Placeholder post: a day in the life
Transcribed from my diary entry of 9/16/08:
Okaasan [my host mother] teaches piano lessons, and on the evenings when she's teaching students in the living room, I'm exiled to my room for the hours while the lessons are going on. Tonight is one of those nights, so I’m in my room trying to stay awake enough to do my kanji homework while through the door I can hear these piano exercises that make me even sleepier.
Sometimes we just eat dinner really late when Okaasan teaches lessons, but tonight she actually ordered 4 boxed dinners to be delivered here, and as Okaasan's waits for a break between lessons and the other two wait for Otousan [my host father] and Shiori-chan [my host sister] to get home from work and school, I ate mine in my room. It was pretty good, too, although I wish it'd had some sort of vegetable in it. Sometimes I wonder if I'll end up with scurvy from the lack of fruits and vegetables here. I eat apples and salads like crazy at home and back in Iowa City, so I'm in withdrawal a little bit. Actually, my host family often serves a little salad or at least a few cherry tomatoes at breakfast, so it's not like I'm really so deprived. But this morning my breakfast was an aluminum-foil-wrapped piece of toast with ham and melty cheese on it, handed to me by Otousan as I prepared to dash out the door to catch the train, and my lunch was a 220-yen bowl of plain udon from the cheap cafeteria. So although the carnivore side of me appreciated that my boxed dinner contained a sausage, two pieces of fried chicken, AND a hamburger patty, the veggie-starved side wished that the scoop of potato salad had been a REAL salad, or at least had been resting on more than one sad, mostly decorative piece of iceberg lettuce. You get the impression from books & things that Japan is this ultra-healthy, vegetarian land where the only source of protein is soybeans and maybe fish, and everybody chows down on green stuff constantly. And then you actually get here and realize that every meal you eat basically consists of rice (or else noodles), salt, and fried things. Supplemented by tea, admittedly, or else sugary drinks from vending machines. And when you eat meat it's always super fatty here. I am going to go home weighing 200 pounds if I don't pay attention.
Anyway, today wasn't bad, but I got bored in Japanese class (the only class I had today, for 2 1/2 hours). I kept being compelled to check the time, as if there were anything else I had to do here in Japan other than learning Japanese. I mean, what else did I come here for?
All right, Okaasan just came to the door & told me that her lessons are done & she's going out (I think she said she's going out "to study"? What is she talking about, or alternatively, why is my listening comprehension so bad?), but that there's pizza in the living room if I want some. Seriously, pizza? To top off my dinner of three different kinds of meat served with sides of rice and potato salad? How much do these people eat? But I did take a peek inside the pizza box and it looked like it had corn on top of it, so I might have a piece just for that. Or just sneak some of the corn right off the top of the pizza and try to make it look like I didn't. Like a vegetable bandit. I'm a desperate woman.
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More to come, when I have time to write a real entry.
Okaasan [my host mother] teaches piano lessons, and on the evenings when she's teaching students in the living room, I'm exiled to my room for the hours while the lessons are going on. Tonight is one of those nights, so I’m in my room trying to stay awake enough to do my kanji homework while through the door I can hear these piano exercises that make me even sleepier.
Sometimes we just eat dinner really late when Okaasan teaches lessons, but tonight she actually ordered 4 boxed dinners to be delivered here, and as Okaasan's waits for a break between lessons and the other two wait for Otousan [my host father] and Shiori-chan [my host sister] to get home from work and school, I ate mine in my room. It was pretty good, too, although I wish it'd had some sort of vegetable in it. Sometimes I wonder if I'll end up with scurvy from the lack of fruits and vegetables here. I eat apples and salads like crazy at home and back in Iowa City, so I'm in withdrawal a little bit. Actually, my host family often serves a little salad or at least a few cherry tomatoes at breakfast, so it's not like I'm really so deprived. But this morning my breakfast was an aluminum-foil-wrapped piece of toast with ham and melty cheese on it, handed to me by Otousan as I prepared to dash out the door to catch the train, and my lunch was a 220-yen bowl of plain udon from the cheap cafeteria. So although the carnivore side of me appreciated that my boxed dinner contained a sausage, two pieces of fried chicken, AND a hamburger patty, the veggie-starved side wished that the scoop of potato salad had been a REAL salad, or at least had been resting on more than one sad, mostly decorative piece of iceberg lettuce. You get the impression from books & things that Japan is this ultra-healthy, vegetarian land where the only source of protein is soybeans and maybe fish, and everybody chows down on green stuff constantly. And then you actually get here and realize that every meal you eat basically consists of rice (or else noodles), salt, and fried things. Supplemented by tea, admittedly, or else sugary drinks from vending machines. And when you eat meat it's always super fatty here. I am going to go home weighing 200 pounds if I don't pay attention.
Anyway, today wasn't bad, but I got bored in Japanese class (the only class I had today, for 2 1/2 hours). I kept being compelled to check the time, as if there were anything else I had to do here in Japan other than learning Japanese. I mean, what else did I come here for?
All right, Okaasan just came to the door & told me that her lessons are done & she's going out (I think she said she's going out "to study"? What is she talking about, or alternatively, why is my listening comprehension so bad?), but that there's pizza in the living room if I want some. Seriously, pizza? To top off my dinner of three different kinds of meat served with sides of rice and potato salad? How much do these people eat? But I did take a peek inside the pizza box and it looked like it had corn on top of it, so I might have a piece just for that. Or just sneak some of the corn right off the top of the pizza and try to make it look like I didn't. Like a vegetable bandit. I'm a desperate woman.
---
More to come, when I have time to write a real entry.