Monday, January 19, 2004
New Year's Day and Meeting Family
1/1/04 - Thursday
Since we were up late on New Year's Eve, I slept in until about noon on New Year's Day. After brunch, we drove to Shiogama temple, which took about an hour or two, due to the slow traffic. We parked on the street, which is the first time I've seen cars parked on the street in Japan. I think it was probably illegal, but everyone was doing it. I doubt that parallel parking is something that is common in Japan, because it seemed everyone was bad at it. I didn't see any cars that were parked decently.
The temple was really crowded. You stood in line with a bunch of people to get in, and they let people in in groups of about 50 or so. The Shiogama police were there directing the flow of people, so we saw Masato's father and the coworker I'd met earlier there. The coworker remembered my name, which surprised me a little bit. Basically the groups came in, all threw their money into the offering bins, prayed, and then left so that the next group could come in.
On the way back to the car, we stopped at one of the booths and got hot dogs on a stick (it was just the meat) which didn't taste all that good compared to the ones we've got back home.
As we were fighting traffic to go back home, we decided to stop at a convenience store (Seven Eleven) and get something to eat. I ended up getting some yakisoba and a pizzaman (a bun with pizza filling in it). Because we bought over 1,000¥ of stuff, we got to draw a slip out of a box and possibly win a prize. I was given the honors, and ended up winning a can of coffee. We gave it to Masato, since he's the only one who didn't get something to drink, and since I don't like coffee anyway. As we ate the food on the way back, we saw the sun setting (it was about 4:40 PM). It was fairly beautiful, but I've seen much prettier ones back home. The rest of the family seemed fairly impressed though.
For dinner we had a variety of stuff. One of the things for dinner was scallop. I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out which part of it looked edible, but they told me that basically all of it was. They also said that the big white area in the middle was the best, so I tried it. It didn't taste bad, but the little bits of shell that came off with it crunched in my mouth and made it really unpleasant to eat.
We went to bed early because we were planning on getting up early then next morning to go shopping. Ever since long ago in the Sendai area, the stores have what's called "hatsu uri," which literally means first sale. Traditionally stores stay closed for the first few days of the year, but in this area they have big sales (sometimes 50% off of everything!) the first few days. It's a really big deal here, and has started to spread to other parts of Japan. Anyway, we were planning on leaving the house at 4:30 AM to go to the sales.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go to sleep, because I was feeling a bit sick. Around midnight, I started throwing up and having diarrhea, and ended up spending the whole night in the bathroom.
1/2/04 - Friday
At about 8:00 AM my stomach had settled down enough that I was able to go to sleep for a bit. I woke up once more to throw up, and then slept until about 11:00 AM. At this point the family was fairly worried about me, so they took me to the hospital. Masato told the doctor that I had a cold (which seems to be the word the Japanese use for just about everything that isn't a bodily injury), and that he thought it might be because I'd eaten scallop, which I'd never eaten before. My guess is that I had food poisoning from something that I ate, and since the rest of the family was fine my guess would be that it was something from the Seven Eleven, and not the scallop (although we did each have our own scallop). The doctor poked around at my stomach to see if anything hurt (it didn't), and then prescribed some medicine to stop my diarrhea and nausea. The family asked what I usually eat and drink when I have a "cold," and I told them toast, pretzels, and Gatorade. They didn't have any idea what pretzels were, and said that they don't have Gatorade in Japan anymore, but they got me "Pokari Sweat," which is one of the many sports drinks here in Japan. It didn't taste horrible, but it's grapefruit flavored, and I don't like grapefruit.
When we got home I went back to bed to try to make up for my sleepless night, and slept poorly until evening. After eating a few pieces of toast, I went back up to bed and lay there and watched the rest of Scrapped Princess on my computer. It was an interesting series, but I don't think I'd watch it again. There's other stuff that's better.
1/3/04 - Saturday
I woke up at about 9 AM, and felt significantly better than the previous day. For breakfast I had toast again. After breakfast we headed over to Masato's grandparent's (on his mother's side) farm. It took maybe 1.5 hours to drive there. For part of the way (about 40km) we took a tollway, where the toll was 1,300¥ (about $13).
When we got there I was introduced to Masato's grandparents and Masato's uncle's family. There were 3 cousins there, all girls. One of them was in high school, and had a bunch of English homework she was supposed to finish during the vacation. The whole family asked me to "help her with her homework," which meant that I read the questions and told her the answers. She would write down the answer, and then move on to the next question. Some of them were fairly hard for me to figure out, and some of them seemed rather pointless. There was a section on the difference between "should" and "shall," but most Americans I know never even use "shall." There was one sentence you were supposed to rewrite using another way of saying the same thing, but the given sentence didn't make any sense in English. While I was working on this, her sister and Masato were working on another portion of the homework which included translating a short text from English into Japanese.
