Over the Puddle

Well, here I am, back at Gaidai. I must say, the place hasn’t changed too much. They updated the electronics in the library, and added on a new cafeteria, but otherwise, it feels about the same. Everyone is more or less where I remembered it.

I met with my host family for the first time last night. They are a really nice couple. My host mother picked me up at Isahaya station after we arrived from the camp. I introduced myself in Japanese, and it was Japanese from that point on. She had actually brought her father and mother in-law with to meet me. They are a nice couple of people too.

I wondered where my host family was because of the odd assortment of animals, and I was right, they are a little far out from Isahaya. However, the place more than makes up for that. They have a good bit of land, as far as Japanese houses go. It is actually broken up into four tiers. The first is by the road, and is kind of small. The second tier is a large flat grass area, with the goat caged on one end. The third tier has the house my host family lives in. The fourth tier is for the parents. They have their own house, and a rather large garden.

Next, I was shown into the house. My room is at the front of the house, and I was blown away. In my room, I have a large widescreen tv, bed, changing screen, sink, refigerator (chock full of stuff too), a nice desk, plenty of drawer space, and even was given a cellphone to use while I was here. She even went the extra mile and got me an adaptor for my laptop so I can use it.

Off of my room, is a big sitting room. A sliding door seperates it from my room. In addition, there is the living room with a round table on one end, and two log couches (shaped logs. comfy actually), a little firepit in the middle, and a really nice low log table that can be brought out when the occasion demands. The kitchen is hidden pretty well, and you hardly know it’s there. I am still not entirely sure where their room is. Rooms are hidden pretty well.

My host mother and I got to talking, and a friend of hers showed up, along with her daughter. A little bit later, another friend showed up, and we had quite the little gathering. It was fun to be talking Japanese again, even though I am not quite sure how good my Japanese was. Apparently it was good enough, because no one had any problems understanding me.

When it came to dinnertime, they asked me what I liked, and I said tenpura and yakisoba. So, while we were waiting for the husband to come home, me and the two girls my age went down to the store to buy food, while my host mother and her friend, and her friend’s husband made dinner. We picked up a -big- thing of sushi, and all the other necessities.

When we got home, my host father finally came home, and I talked a little bit with him. When dinner was ready, the parents came up to have dinner, and we had a party. There was tons of yakisoba, tenpura, and sushi, and the sake and beer was pretty freely flowing. By the time I went to bed, I was having a hard time thinking straight in either Japanese or English.

I think everyone was happy that they could talk to me. I get the impression that the other people that they have had stay with them couldn’t speak any Japanese and didn’t understand Japanese culture. They were also really impressed when I had enough presence of mind to flip the chopsticks around to grab food from the common plate.

Later on, I finally got a hold of Kirsch and talked to him about visiting Nagasaki. After consulting with my host parents a bit, they had no problems with me going, and staying the night in Nagasaki. So, I made plans to come to Nagasaki today, and here I am.

My host father dropped me off at the station, and made sure I had his phone number, and that he had mine, then wished me luck and was off. Getting to Nagasaki was actually alot easier than I thought. The train I got on ended at Nagasaki station, so it was guarenteed that I would get to Nagasaki without any problems. Getting back might be a little different. We’ll see.

So, I’ve been hanging around talking with Kirsch again, and talked with Ikuko a little bit. We’ll be meeting up with her later and do something, not sure what yet. It also sounds like Kirsch and I will be heading to a nomihodi, possibly with some other JASIN students.

Well, time to wrap this up. I’ll try to get some information up about the first camp session sometime. The second session starts up in another four days. We are supposed to be going to Nagasaki girls high school, but I, Kevin (another previous JASIN student), and Lauren will be heading to Nagoya for a special session. More on that later.

We landed in Japan about 5 hours ago now, and still have about another 2 hour wait before our next flight. Right now I’m using one of those nifty internet stations in the airport. It kinds of stinks because it kills cookies, so I can’t check my email at the moment though.

I’ve been talking with the group of people here, and they are a great bunch of people. I just met them, but I already feel like I could have known them and been hanging around with them for the past year. They like the same music, watch Strongbad Email, watch anime, read manga, play video games, etc…

One group has seemed to form with myself and a guy, Kevin, who has studied at Gaitan as well, and two girls. Kevin kind of goes on and on about his adventures and is boring the girls, so I am try to revive the conversations and keep them going. We’re planning on meeting up in Nagasaki sometime so Kevin and I can give them the grand tour. Too bad the one girl is seeing someone, she is like up my alley. I’ll have to get their names straight here sometime. I think her name is Donelle if I remember rightly.

