Kazoku

Time to delve into the host family! First of all, they're great! They are so nice and always help me out with everything. Fantastic! My host mom is a delightful woman who is always around, does my laundry (score!) and feeds me. Basically my life line. She tells me hilarious stories of having a 'Hepburn cut' in high school to 'look more mature', and we discuss such things as the origin of the Bloods and the Crips, and Asian horizontal racism in broken and/or simple Japanese.

This is my host mom's delicious cooking. This is a tasty soup she made. Once we ate most of the soup, except for some of the broth, she reboiled it and added eggs and poured over rice. Tasty!

















I returned the favor and cooked some pasta with a tomato-creme sauce, garlic bread, and salad. My host dad looked worried when I mentioned I wanted to cook. I told him not to worry, and he seemed to like it in the end!



Little Takeru was trying to chug some Asahi. Luckily it was empty.

It was hilarious nonetheless!



This is our toilet. It has more settings than I know what to do with, a seat warmer, three different types of ass washers, and could probably beat me at chess as well. Shit, it has a level of consciousness meriting a name, so I call it Ronald. As if that isnt enough, Ronald is also eco-friendly, with a built in sink at the top where you wash your hands with the soon-to-be toilet water which refills the basin. Now that I see this it seems almost obvious. Why arent these everywhere?
These appliances filter water, and produce delicious tea. Im not quite sure on the mechanics of them, but when I contact superhuman aliens, maybe they can reverse engineer Japanese appliances and tell me what they are.

Tokyo 101

Welcome to Tokyo 101.

In Tokyo, the world revolves around the denshas (trains). The trains are the arteries of the city. When saying where do you live, its really what stop do you get off at. All the malls, movie theaters, stores, restaurants, and really everything worth seeing is usually right by the stations.
Its hard to imagine how crucial they are, but I assure you, they're vital.




You're sure you remember what stop is yours? Cuz theres a lot...





Today the plan is to go to downtown Tokyo. What Ipanema and Copacabana are to Rio, Harajuku and Shibuya are to Tokyo.

Walk out the train station at Harajuku, and you see this:
This street is crawling with odd clothing shops, strangely (yet awesomely) dressed Japanese people, hilariously out of place gaijin (foreigners), crepe shops out the wazoo, and shiny things everywhere.
Yes, children, Harajuku is the lace and leather of Tokyo, the cutting edge of fringe Japanese style. And its oh so glamorous.














Harajuku smacks you in the face. And the group of us, rubbing our cheeks, proceeded to Shibuya. Shibuya is where the young and popular go to buy clothes that arent quite as insane as those at Harajuku.


I know you can't tell because of the HORDES of asians, but this is actually an intersection. Its utter chaos for about a minute as everyone shuffles across the road in all directions. This makes me want to study chaos mathematics and develop some sort of algorhythm or something. But then I think of the work...and decide fuck that.





The malls are extremely crazy. Space is a priority in Tokyo like it seemingly is on a 5-star dinner plate, so similarly, instead of sprawling, they go up. This famous mall, Shibuya 108 is a 8-story ziggaurat of trendy shops where the pious come to pay respects to the lord of dinero, or okane as they do in Japan.

And yes, there's a store called Titty.






After a while, we were tired, and chilled waiting for Pierce to get his cell phone. I call this picture "camera-cell phone-cell phone-cell phone-cane" which I found amusing.










The day ended with some toriyaki - grilled chicken and meat - and karaoke (always a great time). What a jam-packed day!

I slept well to say the least.

Host Family

So on Saturday I met my host family.
We had the opening ceremony, and all the students introduced themselves briefly standing up one by one and saying name, major, school, etc. It was slightly nerve-wracking because it was the first time we all met our host families.
I didnt even know what they looked like, so they were looking at me, but I didnt know who they were. Anyway, after the introductions, those who had gotten letters from their host families (I would have if my Mom hadnt missed it in the envelope from TIU!!) walked towards them and the semi-strange, cross-cultural shmorgasborg of greetings ensued.
I sort of stood there and waited for a few seconds, and saw an adorable lady shuffling towards me. Hagimemashite, she says, which roughly means nice first time. Yoroshiku oneggai shimasu, I reply.
We sit and start talking and eating, and I quickly discover my father is not a 'tsumetai otousan' (cold father) as Matt had warned us most host dads would be. I am glad, he opens up and smiles and laughs a lot. Its already great, and I barely know anything about them.

They take us all home, and I am shown around the house. There are rooms with tatami mats (very cool), a toilet with more buttons than a remote (although a US remote, because the remote here handles 3 types of TV: digital, sattelite, AND cable. All the TV one could ever want or use, and much more), a refrigerator with a rice drawer with some crazy function (this too had more buttons than anything in my house back home), and lots of crazy decorations and interesting random things.

We sit down, I struggle to explain my complex family, roots, and recent travels. Dinner is kare (curry), a delicious brown sludge on a bed of rice, some sort of potato pancake thing very similar to a latka and a yogurt-lemon sauce type deal. They keep expecting me to put mayonaise on everything, and I keep disappointing them. Well, not that they mind.

I am surprised, most host families (I was told all) are returning families, some of which have been hosting for 20 years, but I am my families first. This is going to be very cool and new for both of us, if a bit difficult, virginity allusions aside.

I crash, exhausted after much conversation in japanese, and wake around 10:30. My hostmom is surprised, and we arrange for her not to cook me hot food on the weekends, I will just eat cereal and fruit. Again I leave the mayo untouched as I munch the salad, eggs and bacon.

For lunch Kaori (host sister)'s elder sister comes over with her husband and two extremely adorable children. They at first appear extremely terrified of the gigantic dark man, but later warm up and giggle lots. They are Takeru (1yr) and Yui (3yrs), and oh so adorable.
This is a pic with me, host mom and dad, two sisters, grandchildren, and sister's hubby...oh and lots of yakisoba!















Here is Yui reciting the ABCs...which is basically the cutest thing I have EVER SEEN. Seriously...in my entire life.




Later, we roamed around and went to Kawagoe-eki, the train station to check out various stores and buy random stuff like my commuter pass.

I saw a japanese starbucks...which was moderately disgruntling, but they had this amazing beverage:

Tokyo; Phase 1

Welcome to Tokyo.

Now that I am done with South America for now, I fly almost directly to the far East. Japan is a country unlike any other country. The food, the people, the way of life is so efficient, proper, and very very cute, of course.
Its orientation at Tokyo International University. I check out the campus and meet all the fresh blood. The japanese dont start their term until April. So we have some time to romp around the campus. What antics will happen in one of the biggest cities in the world when the keys are laid out before me for four months? Well, time will tell.
But for now, I have to patch up my badly mauled Japanese skills, root out the Portuguese and Spanish words that pop into my mind first, and get my shit in order. Its going to be a rough first bit learning.

The Net Conclusion

As Dylan would ask, what was my net conclusion for South America?

I gnawed on this question, of course phrased far differently because I would never use a phrase like `net conclusion.`
But basically South America is the shit. I knew this previously, but this trip was like the iron-cast truth of it. First-hand experience of the dopeness.
The people may seem cold at first, but they are warm and open in a simple way. The floods of memories, snippets of sound bites and interactions will haunt me in a way I hope never leaves.
I now feel like I am a True American, american meaning from Nome, Alaska to Patagonia. South and North, North and South. But the West Coast still is the Best Coast, no doubt.
Its difficult trying to summarize how a series of countries or a general location makes you feel, you kind of just have tobe there, breathe the air, swallow the water, and feel the pulse of the land. In my veins my home is here. In my mind my home is North. In my heart my home is everywhere.