Sup

Things that I have learned about my host mom and host sister (I still haven’t spoken with the father):
1. My host mother hates the ocean.
2. She used to have an aquarium but about a month before I came she got rid of it because it was a pain to clean.
3. In said aquarium she used to have water grass, shrimps, and angel fish
4. She doesn’t like Angel Fish because they are scary and would bite her when she cleaned the tank. Also they ate their children.
5. My host sister has never been swimming in the ocean.
6.
I had an interesting conversation with my host mom and she did a terrific impression of a crab. In a strange way it makes sense that someone living on an island would hate the ocean, and I love it. I never do get tired of spending the day on a beach – any beach. Rocky, cold, hot- I love the ocean.
Last weekend my literary teach dragged all of us out to Yokohama, which has a famous art museum and also a famous china town. Apparently Yokohama used to be a big port city and a lot of Chinese people settled there. My literature class read a little bit from ‘The tales of Genji’ for class and the art museum was doing a retrospective of all the art that has been influenced by that novel. Genji was one of the first fiction novels written ever, in the whole world. And it was written by a woman, a concubine, for the emperor who later became his wife. So a lot of paper screens and scrolls have been made depicting scenes from the book – and there were a lot of hand made copies of the novel throughout the years. The copies that survived are not the original surviving text. So in theory the story may have changed.
Regardless, I had to wake up ungodly early on Saturday to catch an early train to Tokyo, where me and about five other students met up with the teacher to continue on to Yokohama. It took about two hours- which isn’t too bad considering it’s on the southern side of Tokyo. The museum was full of more amazing Japanese woodblocks with really old Japanese clothes. The women had long free flowing hair and just tons of giant robes. I just wandered around drawing things and I had an old Japanese woman just start talking to me. She was very nice but was wearing a huge visor that completely blocked her face and so it was hard to understand her. Plus I am terrible at small talk. She asked me what I was interested in in particular with Japanese art, but I didn’t have a good answer. I am interested in all of Japanese art. My favorite thing she said was ‘I can understand your fascination.’ And then we both kind of wandered off.
I do love Japanese art…
A-to-de (which means after) we went out to lunch in the big china town. Which took a little work finding, so we were all kind of starving when we got there. I had some rice with shrimp served in a hot iron pot and some soup and rice pudding. Which was actually pretty delicious. And our lit teacher bought us a bottle of rice wine. Our teacher is one of those guys who is really nice but a terrible teacher. Our classes are three hours long and he fills that by having us read out-loud the assigned reading for the week. Which we are already supposed to have read. Plus, he doesn’t believe in literary theory which means analyzing the text is pretty much out. So he’ll read something like ‘the girl looked strange with her un-plucked eyebrows and non-blackened teeth’ and tell us ‘now in those times women would normally pluck their eyebrows and blacken their teeth.’
So that is infuriating. But he was pretty nice taking us to the art museum and buying us wine. He also wandered around china town with us and bought his wife some o-mi-ya-ge (which is presents). I didn’t buy much but I took a lot of pictures. Especially of the Confucian temple.
My friend Jen came on the trip with me and Jen and I look a lot alike, I might have mentioned already. We are both blonde and blue eyed, and unfortunately on that day we both decided to wear the same color blue shirt. I’m pretty sure to a Japanese person we look identical- since even our American friends say we look alike. So after Yokohama Jen and I split off to do some shopping and to wander through a Tokyo station. We got lost, inevitably, and while we were looking for ‘Sunshine mall’ a random Japanese guy came up to us and asked if we spoke Japanese. He looked fairly normal, actually, and was dressed in clothes from an American Eagle catalogue. So apart from the fact that he approached American girls, he seemed okay. Unfortunately he started the conversation by telling Jen she was pretty and I decided to use him for directions. He told me I had blonde hair and took us to the mall, and when I said thank you he just left. It was very weird. Clearly Jen and I cannot wander around Tokyo alone dressed alike. Although, if we only get approached by nice guys who show us around, it probably won’t be that bad.
I’ve had a pretty calm weekend since then, since I’m waiting for my scholarship money to come through. And I heard another depressing This American Life about the economy. Which I recommend although I felt sad a lot while I listened to it. I don’t want to go back to America where everything is falling apart. At least in Japan I don’t understand the problems they are having. Although I do know that Asia’s economy is having just as many problems. And I’ve been at least two trains that were delayed by an ‘accident,’ which is code for someone stepping in front of a train. It’s kind of freaky how everyone is so used to people jumping in front of trains.
That’s pretty much everything. Good nigh and good luck.
Lots of love from overseas.

more pictures at http://flickr.com/photos/30087712@N08/?saved=1