Tako

So here is the happy haps for today...I'll try to keep it brief.

I was really tired last night, but ended up waking up at 6:00 AM Tokyo time anyway because of the time difference. I didn't have anything to do until 12:00 because thats when I was meeting Chihei for lunch, so I just kinda sat around the room for awhile because it was raining and I didn't feel like getting wet.

After a bit Jeff (the other person in the program) and I went to have breakfast in the lobby. I opted for a western breakfast of eggs and bacon. Jeff is a student from Sacramento State, and he has been studying Japanese for 4 years (compared with my 2), so he's quite a bit better than me. Really nice guy though.

After this we finally met up with Umeda san for lunch. We also met up with Mrs. (Maho) Takahashi, my second host family mother, as well as her son Renosuke (ray-noh-soo-kay) Ren for short). We ate at a tiny sushi place (standing room only at a sushi bar). Each pair of sushi onigiri was around a $1.50, and it was DELICIOUS. One of the highlights was Tako, the raw octopus. I had a couple other fish that I've never had before, but I honestly don't remember the name. I mostly ordered by sight, but they also had an english menu for me to use.

Ren Takahashi loves baseball apparently, which is good because I got him a UCLA baseball cap as a present. He liked it a lot, and he was a really cute little kid. Maho is a fantastically sweet woman, and I can't wait to stay with her family as well.

After all this, Chihei took me by train to the Kin family house. Wow. The trains are unbelievably efficient and convenient (never had to wait more than 2 minutes for a train to arrive), but they are also confusing as a mofo. I'll take a picture of the map to show just how crazy it is.

When we finally arrived at the Kin house, I came in and introduced myself nihongo de (in Japanese). Talking to the Kin family was a bit slow at first, but I'm getting a bit more used to it. We talked about spirit squad, disney, stevie wonder, my family, and how difficult Japanese is. The family consists of Hide (father- hee-day), Yoko (mother- yoh-koh), Yuki (12 year old son- you-key), and Kana (daughter -kah-nah...not sure how old she is but she's younger than Yuki). Yuki is a genius! He can solve rubix cubes faster than I've ever seen. He had me mix up the cube for him, and then solved it and gave it back to me. It was amazing.

I'm sitting here in the living room right now while Hide helps Yuki study English. I'm figuring I might have Yuki help me study Japanese if I help him study English.

Here's the best part:
We're listening to the Aladdin soundtrack right now! Hide is even humming along with it. It's glorious.

Anyway, tonight we're eating shabu-shabu. I'm really excited. This post was longer than I hoped, but thats not even the half of what I want to say. I'll check in after dinner with a few more pictures hopefully.

PS: Happy Father's day, Dad! I've been waiting for you to sign on to skype again so we can chat. That goes for everyone actually, I have wireless in my house!