After the homework was finished, we all took pictures, and then the uncle's family left. Masato's mom had brought the PS2, the DDR pad, and the taiko drum, but had forgotten to bring any of the games, so the only game we had was Momotetsu, which we only had because it was still in the PS2 from the last time we'd played it. We continued our game, and played until the end of year 25. At that time I was way in 4th place, and Masato was way in 1st. They gave statistics at the end, which made it apparent just how bad my luck was. I'd been stuck with King Bomby (the worst one) 15 times, whereas the the second highest player had him only 4 times. Also, I had normal Bomby 64 times, whereas the second highest was 15 or so.
We ate dinner, which was almost completely made from scratch by the grandparents from stuff they raised on their farm. I only ate rice, not wanting to upset my stomach. I did eat one "ume boshi" (pickled plumb) since the Japanese say that's it helps for "colds." At first it wasn't too sour, but by the end it was almost unbearable. It's the sourest thing I've ever eaten. No one else from the family ate them, and Masato seemed impressed that I was able to eat it. The grandparents were quite disappointed that I wasn't eating the food that they made, and kept offering to make different things for me, but I refused since I wanted to let my stomach recover. During and after dinner we watched a Japanese quiz show. They had adults answering the questions, but they were questions that were taken from middle school entrance exams. Most of them I didn't understand, but the ones that I did understand I didn't usually know the answers to. Masato's family didn't seem to know most of the answers, and only a few people on TV got more than about 2 questions right. It was hard to believe that this really was a middle school entrance exam.
1/4/04 - Sunday
For breakfast I had toast with jam on it. When I was putting the jam on my second piece, I noticed that it looked a bit moldy, so I looked in the jar and saw that there was a fair amount of mold in it. I pointed this out to the mom, and she said something to the effect of, "Oh. Perhaps I should have refrigerated it. Hey look, it says to refrigerate it on the side of the jar!" Thankfully, the piece of toast with jam that I'd just finished eating didn't seem to make me sick again.
After breakfast I went to the Baptist church in the area that I've been going to during vacation, and after the service the pastor talked with me again for a bit. He thanked me profusely for coming to the service, especially since I didn't understand Japanese. I was also glad that I went there this time, because they happened to be having communion. It's been quite a while since I've had communion, since the English church I go to doesn't seem to do communion. I was a bit surprised, since the little cups that they passed out were made of glass. It's the first time I've seen communion cups like that which weren't plastic.
Masato came to pick me up from church (his mom had dropped me off because his eye was rather bloodshot), and then the whole family (except the father) headed to the grandparent's (on the father's side) house, which is in downtown Sendai. The grandmother said hello to me when I came in, but the for the entire time that we were there she just sat behind the grandfather, saying nothing. Every once in a while she got up to get tea or sake for those who had run out. While we were there a different uncle and his daughter stopped by. We ate sushi, although I didn't try most of it since I don't like wasabi and most of it has wasabi.
The grandfather was really really happy to have me there, and made me promise that I'd come back again sometime. Masato's mom had me show him my flash cards for kanji class, and he was quite impressed that I had the pronunciation for the kanji written in hiragana (sort of like the Japanese alphabet) instead of English. When I'd showed the cards to Masato's family they'd been impressed by how prettily I'd written the characters and by the difficulty of the kanji that I was studying.
At one point when we were at the grandparent's house they all asked me to speak in English to them, so that they could hear how a real English speaker sounds, and could try to see how much they understood. It was really hard, since when asked on the spot like that I can never think of anything to say. Moreover, it's really hard to speak English when you're the only one there doing it. Also, I hadn't spoken much English the entire time I was living with them (I probably didn't speak much more than four sentences of English a day outside of when I spoke with my parents back home). Anyway, they said I should talk about Sendai, so I said a few sentences about Sendai, but I don't think anyone other than Masato really understood much of what I said.
That evening on TV there was a program about this American guy. He spoke Japanese, but had a really bad accent. I found it quite annoying to listen to him, but the family thought he was really good. He had perfect grammar, but his pronunciation seemed atrocious to me. When we were going to bed that night I asked Masato what he thought of my pronunciation compared to his, and said that that I need to work on my grammar, but that otherwise my Japanese is OK, which isn't really what I was trying to ask.
