What the

I am in a whirlwind of languages. From Japanese to English, to bad English to French, I have heard just about everything I have ever known in a fully real speaking environment. (I know, "fully real" is lousy writing, but you might understand how words could fail me right now.) Shout out to my buddy from Québec à côté de qui je m'assied. We, along with about 200 other people, just met our homestay families this weekend, and it's going to be quite the adjustment. I was woken up at 8 AM this morning, nine hours after I went to bed, but to tell the truth, I shifted between sleep and sleeplessness all night, and I feel decently rested but decently fatigued. I had slept with an air conditioner on all night in the Seminar House, where I stayed until yesterday for orientation.

Last night I learned that what my friend Galen said was right about allergies being slow to manifest. My host family served me, among other delicious things, agedashi tofu. It was this big block of tofu that I finished pretty quickly, and then I realized that I felt kind of itchy as a result. Well, tofu is mostly soybean content, right? If so, that's a lot of soybeans, and I'm not surprised that happened. I still feel kind of off this morning as a result of that tofu. I might tell my お母さん (okaasan, host mother) not to serve it to me later, but it was pretty good and a fair amount of the meal. Hmm.

I want to run today, but all my gym shorts are in the wash. I am very thankful that my host mother is doing laundry for me, especially when I have so much of it from orientation. Hey, another good thing: I have no curfew! I just have to call my host family if I'm going to miss dinner, come home late, or stay over someone else's house. Awesome. They're a very lax family in every way. They seemed very quiet (I talked more than I did, although I was certainly struggling with Japanese yesterday and this morning), and they're the opposite of strict as far as my 生活 (seikatsu, daily life) goes. My host mother's a piano instructor who has two baby grands in her house that I've yet to have the chance to try. My host father's retired but is very fit for his age. He showed me how to get to the campus from the house by bike, and wow, I don't think my dad could get up a hill like that on a bike. I had enough trouble myself. And it's hella dangerous too! There was hardly any room for the bikes on the road, so I'm a little nervous about that. We'll see...

Today, my family drove me to the train station, and I took a bus from there to Kansai Gaidai. Right now I'm just hanging around the computer lab, waiting for people I know to show up. Language classes don't meet today, so I'm free. I have one non-language class every afternoon except Monday. (All other Mondays, language classes will meet, though. And I have to be there at 9 AM.)

My thoughts are free, too, and are touching down in no logical order. For instance, I recall now how my family has an automatic toilet. The seat goes up once you enter the room, and the thing flushes on its own too. Also, you can have it wash you if you want. There are three options for that: パワフル (powerful), マイルド (mild), or ビデ (bidet). I think you can make the seat heat itself too. This saves toilet paper, but is it actually more power-efficient? I mean, everything else is, but it seems awkward. Well, of course, it is awkward.

And I'm being awkward. I'll stop.