Kevin is an interesting character by himself. I thought I was a geek for bringing my MD player, PDA, GBA, and laptop, but this guy puts me to shame. He’s got a full Gamecube with travel LCD (no kidding, the flight attendants got a kick out of them), a Wonderswan, 2 NeoGeos, a GBA, and full DVD player. Whoa.

So right now there is a bunch of bored Americans talking up a storm trying to kill time before our next flight. There is no shortage of things to talk about, and the more I hear about this camp, the more curious I am. It sounds like it could be a really good time. I’ll have to wait until after the orientation before I can get any more solid information.

I suppose I should get out of here as there is a line forming behind me of bored people.

Edit: Got Donelle’s name right now. I was tired…

Ah, it’s nice to have the tickets in hand after all that running around earlier today trying to figure out where they were. I am a bit puzzled why they went with the traditional dead-tree format for tickets rather than etickets… Oh well.

Here’s a finalized airflight schedule:

There’s a few long layovers in there, not to mention the flights themselves, which makes me glad I have my GBA, PDA, and MD player. Hopefully the combination should be good enough to ward-off boredom.

So, tomorrow, my dad and I are heading to 13th Street here in Milwaukee to catch a flyer to O’hare. So no Chicago driving, that’s good. The bus leaves at 5am however, that’s bad. Maybe the next time around I’ll save up enough to stay in Chicago overnight, as I seem to have this habit of early flights to Japan.

I also finished the last of my shopping, and am as prepared as I’ll ever be. All said, I think I spent about $200 in supplies, clothes, and related. It looks like I’ll be going over with about $400 in spending cash, which should be good enough for amount of free time I think I’ll have.

I’ve also been emailing back and forth with Kirsch, trying to organize a time to meet up. I don’t think the weekend of the 28th will work, although it depends on my host family. They may let me do as I please as I’ve already been there once before. If not, then perhaps we can meet up and go out to Sasebo (an American military base, naval I think) for the 4th or something. And if all else fails, just meet up and hang around in Nagasaki. I’ll have to feel things out when I get there.

Anyway, 4am comes early, so time for bed. Posts will be spotty from here on out. I’ll try to update on the weekends.

Sean out.

Ok, I think the arrangements for the first couple of groups has been running too last-minute. Case in point: I only just received host family information earlier this week. I was also to receive my plane tickets by now through FedEx.

I received a partial email with a few tracking numbers, for other people, and I don’t know if the email was cutoff, or if there is a compatibility problem between our email servers and theirs, but it does appear to end abruptly. This has the nasty side-effect of me not knowing what my tracking number is, which presents a whole new set of problems.

I’ve been waiting around almost all day yesterday, and all day today so far, and still have yet to see a FedEx driver. I thought the tickets were to come earlier this week, but I received that partial email this week that seemed to indicate that they would be coming later. I was here for most of the day Monday and Tuesday, and didn’t see any notices about missed drops.

After calling FedEx to inquire about the state of my tickets, FedEx tells me that they cannot find any information about a package for me at all in the system. Guy Healy is out of the office due to a typhoon (man, and I wanted to see a typhoon too), so I’m playing email tag with him, while at the same time trying to track down the person at the travel company.

Really, these tickets should have been taken care of a week ago at latest, so things like this don’t happen. Hopefully I can get things resolved, or else it’s going to be a fun day tomorrow at O’hare…

Update: Well, apparently after talking to the contact person at the travel agency, the tickets were dropped off and signed for by someone, most likely the building manager. It would have been nice to have a notice or something so I didn’t have to waste my entire day. Now I just have to track down the manager.

If there is one thing I should have taken for granted, it is the Japanese mass transit system. I emailed Kirsch about my host family arrangements, and asked him if he could track down some costs for me in regards to travelling to Nagasaki.

Apparently there is a train that goes between Isahaya and Nagasaki. It takes about an hour, and only costs about 500yen. That really is quite reasonable. So trips to Nagasaki aren’t completely out of the question. Once I get to Nagasaki, I know my way around well enough to make it on my own.

Also, Kirsch said that I may be able to crash at his host family’s place if I go there for the weekend. Apparently his host sister gets a kick out of having foreigners over.

Only three days left!