sad, it is only perhaps 23 days until i am home! Looks like i will be getting in at Adelaide on Sunday morning and am spending the wee hours of the morning in Sydney airport for a while, on my own which should be exciting, I will be buying anything but oolong tea and talking with the staff and enjoy the fact that no body will be watching my every move because I will blend in for the first time in 3 months!

Best be off, going to watch my little sisters dancing lesson tonight. Love Mel x

Moving

Well today is my last day at the Hanzawa`s house. I have had a good week and on Thursday the exams finished so me, Miki and Azusa went out to lunch which was spaghetti! After that we walked down to the station and went shopping. I bought manga, Moriyama Naodaro`s CD and a DVD and lots of pens! Then we went for a massive walk and stopped for some food in a place next door to Mr. Donuts, to my horror, so I sat sipping some oolong tea while staring through the glass at the people eating the best donuts in the world and drinking coffee. I was a little envious to say the least. We caught the bus home which is a novelty for me and then had a massive tea which filled me up too much, so much food here. On Friday i did the usual school thing and after school like I do sometimes, I went to the library to read the paper in english. I walked in and sat down and then one of the teachers came up to me and just did a massive X shape with his hands and then walked off and there were two guys there who were like, `何...` (What the...) and I was saying the same. The teacher said to them really shortly, `explain..` and then walked off.

Now I know my Japanese isn`t fluent but believe me if he had simply been nice and explained that today was special and the library shuts at 4pm today I would clearly of understood. So the guys explained, in japanese and I was like, `thankyou for that` and yes, I was a bit taken aback at that but oh well! (And by the way it was only 3.30pm so i still read the paper and all was good)

Then after the paper I went to wait for my host mum at her work and came home etc etc. Today we went out to return some CDs of Miki`s and then bought cakes and now we have just had lunch. I am excited about Sayumi`s house but of course sad to be leaving here. I am sharing a room with Sayumi and she has two little sisters who I am looking foward to spending time with. I don`t know when my next post will be so I am sorry and also sorry for being slack lately, I just haven`t had time!

Melissa x

Home Early

It is now 3.10pm on a Monday afternoon and I am not at school. `Melissa, why is that so?` I hear you ask. Well hold your horses (or your raw fleshy chunks of horse) and let me explain.

Today i awoke, as I usually do, and got ready for school. It didn`t take long because I had laid out everything I need the night before. As the clock was chiming seven times, to indicate 7am, I was making my way to the kitchen. I managed to make it halfway across the room until Grandad finally heard me upon which I smiled and said goodmorning in a clear voice so his aging ears could hear me. Breakfast was of course rice, miso soup and lettuce and something I just can`t explain. I usually have finished breakfast, washed the dishes, dried the dishes and put the dishes away by 7.20am after which is out the door for Miki, myself and my host mother. Driving to school I look out the window, watching the business men who are dressed up smartly in suit and tie riding pushbikes along the side of the road along with school students and young primary school students in their bright yellow hats and with their bright red school satchels.

Upon arrival I put my shoes in my shoe locker and whipped out my uwabaki (inside slippers). I then climbed the tiring stairs until I came to my classroom which is ２年６組. I had to wait there for a while until class started so I talked with my old host sister, Marina and Auka while they told me how nervous they were about the exams looming before them. I didn`t really have any need to worry as I have no exams! Eventually home class started and after it I went to the english office. One of my english speaking teachers promised that today they would `drop me` and I wondered firstly what I had done wrong and secondly where they had picked up such a gangster-like expression until I figured out that in `dropping me` they would come by the english office and `drop in` for a while.

David and I then successfully entertained ourselves by comparing all sorts of cultural differences between America and Australia and then the two together versing Japan. I also actually got some work done and 12 noon came surprisingly fast. We went to clean, I am still on the carpet-cleaning sticky-tape style cleaning roster which is, I admit, good fun. By about 12.30 I was ready to go home and Miki rang Dad and he came all the way out to pick me up, which he really didn`t have to but he did. We talked a little in the car but again it is very difficult, so much to say with so little words to convey it with. Grandma was surprised but somewhat delighted at having company for lunch and in portraying so, doubled my lunch with extra rice, a bowl of miso, fish and also seaweed. On top of that she gave me yogurt and orange juice along with the obentoo I already had of pasta, rice, chicken, vegetables and a little bit more fish. Once full to the brim, I made my way here and here we are.

Will post something a little more constructive later, for now that will have to do!

