Right.
Everything that lives in my house here is nuts, which means they must be really crazy for me to actually pick up on it. I live with my host father, who can remember the English word stagflation but can't remember the word for pear, and who will sometimes randomly pour soy sauce into his beer, stare at for two seconds, and then drink it anyway; there's my host mom, who insists that my zabuton (the cushion thing I sit on in place of a desk chair) is always turned so that the embroidery on it always faces the same way and that I tie my apron sash so that the loopy pieces of the bow go side-to-side instead of up-and-down; and Yuuichirou, my host brother, who has yet to say more than two words to me and anything nice to his mother.
Then there's the animals. First there's a dog named Hana that loses more fur in two minutes than an angora rabbit could hope to lose in two months. She is afraid of the vacuum cleaner and the dust mop. This makes things rather difficult, since my host mother, like most Japanese (stereotypical but true, people), hates mess and so she is continually soji-ing (which, of course, employs the two aforementioned panic-inducing appliances) to try to get rid of the ever-present fur rug. Then there's Sakura, the 21-year-old cat, who hopefully will die soon or at least get a good, long-lasting case of laryngitis. Maybe then I'll be able to sleep for those few hours allotted to me.
That's the other thing. My host mother was not pleased at all when I got up at 10:15 on Sunday morning, and so has decided I shall be up before nine if I want breakfast. Of course, anyone who knows me is going to realize that 10:15 is pretty damn early, and I did a good job to get myself out of bed before noon on a weekend. So naturally I was a bit annoyed at the prospect of having to set my alarm clock every damn day, until I realized that no, I wouldn't have to, because the cat would take care of that for me. She's better than that atomic clock, yowling on the hour, every hour, and waking up the whole damn neighborhood in the process.
And if she doesn't wake me up, the construction will. Waking up every morning to the large amount of noise coming from two streets away is almost a throwback to freshman year in Stewart Hall. Almost. Construction on Stewart Hall never made the building shake. Not that my house shaking here is anything abnormal, mind you. If it's not construction making the house shake, it's an earthquake.
I would have figured that by now, Japanese food would have no surprises left for me. But apparently it still a has a few tricks up its sleeve, in the form of rather tasty-looking sandwiches. You buy a delicious-looking lunch. Normal, every day sandwich. Egg salad, tuna, sliced deli meats maybe. With lettuce and tomato if you like, perhaps a sliced cucumber if you want to be weird. And so, hungry and all, you bite into it and taste... horseradish. Gobs and gobs of nasty green not-quite-spicy-but-definitely-potent horseradish sauce. What the HELL. If I'd wanted to taste nothing but horseradish, I would've gotten the sandwich marked "horseradish." I bought an egg-salad sandwich, and I'd like to actually be able to tell that's what it is when I'm eating it.
And also, the much-discussed but still annoying pizza issue. CORN DOES NOT GO ON PIZZA. Whoever gave the Japanese the idea that it DOES needs to be bludgeoned to death with a corncob. And please, don't hide the mostly raw onions under a layer of cheese. Biting into what looks like a cheese pizza and have it turn out to be an onion pizza is almost as bad as the horseradish thing. However, mushroom pizza is a different story, even if the mushrooms are that weird kind that come with the stringy three-inch long stems.
Okay. I'm done. I'm not really expecting anyone to actually read this, but I had to get it out of my system.
Then there's the animals. First there's a dog named Hana that loses more fur in two minutes than an angora rabbit could hope to lose in two months. She is afraid of the vacuum cleaner and the dust mop. This makes things rather difficult, since my host mother, like most Japanese (stereotypical but true, people), hates mess and so she is continually soji-ing (which, of course, employs the two aforementioned panic-inducing appliances) to try to get rid of the ever-present fur rug. Then there's Sakura, the 21-year-old cat, who hopefully will die soon or at least get a good, long-lasting case of laryngitis. Maybe then I'll be able to sleep for those few hours allotted to me.
That's the other thing. My host mother was not pleased at all when I got up at 10:15 on Sunday morning, and so has decided I shall be up before nine if I want breakfast. Of course, anyone who knows me is going to realize that 10:15 is pretty damn early, and I did a good job to get myself out of bed before noon on a weekend. So naturally I was a bit annoyed at the prospect of having to set my alarm clock every damn day, until I realized that no, I wouldn't have to, because the cat would take care of that for me. She's better than that atomic clock, yowling on the hour, every hour, and waking up the whole damn neighborhood in the process.
And if she doesn't wake me up, the construction will. Waking up every morning to the large amount of noise coming from two streets away is almost a throwback to freshman year in Stewart Hall. Almost. Construction on Stewart Hall never made the building shake. Not that my house shaking here is anything abnormal, mind you. If it's not construction making the house shake, it's an earthquake.
I would have figured that by now, Japanese food would have no surprises left for me. But apparently it still a has a few tricks up its sleeve, in the form of rather tasty-looking sandwiches. You buy a delicious-looking lunch. Normal, every day sandwich. Egg salad, tuna, sliced deli meats maybe. With lettuce and tomato if you like, perhaps a sliced cucumber if you want to be weird. And so, hungry and all, you bite into it and taste... horseradish. Gobs and gobs of nasty green not-quite-spicy-but-definitely-potent horseradish sauce. What the HELL. If I'd wanted to taste nothing but horseradish, I would've gotten the sandwich marked "horseradish." I bought an egg-salad sandwich, and I'd like to actually be able to tell that's what it is when I'm eating it.
And also, the much-discussed but still annoying pizza issue. CORN DOES NOT GO ON PIZZA. Whoever gave the Japanese the idea that it DOES needs to be bludgeoned to death with a corncob. And please, don't hide the mostly raw onions under a layer of cheese. Biting into what looks like a cheese pizza and have it turn out to be an onion pizza is almost as bad as the horseradish thing. However, mushroom pizza is a different story, even if the mushrooms are that weird kind that come with the stringy three-inch long stems.
Okay. I'm done. I'm not really expecting anyone to actually read this, but I had to get it out of my system.