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Today a bunch of people from Kalamazoo, Michigan came to the school because apparently it's Numazu's sister-city. This fact has been emphasized to me since the day I moved here, as my host mother was on the Kalamazoo Committee or Board or whatever. I had heard about a couple of the people who would be coming, and it seemed like they were all pretty old, but I was surprised to find that there were several really young people, too. There were some people still in college, and even 3 high-schoolers. I guess that would explain why, when we had to break into groups according to who wanted to do kendo and who wanted to do tea ceremony, I was the only one who went with tea ceremony. ^^;
We also got to watch some kyuudo, which was VERY ritualized and formal, at least to my Western eye. After that, I did the tea ceremony (for the first time, if memory serves), and then we caught up with the kendo people back at the gym. The Michiganders were totally into hitting stuff with swords, and there was some kind of news camera getting footage of them playing and possibly some interviews, too. It was cool to see some of the 部活 up close, and I was even glad to see that the American high schoolers were talking to the Japanese ones, though I hardly know how they managed.
One guy had the nerve to tell me that I'm losing my American accent from being here too long. -__-# First of all, what does that even mean? And second of all, 余計な世話. But that's neither here nor there.
Recently, I've been eating a ton of unhealthy food. It's so hot here, and everything's pretty far away, so you use more calories than you realize. But no matter how much I eat, I just seem to want more. Especially ramen! Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure this year is the first time I've ever had ramen. But it's totally my new favorite food and I can't imagine how I ever got along without it. Actually, I don't think I realized how much I liked it until I had some really bad ramen with my host family. We went to this place called 豚平, where the broth had no taste whatsoever, and was not even salty. Perhaps this place is part of a chain, and they're the only ones who are doing it wrong, but I couldn't even say "おいしい." Even their gyoza were ... well, I could do much better with 生餃子 from the supermarket.
So I've been trying to find some good ramen places in my area, and have been largely successful: this place called やくみや is just down the street from my house, and it's quite good. (It's also next to this steak/tonkatsu/エビフライ place that I saw on TV and looks ridiculously good, but that's another story.) Anyway, やくみや is a 塩/醤油-specialty place, and I like 醤油, so I got that. Their broth is pretty tasty, and it's full of little blackened onions, for some reason. They make for an interesting twist, but the broth itself is hard to drink, somehow. :/
There's also 卓郎商店, which is about halfway between my house and the station. We ate there one rainy day, and it was really good, except for one thing. We made the mistake of ordering the くん玉ラーメン, not knowing what it was. I had never had a roasted egg before, but I don't think I like them. >__< The rest of the ramen was quite good, though, and I drank all the broth, which was full of umami. But Kookai is still the best! I'm so sad I missed out on the 500円 ramen thing they had last weekend!