失礼します: excuse me!

Sorry I haven’t updated about my week! For some reason, even though my commute time to school and back is about half and I don’t have constant internet/Facebook to distract me, I seem to be staying up later doing homework than I was at HSH!

I even forget what I’ve done this past week already…it’s been so crazy! On Monday and Friday my host dad drove me to school because I started class at 9:00 those days and he leaves for work at the same time. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I walked to school…it takes about half an hour to walk, but it seems so much shorter because the weather is cool and the scenery is nice.

On Tuesday, I was supposed to stay back after class to hang out with Koki and Hikaru, but Hikaru ended up having work, so Koki didn’t come over from the Bunko campus, so I stayed back and planned my Fall Break plans with Gabi. The plans are still tentative, as we haven’t reserved anything yet, but right now it’s looking like me, Gabi, Sam, Isaac, and Faye are gonna travel to the Kyoto area starting the 30^th. We were originally planning on taking the cheap night bus over to Kyoto on Saturday night, but with the package deal Eguchi-san (国際センター, International Center staff) was showing us through this JR website, we could take the 新幹線 (bullet train) to Kyoto and back for not much more. We were going to take the night bus to save money, but Isaac pointed out that for not much more, we could spend a lot less time traveling (3 hours vs. 6-8 hours) and save the money we would have spent on food if we took the night bus (does that make sense? cause it did to me). It’s looking like we’ll take the 新幹線 to Kyoto on Sunday morning, check into our hotel and spend the day in Kyoto, spend Monday in Osaka, spend Tuesday in Nara, spend Wednesday in Kyoto again (or anyplace we wanted to see more of), and return back to Yokohama Thursday morning before classes resume on Friday. It’s really awesome because 京都駅 (Kyoto station) is in the lower part of Kyoto, and Osaka and Nara are both the prefectures below Kyoto. According to Eguchi-san, it takes about half an hour to get to Osaka (an hour total to get to the temple we want to see) and about an hour to get to Nara (maybe more like hour and a half to get to the deer), but that’s not bad at all! I’m really excited because if Fall Break goes according to plan, I’ll have crossed off a bunch of stuff on my Japan Bucket List! ^_^

On Wednesday, my host parents picked me up from school after class (I know, I’m spoiled-I’ve accepted that) and we went to Costco together! On the way there, my host dad talked about/showed me all these neat places in the area. Apparently, Costco is in this industrial area (the same area my host dad’s work place is), and it’s the largest industrial area of small businesses in Tokyo (or Japan…I’m not sure). Costco looks the exact same as in America (or Hawaii at least)! The only difference is that due to the lack of space, the parking lot is on top of the store instead of sprawled out in front of it…which actually makes more sense if you think about it. What’s also cool is that you pick up your shopping cart on the second floor where you park, and then ride this huge escalator down to the store WITH your shopping cart. How nuts is that! They have a whole bunch of American products with some Japanese foods, but it really is the exact same! There’s also a bunch of foreigners working there…like our cashier’s name was Catherine, which I noticed right away. I pointed it out to my host parents and they started cracking up and giggling…poor girl probably thought we were laughing at her cause she’s foreign, but we were just amused that her name was Catherine -__-.

Wednesday night, my host mom made 鍋物 (nabemono) I think I think I think. I’m really not sure…I’ll post a picture and you can correct me if I’m wrong. It’s kinda like shabu shabu in the sense there was a communal pot with boiling soup and we cooked the ingredients in the pot as we ate. But it wasn’t shabu shabu because one person (my host mom) had all the ingredients and dumped them into the pot and let it boil for a while versus each person cooking their own meat and eating it right away. I don’t know if that made sense, but anyways, it’s kinda of different. But guess who came to the dinner party?? The owner of マリン, the restaurant we went to on Sunday for lunch who lives down the street, and her husband! And, apparently, they were born 1 week apart, got married in their early 20’s, were high school sweethearts, and were friends since elementary school! Isn’t that so precious?? My host parents told me their story, but it was a lot more complicated so I didn’t understand the Japanese. T__T Another big event of the night was that my host dad said, “well, since part of your family is from Okinawa, you need to try Aomori sake” (Okinawa is famous for their Aomori sake). He poured me a tiny, tiny amount (maybe an inch in a shot glass), and everyone waited for me to try it. I took a sip (a tiny sip), and immediately was like “強———い！” It was so potent! I had to chase that tiny sip (and 2 more tiny sips later) with the only drink I had-Asahi beer. I then watched my host dad take this huge double shot worth of sake in one gulp without even flinching and was like “YOU’RE SUCH A STRONG DRINKER!!” and felt really incompetent. But the restaurant owner was like, “Don’t worry…he’s just crazy.” So I felt better haha it was really cute actually. So I was like “ええ！全部を飲んちゃったんですか？はい、これも、飲んでくれてください！”(What?! You drank all of that? Ok, please drink this for me!) And he did! Ugh, that man IS crazy. But I kind of want to buy a bottle of Aomori sake (because it’s so famous around Japan-even one of the buddies recognized it as Okinawan just from a picture of the bottle) and bring it home as a souvenir. But I don’t think Customs will let me…or that it’ll survive the flight, right? Anyways, the restaurant owner told me that her famous loco moco at マリン is gonna stop in a few days (because it’s a summer dish and it’s turning into fall), so me and my host mom are going back to Hayama to eat there on Saturday! (:

On Thursday after class, I ate the BEST. DINNER. EVER. I was really nervous because my host parents seem really excited about this restaurant (I forget the name…I’ll go look it up tomorrow on the calendar) because they kept saying “素敵なレストラン” (it’s a fantastic/awesome restaurant!) over and over and they told me it was on top of a mountain, so I was worried that the only thing I have to wear is jeans and blouses. Plus, for the ride there, my host mom insistent that I sit in the front seat because it was going to be “interesting”. But the “amazing” thing was getting there! The streets were sooooo narrow (basically one-way) that if you had any car bigger than a Toyota Camry, you wouldn’t be able to get up the mountain-I’m not exaggerating. There were these 90˚ turns and steep inclines, and I covered my eyes most of the way screaming “気をつけて！気をつけて！”(please be careful!!) Yeah, my host parents thought it was the funniest thing in the world. -__- But we finally got there (it really is the very top of the mountain…and I have NO idea how anyone else gets there because there’s really not any parking and there’s only one way up and one way down…which is that one-way street) and my host parents took out all this futon bedding (I was wondering why it was in the backseat and in the trunk…it was kind of a lot) and just gave it to the restaurant staff! They explained what they were doing…but I didn’t understand a word of it…but the staff didn’t seem surprised at all, like they knew we were bringing the bedding. So I was wondering, “ok, they must be friends (even though the cook is like in his early 30’s) because how else would they know about this obscure top-of-a-random-mountain restaurant and why else would they randomly bring a trunk-and-backseat-ful of bedding” Anyways, the restaurant was tiny and cozy and (not-surprisingly) COMPLETELY empty, and cutely decorated with Halloween decorations! The tables and chairs were on tatami mats, and my host parents explained that sometimes the rooms are used for tea ceremonies! They also proceeded to explain the full history of the building…most of which I didn’t understand.

Anyways, to the AMAZING food we ate. The food was surprisingly NOT obscenely expensive…one plate could decently fill a person, and the average price was around $10! So I really don’t know how they stay in business since no one seems to go…unless we went on an empty night? Anyways, my host parents decided (with the recommendation of the chef/waiter/friend) that we would eat family style, and my host mom proceeded to like order the whole menu. She got a salad (avocado & maguro (tuna)), a pizza (this really good ham with a salad thing on top), two types of spaghetti (this spicy sausage and tomato sauce one and a shrimp one that tasted like really good macaroni and cheese), a side order of taco rice (which I thought was gonna be tako (which I HATE and was psyching myself out for), but it ended up being Mexican taco, not Japanese tako), and dessert (the BEST, BEST, BEST French toast I have ever eaten with a tiny scoop of ice cream) and coffee. In addition, the chef surprised us with spareribs on the house (we each got a little rib thing)! For the coffee, me and my host dad just got house coffee (which actually tasted funky, but then again, I just like plain old coffee) and my host mom got a latte. The latte! The in-house barista made espressos the older way than I did at Starbucks-he ground the beans for each order with a hand crank, and prepared the shot using a hand press, and pulled the shot manually-it was really impressive! Plus, he does latte art! He made my host mom a rabbit…that really didn’t look like a rabbit, it looked more like a ram. But it doesn’t matter it was still badass! I explained to my host parents that I worked at Starbucks for a summer, but we pulled shots with machines and that this way was cooler…my host mom took me saying it was かっこ好い (cool) as an invitation to try to hook me up with the barista, so she proceeded to tell the owner AND the barista when he came to give us our dessert that I thought he was cool. T______T Oh, moms. Oh course, I couldn’t say “oh, no, I don’t think he’s cool” cause that would be rude, so I just sat there like my awkward Asian self and looked really embarrassed…adding to my host mom’s amusement.


Avocado Maguro salad

Ham Pizza

Spicy Sausage Pasta

Shrimp Cream Pasta

Taco Salad

Spareribs

French Toast

“Rabbit” latte

We have really big plans for the weekend which I’m really excited for, but I’ll save that for another post since this is already obnoxiously long. There’s just so much to say! I haven’t even talked about the house, or my host family, or all this other really amazing stuff that has happened. OH DID YOU SEE MY TIGER PROFILE PICTURE ON FACEBOOK?! Sorry to be an attention whore, but it’s awesome, and I held a tiger, so I’m pretty much allowed to force anyone and everyone to look at it. Plus I look cute holding a baby white tiger, so, yeah.