Since we were up late on New Year's Eve, I slept in until about noon on New Year's Day. After brunch, we drove to Shiogama temple, which took about an hour or two, due to the slow traffic. We parked on the street, which is the first time I've seen cars parked on the street in Japan. I think it was probably illegal, but everyone was doing it. I doubt that parallel parking is something that is common in Japan, because it seemed everyone was bad at it. I didn't see any cars that were parked decently.
The temple was really crowded. You stood in line with a bunch of people to get in, and they let people in in groups of about 50 or so. The Shiogama police were there directing the flow of people, so we saw Masato's father and the coworker I'd met earlier there. The coworker remembered my name, which surprised me a little bit. Basically the groups came in, all threw their money into the offering bins, prayed, and then left so that the next group could come in.
On the way back to the car, we stopped at one of the booths and got hot dogs on a stick (it was just the meat) which didn't taste all that good compared to the ones we've got back home.
As we were fighting traffic to go back home, we decided to stop at a convenience store (Seven Eleven) and get something to eat. I ended up getting some yakisoba and a pizzaman (a bun with pizza filling in it). Because we bought over 1,000¥ of stuff, we got to draw a slip out of a box and possibly win a prize. I was given the honors, and ended up winning a can of coffee. We gave it to Masato, since he's the only one who didn't get something to drink, and since I don't like coffee anyway. As we ate the food on the way back, we saw the sun setting (it was about 4:40 PM). It was fairly beautiful, but I've seen much prettier ones back home. The rest of the family seemed fairly impressed though.
For dinner we had a variety of stuff. One of the things for dinner was scallop. I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out which part of it looked edible, but they told me that basically all of it was. They also said that the big white area in the middle was the best, so I tried it. It didn't taste bad, but the little bits of shell that came off with it crunched in my mouth and made it really unpleasant to eat.
We went to bed early because we were planning on getting up early then next morning to go shopping. Ever since long ago in the Sendai area, the stores have what's called "hatsu uri," which literally means first sale. Traditionally stores stay closed for the first few days of the year, but in this area they have big sales (sometimes 50% off of everything!) the first few days. It's a really big deal here, and has started to spread to other parts of Japan. Anyway, we were planning on leaving the house at 4:30 AM to go to the sales.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go to sleep, because I was feeling a bit sick. Around midnight, I started throwing up and having diarrhea, and ended up spending the whole night in the bathroom.
1/2/04 - Friday
At about 8:00 AM my stomach had settled down enough that I was able to go to sleep for a bit. I woke up once more to throw up, and then slept until about 11:00 AM. At this point the family was fairly worried about me, so they took me to the hospital. Masato told the doctor that I had a cold (which seems to be the word the Japanese use for just about everything that isn't a bodily injury), and that he thought it might be because I'd eaten scallop, which I'd never eaten before. My guess is that I had food poisoning from something that I ate, and since the rest of the family was fine my guess would be that it was something from the Seven Eleven, and not the scallop (although we did each have our own scallop). The doctor poked around at my stomach to see if anything hurt (it didn't), and then prescribed some medicine to stop my diarrhea and nausea. The family asked what I usually eat and drink when I have a "cold," and I told them toast, pretzels, and Gatorade. They didn't have any idea what pretzels were, and said that they don't have Gatorade in Japan anymore, but they got me "Pokari Sweat," which is one of the many sports drinks here in Japan. It didn't taste horrible, but it's grapefruit flavored, and I don't like grapefruit.
When we got home I went back to bed to try to make up for my sleepless night, and slept poorly until evening. After eating a few pieces of toast, I went back up to bed and lay there and watched the rest of Scrapped Princess on my computer. It was an interesting series, but I don't think I'd watch it again. There's other stuff that's better.
1/3/04 - Saturday
I woke up at about 9 AM, and felt significantly better than the previous day. For breakfast I had toast again. After breakfast we headed over to Masato's grandparent's (on his mother's side) farm. It took maybe 1.5 hours to drive there. For part of the way (about 40km) we took a tollway, where the toll was 1,300¥ (about $13).
When we got there I was introduced to Masato's grandparents and Masato's uncle's family. There were 3 cousins there, all girls. One of them was in high school, and had a bunch of English homework she was supposed to finish during the vacation. The whole family asked me to "help her with her homework," which meant that I read the questions and told her the answers. She would write down the answer, and then move on to the next question. Some of them were fairly hard for me to figure out, and some of them seemed rather pointless. There was a section on the difference between "should" and "shall," but most Americans I know never even use "shall." There was one sentence you were supposed to rewrite using another way of saying the same thing, but the given sentence didn't make any sense in English. While I was working on this, her sister and Masato were working on another portion of the homework which included translating a short text from English into Japanese.
