I slept in today.  The air-condtioner in my room has a cool function where you can set it to go off after several hours, so say you get in bed and you want to go to sleep; you can set the air-conditioner to turn off after a several hours so you can fall asleep.  This is cool in that it lets you get to sleep, but the downside is that once it’s off and morning comes, it gets really warm again.  Which is the reason why I was woken up at 9.  Despite being awake, I tried my hardest to fall asleep again, and I think I managed to grab an extra hour and a half or so.

I got out of bed at noon and went downstairs to get some breakfast/lunch.  I found a note for me from my okaasan which I spent 5 or 10 minutes deciphering.  Reading a Japanese textbook is easy enough, but reading actual handwriting is something else entirely.  I mean, there are some people whose English handwriting is barely legible, and I’m not saying that my okaasan’s handwriting is bad, for all I know her handwriting could be considered excellent, it’s just that a language looks different handwritten as opposed to typed.

I managed to figure out the essentials of the note, and I retrieved a bowl of nashi from the fridge.  Nashi means pear, but nashi is different from an American pear.  It tastes different, and it’s much crisper than an American pear.  All in all, very delicious.  There was also some curry, but I decided to save it for later.  I went back up to my room and nearly finished unpacking (I have several miscellaneous things that I don’t know what to do with), although there’s no more room on the bookshelves for all of the books I brought.

After unpacking I caught up on webcomics I had missed during the week and other stuff I do on the internet.  As I was nearing the end of my internet duties, I got a knock on the door, and my oniisan, Yuusaku, asked if I had eaten lunch yet.  Since I first woke up, my fear of socializing and having to talk in Japanese had returned, and had only increased during the day, so when Yuusaku knocked on my door, I got really nervous.  He was kind enough to fix me some curry, and I ate in silence as we both watched tv.  After finishing, I continued watching tv and realized I had forgotten to say “gochisousama,” which is what you say after you finish eating as an expression of gratitude to whoever prepared the meal.  So when the program we were watching ended, I gathered my plates and managed to say “gochisousama.”

Yuusaku showed what to do with the dishes, and I went back upstairs.  I finished what had been left of my internet duties, and, feeling bad that I was being a recluse, I went back downstairs with a book, thinking that I could switch between reading my book and watching tv, seeing as I wouldn’t understand the majority of what was being said.  Despite that fact, the tv dominated most of my attention.  I watched tv for several hours, and I felt comfortable just sitting there, but at the same time I wondered if I should try to converse with Yuusaku.  I wanted to, but I didn’t really know what to say.  My level of Japanese allows for infantile conversation, maybe elementary school level at best, and I had a feeling that that wouldn’t really get me anywhere with Yuusaku.

So I ended up not saying anything and I went back up to my room once it started getting past 5.  I think I continued to read and tried to sort out a good way of organizing my photos that I’ll collect while I’m here, only to discover that my computer was slightly broken.  Nothing serious; the disk needed to be repaired was all, although my disc drive is doing that thing computers do after a couple years where they refuse to accept the majority of CD’s that are put in them.  Luckily one of my install discs was accepted and I was able to repair my hard drive.

After that I managed to start uploading my pictures.  I’m using Picasa, because I like Google and it seemed to be one of the best options.  I still don’t know how to link to my web albums since the url for the albums is pretty unspecific.  I’ll figure it out eventually.  During the long process of setting all this up, or shortly afterwards, the phone next to my computer (there’s a phone on my desk), rang and surprised me.  I thought it was just a random call and I was about to go back to the business at hand, when a voice came from the phone’s speaker.  It was okaasan saying that dinner was ready.

I headed down to dinner.  Okaasan showed me that I served myself however much rice I thought I could eat, and the rest of the meal was already laid out.  I sat down and waited for Yuusaku and okaasan to both be ready.  When you’re about to start a meal, you say “itadakimasu,” the meaning of which is similar to “gochisousama.”  Dinner was some kind of mashed potato with cucumber, I think, some kind of asparagus or long green cylindrical object with mushrooms and bacon, mackerel, and some kind of spring roll-type-thing.

The mashed potato dish was good, but not particularly exciting.  The aspragus/mushroom/bacon dish was great; the vegetables were a little crisp and it had a great taste to it, probably because of the mushroom and bacon combination.  The spring rolls were good; they had that fried taste to them but they weren’t huge and they weren’t really greasy or anything.  Finally, the mackerel, or, saba.  A month or two ago, my family and I went to a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco that claimed to have traditional Japanese food.  Mostly it was various kinds of fish, and out of all the dishes we had, the mackerel was the best.  The mackerel I had tonight was just as fabulous as the one I had that night at the restaurant.  It was delicious, and I regret not really communicating that to my okaasan.

The whole time we were eating, we were also watching tv, so it kind of gave me an excuse not to talk, again, but I did kind of try to make conversation, unsuccessfully.  This time when I finished eating, I successfully said “gochisousama.”  I waited a little before taking care of my dishes then I went back upstairs…to fetch my photo album that I brought.  I went back downstairs and made the presence of the album known, and my okaasan eagerly asked to see them.  We went through the album and I explained who each person was and their relation to me.  It was mostly relatives of mine and my cats, so it didn’t take too long to get through the album.

However, I can probably find pictures of my other friends online, load them on my computer, then show them to my okaasan.  After I finished going through the album, I managed to fit in a little more conversation about my parents and then we relapsed into watching the tv.  I continued to watch and managed to ask a question or two about something on tv until an hour or so later I took a bath.  After the bath I went back upstairs and meddled around on my computer.

I decided to go downstairs one last time to say good night, and I ended up watching the tv for a few more minutes.

This is a good point to talk a little bit about Japanese tv.  These are just some basic observations, nothing particularly insightful.  One thing is that Japanese tv kind of bombards you with stuff.  With American tv, or what I remember of it (for the past three years I’ve lived in a place that doesn’t get tv reception), the commercials would be half a minute long or so, maybe a little less, and the transition between commercials, and between commercials and the actual program would be pretty smooth; there’d be a few seconds of black and silence before whatever was next started up.  Also, American tv and commercials are subtle in that they aren’t really loud, or the visuals are subdued, or something like that.  With Japanese tv, the commercials are loud and fast and they bombard you with speech and music so they can get the message across quickly, then it’s on with the next commercial.  And as soon as the last commercial is done it cuts right back into the program, as if there had been no commercial break whatsoever.

As for the actual programs, most of them were talk shows, or were what looked to be some kind of game show.  Not any of those game shows that we see in America and go “oh those Japanese, they’re so crazy,” just a simple game show with a family or something that has to answer questions or guess something’s worth or whatever.  Since I had no idea what most of those shows were about, I can’t comment on them much.  I’ve already explained the biggest impression that commercials left on me, but one interesting thing is that a lot of commercials end with an image and sound of a mouse clicking a search button with a certain phrase in the search bar.

That’s about all I can think of for today.  I can’t wait to get back into studying the language so I can really start improving.

Oh, the internet here is fabulous.  When I was downloading Picasa, I got speeds of up to 2.5 MB/sec.  Yeah, ridiculous.

Ok, I think I should be up for breakfast tomorrow, which means waking up at 6 AM.  I might be able to get away with napping after breakfast, I don’t know.

Oyasumi~

-Shimon