Went to uni for more orientation, and learned about train-perverts. And taxi-perverts. Apparently it's not a good idea to ride in the front seat of a taxi if you're on your own. Even if you're a guy, they can (and did!) pull off to a secluded place and molest you. Yay Japan. We learned some less scary/more practical things like how to choose and ride the train system. Soooooooo confusing. Thankfully it ended pretty quickly, and we went for lunch at a chinese food place that I didn't like too much, and there was a woman smoking in the next booth.
The main, big thing that happened today was meeting the homestays. Gone are the days of hanging out with Tamarra in our hotel room, it's time to move in with a real Japanese family! Hooo boy. I've been worried about this for a long while, but nothing really compares to actually meeting them. The first and only one of the family that I got to meet until… 10 minutes ago, was the mother of the family, "Mama" Katayama. Very nice woman, but the only thing I could think when I met her is how genki genki genki she is. This woman does not stop for a moment. Every second she's moving about, picking things up, going over here, talking about this and that. It's a good thing she speaks mainly Japanese, I feel like I'm going to learn a lot from her.
Not only her, but Mama is keeping another student in her "guest house", an 18-year-old Korean girl, Miri-san, who's going to Meiji university. She just got to Japan today, but has a known the Katayamas for awhile. The two of them, in the same house, is a little overwhelming. They really feed off of each others energy, and reflect each others nerves, so it's becomes a cacophony of Japanese when they're together. We decided to go get alien registration cards today, rather than tomorrow, but that meant we'd both need 2 copies of passport-sized photos. I was fine, but Miri couldn't find hers, so the two of them spent half an hour tearing through her things trying to find them, to no avail.
Another surprise, is that Mama keeps a maid(?), or at least employes a woman from Thailand(?) who doesn't speak much Japanese. She's very nice, if quiet, but also has a good sense of humor. She and I bonded over laughing at the antics of Mama and Miri as they fumbled over locking doors and unpacking bags, etc.
Eventually everything settled down a bit. We made Okonomiyaki for dinner, which was an interesting experience. I discovered that I dislike Kimchi, but okonomiyaki is pretty good with ketchup, honey mustard, and okonomiyaki-sauce. Not something I'm going to do often.
Finally, I got to meet one of Mama's daughter's Riyo, who used to study at Waseda. She plays piano well, and has braces. She's also done study abroad in australia, and is very good at english.
This is my new room for the next four months:
That's as far as I got before deciding to turn in. Because I'm freaking tired.
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