Hey guys, another quick one since I have to leave in like, 10 minutes.  I’ve been going through a tougher time recently.  I think part of it is that I still don’t feel like I’m connecting with my host family.  I’ve gotten better at talking with them, but I’m still hesitant some of the time, and it just feels like there’s not much to bring up or discuss.  Well, I guess that’s not true.  There are things we could discuss, like my trip, which I did talk about, but I have pictures which I haven’t gotten around to showing them yet.  I think it’s more like I’m unable to talk about things on a more serious level.

This ties into the problem I have with not having many Japanese friends.  I feel like it’s hard to go in depth with a topic of conversation.  People who I really connect with are usually people who I’m able to share some measure of depth with.  As in, I’m able to express myself freely and share something complex with them, some thought or emotion.  Some of my best friends are people who I’m able to talk at length with about things like what makes anime good, or the emotional pitfalls of relationships.  As of right now, my interactions with Japanese people have mostly stayed at a pretty shallow level.  It’s fun to talk to them, but so far I haven’t been able to go into that level of depth in the context of a conversation.

Part of it is my belief that my Japanese isn’t good enough, but at the same time I don’t know how that kind of conversation would be received.  I feel like they wouldn’t be interested, or they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  However, this this belief is definitely rooted in some of my preconceptions about Japanese people, so I guess I should just try sometime and see what happens.  Ok, gotta go now.