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Random statements! (With risk of being repetitive).
Some weeks ago, the entire 10th grade was shut down and not allowed to go to school due to the flu, they came back a few days later though, but now 10-4 has been shut down again. I'm completely fine though, don't worry.
My host family arranged a little takoyaki (fried octopus) party for me, they apparently forgot about my dislike of all things marine (except turtles, those things are totally cool, though I wouldn't eat them either). But it was fine, I got a beef steak when I told them. The guests were nice too, just three people; Terui-san and two of my host mother's nice friends that I had met at the BBQ party before moving in (did I ever write about that?), I never got around learning their names though. One of them actually gave me a bunch of presents! They were all Pokemon-based. Pokemon pens, a Pikachu cellphone pocket, a Pikachu cellphone strap, a fabric Pikachu with a balloon in it (I don't really know what it's for), a Pokemon towel and Pokemon tissues (kind of an odd present but sure).
This party lasted until 23.00 in the evening and I actually had quite fun telling people about Sweden and stuff, though I had to use a lot of English. Then my host family decided to give Terui-san a ride home, there was just a slight problem in their logic with that; Terui-san lives in the other end of the City, and it didn't help that my host father took the wrong turn three times on the highway, resulting in massive delays. All in all the car ride took 2 1/2 hours, I was quite tired afterwards.
But I was fine with it, I got to see Tokyo Tower, with the lights on! It was simply fabulous.
One week later, my host family took me to a Halloween party (on the 24:th...), it was awful.
For some reason they thought that I would like to spend an evening in a darts bar, where the air was so full of smoke that I nearly suffocated and the other people there were at the very least 22 years old and drunk like a glass of water in the Sahara desert. To make things worse, I had not been given anything to eat before we left for the party and didn't get my dinner before 22 o'clock in some random restaurant while on the way home with my drunken host family (it was ten times worse than new years eve!).
Time for some happier news again. I've finally joined a club! The manga club has meetings every Monday and Wednesday and the members are really nice, we talk about manga and anime and games (in Japanese! I've gotten better).
Though since the manga club really is a manga club and not the Genshiken or anything, I feel kind of bad for not being able to contribute (my drawings are awful) and I'm nowhere near the level where I could translate my story ideas into Japanese. I'll have to find a way to truly earn my place as a member eventually.
I've also started talking a bit more to people in general, all thanks to the Thai exchange student イフ (I have no idea how to spell her name except for in Katakana), who started talking to me. After having nearly one whole hour of Japanese conversation with her, I got the courage to speak up a bit more in general. My goal of finding people to go to karaoke with is suddenly not so impossible anymore.
Next week is International Week in my school (that's Myojo's "thing" I guess), there are going to be lots of activities and I'll get to meet even more students from around the world (though they'll only be staying for that one week). The Saturday of International Week is called International Day and is the most special day of the whole week, I'll be making a speech about peace, in front of the whole school, in Japanese (boy does that sound familiar). I practiced on my speech today, despite sounding weird, most people could understand what I said, I just need to speak very slowly.
I'm going to change to a new host family tomorrow.
Finally! I can't believe it's already over, thank god (notice the lack of a capital G).
Oh right, tomorrow is also going to mark me having spent twelve weeks in Japan (I passed 25% a number of days ago), 84 days man. Time moves onward with incredible speed here (at least I hope it's because of the location, otherwise it means I must be growing old).
Back to the host family thingie. Back on Monday I was informed that I would move to a pair of old people living in the same area as the family before this one, I wasn't really thrilled but I figured anything would be better than this. However, yesterday I got to know that they had suddenly changed their mind and could not house me (second time that happens, I must truly be cursed with inconvenience when it comes to host families).
Instead I will be moving to a family where the host father is American and the house is really big, they already keep two exchange students and a number of Japanese university students there. One of those students is one of my former "sempais" from the Japanese language school. Sounds like my new family is going to be awesome.
That's about all I can remember to write about at the moment, now for something entirely else.
I have been thinking for some time whether to upload a picture of myself in my current state, in case people were curious as to how I might have changed in the last two (almost three, actually) months. Due to the request of a family member, I will now do just that.
Here's a picture taken with my computer's built-in camera (it's pretty spiffy, I could actually use it as a webcam if I so wished).
I really like my black T-shirt with gray stripes, thanks mom!And that's all for today, folks. You bet I miss you.
