Various fun times from the last few days

Today was my host mom's birthday! Every year my host family goes to the same restaurants for each person's birthday and gets a picture taken. My host mom showed me all of the pictures last week, and they are really great. I'm glad to be in one of them! Takumi made a face in last year's picture, and I thought that was funny. He was just a baby in the first one. :) But in this picture, I couldn't stop laughing at how he looks. He fell asleep midway through dinner and couldn't wake up for the picture at the end. Namiko said, "Our one memory from tonight..." Click on this picture, it's too funny. He looks adorable!

Namiko got a really great haircut today. I think she looks lovely with both kinds of hair but possibly more energetic yet dignified with shorter hair.

We had a great time at dinner eating really small food that tasted so good. Here's a picture of Tomoaki posing with his "Bikkuri Bomb" (Surprisingly Huge Bomb of Food), which was a hamburger with an egg in the middle of it. See?

I think Takumi likes me now because of how I treated him yesterday. I sat down to write my report yesterday afternoon when I heard him crying from the other room. I wasn't sure what to do and his parents weren't home. Trying to get him to explain the problem to me took awhile because he was so distraught. Thankfully I understood his mid-sob Japanese and learned that no, he wasn't in intense emotional or physical pain, but that he had lost his hat. :) I know it's a big deal to lose one's school uniform hat but it was very cute and I tried not to laugh. He kept saying, "I lost my hat, it's gone away, and now I can't go to school again!" I tried to console him and say that he could probably find the hat or get a new one, but that didn't work. So I got him some tissues and a glass of water, and that seemed to help. Then we called his mom so he could tell her. I wasn't sure exactly what to do so I got my computer, pulled up some old-school English Pokemon videos and a Super Mario Brothers video, and showed them to him. That really cheered him up. :) Then his dad came home after finding the hat and everything was a-okay again. :) But soon after, he climbed into my lap to watch more videos with me. Then today, he slowly and carefully explained to me that he wanted me to watch Pokemon with him at 7pm. :) That was really nice of him.

Yesterday and today I was worrying about some things in the US that I'll have to deal with when I return. But I realized that those thoughts are distracting me from enjoying the present, so I decided not to check my email until I got home today, after studying with my friends. Good decision!!

Anyway, today after dinner I taught my host mom some of the English phrases she had trouble with while watching Sex and the City. Some of those quotes were pretty hilarious to translate. I never noticed how many difficult metaphors are commonly used in English!  "Up to his ears" was a fun one to teach, "I don't buy into that crap" was also fun. "Dildos", "emotionally detached", and "hooking up" were interesting to try to explain, but I was at least glad that I don't have to sugarcoat anything; Namiko appreciates bluntness in definitions, it seems.

I love learning both the meanings and literal translations of words in Japanese. For instance, I think it's cool that "bathroom" in English doesn't always have a bath in it, and the Japanese equivalent, "otearai" means "place for washing hands" although obviously that's not the only reason people go there. One thing that I think is funny is the translations I make in my head for what Takumi is saying. He's only 8 years old but he says things that translate as, "Indeed" and "Is that so?" and "Right before my eyes!" and "After all..." These are all very common things to say in Japanese but to me they sound so formal coming from someone who hides under the blankets on the couch. :)

I think I was mistaken when I compared the tones of English, Japanese, and Spanish. I think what I was actually trying to say was stress. English is full of stress, which makes good rap. Spanish has accent marks and unaccented stress that sounds very regular and even, like music or poetry. Japanese has some stress but very, very little compared to English. I recognized this when I learned about Japanese rap, which has artificially-added stress, and when I was watching Japanese game shows and thought, "There's no way those tones are staying even!" :) If you ever walk into a Japanese store, the store owner will say, "IrrashaimasseeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEE" hahaha. It sometimes sounds pretty annoying. There's no stress in the word but the tone is all over the place.

I also noticed stress in Japanese because there is a person in my class who has not grasped this concept at ALL. This person not only stresses Japanese words too much, this person stresses EVERY SYLLABLE as though it's an individual exclamation, and fails to produce any soft R sounds (which in Japanese are so soft they sound like Ls). Maybe sometime I'll try to make a video but it is like a constant grating on my ears. Have you ever had a Spanish class where someone says, "Yo Quay Ro Uh-nuh Quay Say Dil La"? It's like that, except so much worse. That's the end of my rant for this week.

Yesterday there was a neat fashion show during lunch at my university. Here are some photos from it.

My favorite dress is the short black and silver one on the right. There was a great DJ playing awesome mixes during the fashion show. I really appreciate all the great entertainment at Kanda University; there's always someone performing in the courtyard next to the cafeteria, it seems. Today there was a screamy rock band playing Linkin Park and a number of other loud bands. It makes it difficult to talk to friends at lunch but it's always exciting. :)

I've been so tired that I have to go to bed now, sorry for the disorder in this post. But I fell sleep today once in class during a break, and twice on the trains! No worries, I jerk awake when the train stops or when my head hits the window, haha.

I greatly fear my next week's schedule. Monday is a holiday, there is a 2-chapter test on Tuesday, one final exam on Thursday, one final exam on Friday, and a huge, 25%-of-grade presentation on Friday (after the test) that is not even done right now. How am I supposed to have fun with all this impending doom? I'll manage somehow... :)

The sky today as I arrived home: