"yes, buba (sic) pee in my computer cause mother board dead, nam have to replace it."
FAIL. I kind of miss my dad too, although we barely speak to each other at home---my family for the most part just lives in the same house. If anything, I talk to my dad a whole lot more now that I'm on a different continent. That's probably the thing I miss most here actually---just talking to people. It's tough going through most of the morning with the Nihongo Dake Rule (Japanese only on the 4th and 5th floors, i.e., the floors where our classrooms are), and then going home only a short while later where my already minimal speaking habits disappear altogether.
Don't get me wrong, I really love conversing with my okaasan and with Yoshihisa (my sister, Mina, is usually at work) in my bad Japanese, but even ignoring my grammatical failings, I can only talk about so much.Yoshihisa and I have a thing going where he talks to me in English and I answer in Japanese, which is a lot of fun at least. I probably like him the best because I kind of a have a preference for males (cue another fruit fly joke from Elliot just because I'm scared of females and a good number of my Yale friends happen to be gay males). Plus, he's only 4 years older than I am, and the language barrier isn't as big of a problem since he knows English. Anyway, he's really great and I kind of love him =). We spent a good two hours or so listening to his records today, because he asked me to explain the lyrics to him. Sadly, his Jamaican reggae is incredibly difficult to translate so I wasn't much help other than the few songs I managed to google (and translate) lyrics for. We had fun going through my itunes library afterward and comparing equally shared bad taste in bad hip hop/rap artists (Eminem for the win, woo! Maji, you'd love that).
As for extended conversation with my other host family members, I have to say that my Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (Nintendo DS dictionary rom) is absolutely PRICELESS. There's always rapid typing (or sketching) away on my DS or on Yoshihisa or Mina's SEIKO dictionary, as we all look up words to explain things. I had to grab my DS from my room the other night after dinner to try and explain what the English phrase "it's complicated" meant in words other than "ちょっと難しい"to Mina and my okaasan, both of whom started cracking up because the Japanese equivalent on my DS was apparently hilarious. Yeah, I didn't really get the joke for that one...
Sad to say, my homestay family probably knows more about my not-very-interesting life than my actual parents do. I showed them pictures of various relatives and friends off my computer and facebook---my okaasan saw my senior prom pictures and though Denno was "very handsome," haha. They all pretty much told me that all of my stories, extracurricular activities, and pictures were "すごい!" The part that really amused me was hearing my okaasan repeat to her relatives who live next door everything I'd told her in my garbled Japanese in actually grammatically correct, understandable Japanese as she told them about me. Anyway, she (and her relatives) have now suffered through explanations of the Classics major, my foreign language capabilites (fail), Texas weather, dormitory life, American eating habits, my mom's gardening (they were really excited that we had a persimmon tree), soccer, running the 800 m for track in high school, boys (yeah, apparently it's quite common for Japanese people to interrogate you about your love life), my dog, marching band (woo!), etc.
Hmm, I guess I did a decent amount of talking with my homestay family then, between telling my okaasan my life story and discussing music with Yoshihisa. It seems I have to rely a lot on overly exaggerated facial expressions or on an ambiguous "Mm" all the time too, since my language capabilites aren't enough relay my feelings. I miss speaking English. Or, I miss speaking with people. As awesome as my host family is, I can't really talk to them, you know? Now that quarantine is over, the HIF students are scattered all over town (and some not even in the same town), so that's not exactly an option either, although Victor (the really cool, really nice Chinese grad student from Harvard) has internet at his homestay, so we talk a decent amount via the internets. He's in Intermediate 1B with me, and he's probably my favorite person to partner up with in class--he's really patient whenever I ask for the bajillionth time, "すみません、X - って、どう言う意味ですか？" Heck, he even goes into charades for me to explain things a lot. Seriously, really freaking awesome guy.
Yeah, I realize this post wasn't terribly descriptive about anything in particular and I kavetch a lot, sorry. I miss Bubba. I miss America (the person, not the place). I miss speaking English, and I realling miss talking to people, certain indviduals more than others. Sorry I've been so busy, Maji, I'll shoot you an email soon, I promise, or I'll call you really early one morning and make you skype me =). I'm really glad David's online so frequently, because being able to skype and videochat him and speak English with somebody is so unbelievably nice, and probably necessary for my sanity.
Anyway, my apologies didn't intend for this post to sound so sad---I'm really not. Japan is SO amazing and the people here are awesome, as is my homestay. I'm just a bit overwhelmed at the moment and getting accustomed to everything, so I may sound mildly stressed although everybody says it gets better, and I can see that since this week is definitely an improvement from last week. Still, shoot me an email or letter or postcard or skype or something because I miss all you lovely people and hearing from you might just be the thing to get me through another day of hell---I mean
And to work now. Blah. Do not want.
I leave you with this beauty:
Roman Cathoric Church for the win! Located right near HIF too, woo.
