2001-08-10 - 10:21 a.m.
It's been a few days since I've written, but there have been no festivals or big mishaps (I'm jinxing myself here) and things are more or less falling into the rhythm of everyday life (in a strange country where I don't speak the language). I've been spending a lot of time studying Japanese and then trying to use it whenever I can... My big accomplishment so far in that regard is that on Wednesday I asked for something in a store in Japanese and got it.
Tuesday night Lela from Vassar came to Kimitsu and we went out to dinner with my co-JET and some of his friends. We went to a French place in town -- I have never enjoyed a plate of pasta with eggplant and tomato sauce so much in my life. This inspired me to try cooking western foods at home, and so in the past couple of days I have re-created my favorite breakfast (an egg sandwich with ketsup) as well as Italian-style pasta dishes. I am also enjoying the glorious ease of the rice cooker: pour in rice and water, close the lid and one hour later you've got rice. It's quite exciting to be able to make some of my favorite Japanese food at home now that all of the ingredients are right around the corner. Yesterday I made inari, which is rice stuffed in a small, sweetened sleeve of fried tofu, and onigiri, which are rice balls filled with vegetables and wrapped in nori (seaweed). I'm actually looking forward to making my lunch every day for school -- I'll have to because what they serve won't be vegetarian.
A new JET arrived in Kimitsu from San Francisco on Wednesday, so I've been showing her around a bit. Thursday we went shopping in Kisarazu (a bigger city one train stop away) with an Irish JET who lives nearby. I bought a cute dress for my sister's baby, but then I left it on the train platform in Kisarazu. I realized this when we got to Kimitsu, so I hopped back on the train and went back to Kisarazu, but the shopping bag was not there. With the aid of 2 dictionaries and one phrase book, I attempted to explain this in Japanese to a station worker. I think he got the gist of it, but he left for about 5 minutes and then returned with a young woman who could speak English. I told her what had happened, but the bag had not been found. Oh well...
Tomorrow I'll go to Chiba City for a tour with other JETs, then probably off to Tokyo for the night with friends. Hopefully it will not be terribly hot. One thing I like about people here is that they do not hesitate to comment on the heat -- in fact, talking about how hot it is seems to make up the majority of small talk among most people. In the States, I always felt like I was whining when I talked about how horribly hot the summers are. Finally, a society which realizes that no one should be expected to keep quiet when the thermometer tops 80 degrees. Atsui desu, nee? (It's hot, isn't it?)
