Day 3: Za Biggu Dey

There was actually relatively little that happened today, but it was the most exhausting day by far. My alarm woke me up for the first time since coming to Japan. 16-hour jet lag conquered. In one day. Like a boss.

Just in case Sophia denizens forget what green looks like.

Anyway, I headed down to the hotel lobby for my second breakfast here. Still an odd combination of American dishes and Japanese ones. The group then fractured into the dorm kids and the homestay kids. As one of the homestay members, I packed my bags and checked out of the hotel. The dorm group still has another night here.

The homestayers then headed off to campus to temporarily drop off our bags at the CIEE Study Center. We then regrouped with the others and went through the process of applying and paying for our cell phones, which we'll be able to pick up tomorrow. Next came a more thorough tour of the campus and lunch at one of the three cafeterias. The curry was pretty great, I must say.

The group split up again and the homestayers headed off for some intensive before-making-a-fool-of-yourself-in-front-of-your-host-family orientations. The moment of truth finally came and I met my host mother, Ito Tomomi, her 0-year-old (that's how they do it over here) baby boy, Takamasa, and host little sister, Momo. Momo-chan. Is. Adorable. She's 5 years old and the first thing she did when we met was hand me an origami kit and tell me in tooth-rottingly saccharine Japanese that she wanted to make origami together. We made a crane on the train ride home.

Ghaa! I'm gonna go hug her again right now!

I later met up with the other son, Akimasa, who's 7 years old. He's really into games, so we traded off playing New Super Mario Bros. 2 on his 3DS—communication be damned.

Speaking of which, communication between myself and the family isn't nearly as bad as I'd expected. I know enough Japanese to get most basic ideas across (even if I horribly mangle Japanese grammar), and the mother knows enough English to help me express more complex ones. It's mentally exhausting having to think my words through for like 30 seconds each time I want to say something, but this is definitely going to help me with my language skills. Plus the family is super nice, so I'm glad I'm here with them.

They also have a 15-year old exchange student from Korea staying here until mid-October. It's nice to have someone somewhat close to my age around. Neither of us knows much Japanese, and he doesn't know much English, so communication isn't particularly easy there either. We mostly just exchange simple Japanese. He's a nice enough guy, though. We're friends on Spacebook now, and he asked me if I wanted to go to his school with him tomorrow to meet his friends. I still have more orientation stuff ahead though, so that probably won't happen just yet. It was a super kind offer, though.

My okaasan made me a dinner of soup, salad, and a chicken rice bowl, which were all really good. Everyone ate at different times, though, which was fairly weird.

This turn of events was . . . unexpected to say the least.

But weirdest turn the day took was this evening when we all headed over to something called "Hippo." My host mom had been saying something about hippos all day, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was talking about. We eventually arrived and I had it explained to me by one of the staff. Ostensibly it's a program to help little kids learn foreign languages through fun and games, rather than studying, but it seemed to just be a ton of screaming and running around while muffled tapes played random foreign phrases in the background. The game of choice seemed to be put the foreigner on the spot, where everyone wins but me. Anyway, I'm kind of hoping to avoid that experience in the future -.-

I still haven't met the father, Ito Yoshimasa. According to Akimasa-kun, he doesn't get home until past midnight. We'll see when I eventually get to meet him.

I'm lying here on my floor pad of a bed, wondering if this bath towel is supposed to be my blanket, or if it was just in here and they forgot to give me a blanket. Doesn't matter; it's way too hot in here for either of those anyway.