After the homework was finished, we all took pictures, and then the uncle's family left. Masato's mom had brought the PS2, the DDR pad, and the taiko drum, but had forgotten to bring any of the games, so the only game we had was Momotetsu, which we only had because it was still in the PS2 from the last time we'd played it. We continued our game, and played until the end of year 25. At that time I was way in 4th place, and Masato was way in 1st. They gave statistics at the end, which made it apparent just how bad my luck was. I'd been stuck with King Bomby (the worst one) 15 times, whereas the the second highest player had him only 4 times. Also, I had normal Bomby 64 times, whereas the second highest was 15 or so.
We ate dinner, which was almost completely made from scratch by the grandparents from stuff they raised on their farm. I only ate rice, not wanting to upset my stomach. I did eat one "ume boshi" (pickled plumb) since the Japanese say that's it helps for "colds." At first it wasn't too sour, but by the end it was almost unbearable. It's the sourest thing I've ever eaten. No one else from the family ate them, and Masato seemed impressed that I was able to eat it. The grandparents were quite disappointed that I wasn't eating the food that they made, and kept offering to make different things for me, but I refused since I wanted to let my stomach recover. During and after dinner we watched a Japanese quiz show. They had adults answering the questions, but they were questions that were taken from middle school entrance exams. Most of them I didn't understand, but the ones that I did understand I didn't usually know the answers to. Masato's family didn't seem to know most of the answers, and only a few people on TV got more than about 2 questions right. It was hard to believe that this really was a middle school entrance exam.
1/4/04 - Sunday
For breakfast I had toast with jam on it. When I was putting the jam on my second piece, I noticed that it looked a bit moldy, so I looked in the jar and saw that there was a fair amount of mold in it. I pointed this out to the mom, and she said something to the effect of, "Oh. Perhaps I should have refrigerated it. Hey look, it says to refrigerate it on the side of the jar!" Thankfully, the piece of toast with jam that I'd just finished eating didn't seem to make me sick again.
After breakfast I went to the Baptist church in the area that I've been going to during vacation, and after the service the pastor talked with me again for a bit. He thanked me profusely for coming to the service, especially since I didn't understand Japanese. I was also glad that I went there this time, because they happened to be having communion. It's been quite a while since I've had communion, since the English church I go to doesn't seem to do communion. I was a bit surprised, since the little cups that they passed out were made of glass. It's the first time I've seen communion cups like that which weren't plastic.
Masato came to pick me up from church (his mom had dropped me off because his eye was rather bloodshot), and then the whole family (except the father) headed to the grandparent's (on the father's side) house, which is in downtown Sendai. The grandmother said hello to me when I came in, but the for the entire time that we were there she just sat behind the grandfather, saying nothing. Every once in a while she got up to get tea or sake for those who had run out. While we were there a different uncle and his daughter stopped by. We ate sushi, although I didn't try most of it since I don't like wasabi and most of it has wasabi.
The grandfather was really really happy to have me there, and made me promise that I'd come back again sometime. Masato's mom had me show him my flash cards for kanji class, and he was quite impressed that I had the pronunciation for the kanji written in hiragana (sort of like the Japanese alphabet) instead of English. When I'd showed the cards to Masato's family they'd been impressed by how prettily I'd written the characters and by the difficulty of the kanji that I was studying.
At one point when we were at the grandparent's house they all asked me to speak in English to them, so that they could hear how a real English speaker sounds, and could try to see how much they understood. It was really hard, since when asked on the spot like that I can never think of anything to say. Moreover, it's really hard to speak English when you're the only one there doing it. Also, I hadn't spoken much English the entire time I was living with them (I probably didn't speak much more than four sentences of English a day outside of when I spoke with my parents back home). Anyway, they said I should talk about Sendai, so I said a few sentences about Sendai, but I don't think anyone other than Masato really understood much of what I said.
That evening on TV there was a program about this American guy. He spoke Japanese, but had a really bad accent. I found it quite annoying to listen to him, but the family thought he was really good. He had perfect grammar, but his pronunciation seemed atrocious to me. When we were going to bed that night I asked Masato what he thought of my pronunciation compared to his, and said that that I need to work on my grammar, but that otherwise my Japanese is OK, which isn't really what I was trying to ask.
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