Free Time

Free Time. It appears that the next week will simply be full of free time for me and David the assistant language teacher at Tachibana. We are saving up all the work we can think of for next week because next week, Tachibana students, excluding myself, have 9 exams in three days. Hence I will be doing my own study in the english office which will become just a little boring. Today there is optional school and believe it or not I genuinely concidered going but then realised that my friends who actually do go will be studying anyway and I do admit that the biggest reason that I like school is the social life. Anyway, the other day after school at about 7pm I was walking with Miki to the station and there was a man handing out fliers like they do a lot here in Japan and so I thought I would be nice and take one from him, make him feel like he was making a difference, which I am sure he was. Anyway, I got close enough to see he was a westerner and I took the brochure and he was laughing heaps as we said `hello` and he told me, `Learn English, it`s fun!`. He was handing out english school brochures! We thought it was a pretty good coincidence seeing that a westerner in Fukushima is as rare as me not eating rice with breakfast, lunch and tea. Must go, my studying is calling me and it isn`t sounding too friendly either! Love Mel xx

Love

I really must say, apart from the raw horse meat, that I am quite in love with being here. I am really enjoying school now and my Japanese is now good enough for me to understand and talk a lot more than what I could before. I am especially enjoying lunch times and talking with the people in my class, they are all so friendly. I am studying a lot more now because I have finally found a rhythm and gotten into what I should be studying, self studying is so hard when you start it for the first time! I apologise but this will have to be short because the firewall and I are still not friends and big blogs don`t go down too well but wanted to tell you all I am alive, if not more than just alive, and soaking up every day! Love Melissa xx

(The picture is of me and Shyu and Fukushima Spring Festival. I was watching the Taiko drumming with my host mum only to discover that it was a friend of mine playing on the stage so he came down to say hello afterwards! Note the cool Japanese uniform!)

Raw Meat

First of all I send apologies to anyone who is insulted by the amount of time which has passed since I last posted. This is simply that I am really in quite a rhythm now and settled into life here that getting on the computer can be a little tricky.

However, this moment needs to be recorded in my life history.

Today brought with it a new meaning to the phrase, `I am so hungry I could eat a horse`. Sitting in a traditional Soba restaurant my host father leans over to me and points to the table opposite. He goes on to say in Japanese that those five people are eating a raw horse. I simply think that my Japanese is so terrible and it is yet another misunderstanding.

I was wrong. Quite literally those five people, who happened to be school students were eating a horse. Only small portions of course and Dad stop laughing and Amelia, I am so sorry to tell you this and yes I too was disgusted but kind of just in shock. Can`t say my food tasted all that great afterwards.

That is my story for today. I shall post with something a bit more constructive at a later date.

Love Melissa xx

Niigata

Well hello,

It has been a while, I have just been busy with bits and pieces. Last week was Golden Week here in Japan. It`s a string of public holidays and little festivals which meant no school. During my Golden Week I got the chance to go to Niigata which is on the other side of Japan! It was a great drive with many tunnels that take you underneath the lush green mountains and There was beautiful scenery! Once we had arrived in Niigata, I had the chance to see 日本海！(The Sea Of Japan). It was, dirty. Didn`t quite have the same smell or white sand that we have in Australia, instead a gravel carpark and many cement barriers and an aquarium situated about two hundred meters from the shore.

We went to the aquarium and had lunch, I ate ramen and my host family asked for a fork for me. They do this often but I always use the chopsticks and just say thankyou but I want to learn! I think they are afraid I will starve to death if I use chopsticks but I personally think I am quite talented at it now! After lunch we watched the dolphin show and it was quite amazing but I was on an animal rights protest that day and couldn`t fully enjoy the aquarium because of the fact that the poor animals were locked behind bars, well, glass...

Anyway, it was a great bonding experience and I enjoyed it a lot. We also had rice planting day and also had the chance to visit many temples during my Golden Week. Now I am back at school and for this week I am on the shoe room cleaning committee. I forget the word in Japanese, perhaps Genkai, no, anyway, this means that we clean the carpet mat. Of course we don`t use a vacuum cleaner, that would just be practical, instead we use bits of sticky tape wound around our hands and pat the carpet to remove the minute particles of dirt that have settled since the day before. As bad as I make this sound, it is actually quite fun because the teacher always wants to learn more english and was today was asking me to demonstrate the intonation within the word `Ketchup`.

I will leave you now, I don`t know what my plans are for the rest of the week, I just know that we don`t have school on Thursday which is cool. I will leave you now with a pictures rom my trip to the Sea of Japan. (That reminds me of channel nine news and tea back home!)

Grandparents

`ごはんですよ!` I quickly shut the dictionary and head into the kitchen. Grandma is standing at the sink, her stained floral apron tied tightly around her waist. She is grinning and I grin back ten times brighter. I check out the table, a usual ritual, to see what I`ll be putting in my mouth this particular lunch time. It seems I will live to see another day as the food doesn`t look too scary. Grandad has already started lunch, slurping his Soba like it`s about to dissappear before his very eyes. I reach for the chopsticks pot and pull out mine, they are new because the ones I had previously been using weren`t exactly the same colour, indicating that they perhaps weren`t the original match. Of course, that is not acceptable in any way, shape or form. So two nights ago, Grandad spent about ten minutes selecting just the right pair of chopsticks for me before tea while I sat there starving hungry, staring into my miso soup as it grew colder and colder...

Today`s lunch is traditionally packet food. Sorry to hurt any Japanese cuisine recipe seekers, but that`s the way it is. I pull back the plastic, cursing the difficult Kanji that explains just exactly what I`m about to eat. I say my prayers with my Grandma who has also sat down beside me, her legs folded underneath her in the most painful looking position.

The food is tasting quite nice until I come across my best friend, えび. In english this is the equivilant of shrimp or prawns, I am not a seafood girl... Now anyone who was at Steph`s house that fateful night knows how well えび　and I get along. We simply don`t. However, how times have changed. I eat this stupid えび　and don`t even pull that pained expression I usually get when I clash with my meals. I won`t say I like it, but the tolerance levels are slowly rising each day and in more ways than just food.

Grandad has things to do, hence he leaves after saying thankyou for the meal. Now it is just Grandma and I. Old Japanese people are my worst nightmare when it comes to my Japanese. I swear they don`t really speak Japanese but a strange dialect of some ancient language. I act super interested in my food, which is beginning to get hard because I am so full, however, Grandma feels chatty so I act like I am too. Smiling with a mouthful of rice I nod and pull the usual　`ah` and `mm`. Then she starts shooting the questions. I manage to chat about my family, saying what they do and how old they are etc. She then tells me about a wedding function recently, one of her relatives... not quite sure what else but she has something, what she has I will never know...

Whipping out the green tea, Grandma pours me a cup as I struggle to finish the rest of the meal. I try a technique I heard about on TV once and try and put a lot of it in my mouth at once, but then I am so full I can`t swollow. Grandma is offering me little bits and pieces and she is just so hard to refuse, very insistant. I survive and after slamming down the rest of my green tea and half dying on the little leaves that produce the strongest of flavours, I finally can say `ごちそうさまでした`. Grandma asks if I am finished and I say, yes, I am definately 100 percent finished.

I try and help clean up but she insists that I am on holidays, hence I should go to my room. So, now here I am. I have been doing a lot lately, the other day after school I went playing Kareoke. Just think a not so gorgeous version Cameron Diaz in `My Best Friend`s Wedding`. I hadn`t spoken english for so long but I sang english songs and at the start I had the scariest Japanese twist to all the words I was saying! I began to pronounce my L`s properly in a matter of seconds and finally I was ok! Also, I have recently had the chance to visit many temples which has been great and for those of you wondering why I`m not at school, this week is Golden Week in Japan, no school. I go back on Monday but on the Sunday, I think we are planting rice... Also, we have another holiday on the Thursday which happens to be my birthday, and Ayaka`s birthday, a girl in my class!

Well, going to study as much Japanese as I can without my text book which i smartly left at school! Hope the pictures are ok and I will post them more often now!

Love Melissa xx

Recent Pictures

Takumi and I in the snow! We are at the top of Mt Azuma.
Auka and myself and then in purple is my old host sister, Marina. We are at the park near school having pictures after a huge test they had.
I won`t name everyone! But we were working on the decorations for the first year`s kangenkai, Welcome Party.
That is Marina and I acting as Samurai out the front of a traditional Samurai`s house!
This is me eating Ramen. I am actually in a restaurant even though it doesn`t look like it. I love Ramen!

There are more pictures to come i promise! But for now this will have to do. My change back to this family, The Hanzawa`s went well and i feel like I am back home but i was really attatched to my last family so it was difficult to say goodbye! I hope you are all well and please comment when you get the chance!