Starting to settle in...

hello,

these are things i have done since last:

i have begun to take fla (hula dancing ie. hawaii) lessons every monday morning with ayako in sannomiya. so far i've had three lessons and its lots of fun i have moved up from feet to arms in coordination but i havnt got to the hips yet... its a lot. sometimes my toes get cold. i went with ayako one monday after class to a kilt shop (a material shop) and she's going to make me a hula skirt like they all have. its going to be yellow with white flowers. there are only a few people in my class. our teacher is really nice. she has long black hair. we are going to dance in a festival in kobe in may. i'm pretty excited... it's pretty cool.

i've been meeting yuka every monday to study japanese and help teach her english. i like teaching english to her. one monday we met in sannomiya after hula and she took me to the international centre and we went to the book store and bought textbooks. i got a beginners japanese textbook and its pretty cool and yuka got a textbook that helps you study for the TOEIC test cause she wants to take it later. yuka is pretty cool, she can speak english really well, she just has trouble sometimes with the right word and mixing up the order of sentances or the tenses. sometimes she asks me to explain really hard things that ive never really thought about before like what exactly would means. i like teaching her different words. i like remembering what all these different words mean and figuring out how to explain them to her. i really like some words. its lots of fun. i like teaching kenta too cause he is really good at english and i can explain different things... last week we talked about reincarnation which meant karma and buddhism which was pretty cool. kenta wants to come back as a cat cause they get to sleep all the time and he's always tired. he thinks he has pretty good so-so karma or at least he tries so maybe he will get to be a cat. i hope my karma is pretty good to but i'm not sure what i would like to be. once i also had him read part of the book i was reading (hunters and gatherers) and i think he liked it and he told the japanese teachers it was an interesting book. he understood the words but i think its hard to put them all together into a story when its your second language, but it was fun talking about it. all i ever want to do is talk about books im reading i get way to excited when i get the chance. also kenta is really funny when you ask him questions or when i ask him to ask me a question like with the word who and whenever i ask him why he says because he is japanese. i think he thinks japanese people are really boring and he said japan doesnt have anything special but i told him it does to me. kenta is my 17 year old student. when i asked him to tell me something i didnt know about him he said that when he was 6 he fell off the second story of his house and broke his head and had to get 7 stiches and everyone was really nice to him and i told him that i had stiches in my head too from when i was little. kenta's pretty awsome i like him lots.

a few mondays ago i went with nami to the hot springs in tarumi. after fla i met nami at the tarumi station and we had lunch at this little restaurant that was really nice and kind of reminded me of toronto and we both and curry and they were really yummy. i had chicken curry and nami had beauty curry that had mangoes and banana in it and it was really good too and i had an almond latte and it was really yummy. after that we went to a shopping outlet and we went to this store called franc franc thats a cool household store and i got four dishtowels that are yellow, red, blue, and green (i use one in my baby o class for when we play peekaboo with stuffed animals and stuff, also we sing hickory dickory dock and my baby's name is maki and she always looks at me with a straight face with her big chubby cheeks just as though she is contemplating everything thats happening and shes not decided what to make of it yet cause shes still leveling it all out in her head except sometimes i can get her to crack a smile). also i bought a space foam pillow and checked cover for reading but i think its too hard. nami get an orange apron. after that we walked over to the hot springs that are in a big building next to a hotel. its really nice. first we put on these loose brown clothes and went into all these different sauna rooms. i remember once i went into a sauna when i was little and it was so hot i thought i couldnt breath so i was kind of scared but it was good. first we went into the middle room and laid down on the floor for a while and then we went into the cold room which is pretty cold but not freezing and then we went into the salt stones room that has all these little pink stones that you lie on and then we went into the coal room or something like that and it was a wooden room and it was really hot. nami sweat buckets but i didnt sweat very much because i never sweat very much. after that we took a rest for a while and then we went to the locker room and took off all our clothes. first we took showers with these little buckets and stools and washed our hair in mirrors with all the other women and then we went into the hot tubs with the jet things that were very strong and kind of itched my skin. after that we went outside. it was raining a little like misty sprinkles which was very nice becasue we were very hot and it was a good contrast. we layed down in this shallow pool of water that was just right and you could just sleep there forever, it was my favorite and i could read a book there for a long long time until i was really really wrinkly like a prune. and then we went into a pool that was really hot and then we sat on this little marble waterfall thing with a bench part and it was really nice with the rain and we talked for a while. nami is really cool, i like her a lot. and then we went into this other pool that was the carbon dioxide pool and it was really cool and fun because all these little bubbles come and stick to you and if you touch them they all float away and you can brush them off or you can crush them and they all pop against your skin that makes you laugh. i wrote my name on my thigh and nami drew a heart on her hand. that was my second favorite pool, it was really fun. it made me think of someone who once told me that little fish come to eat up all the little oxygen bubbles that collect on your legs when you are in the warm warm ocean. last we went to sit in these big copper pots with really hot water and it was just like being cooked in a pot of soup... i told nami that and she laughed. after the big copper pots we rested for a while and then went home, it was a really good day.

a few saturdays ago a boy named hideki (who is the same boy who took me to osaka) went with me to osaka after work to go to a place named club karma to see boys noize and go dancing. i met him after work at kobe station and we drove in his car to osaka which took awhile and we went to the club around 11pm. it was really small and underground and it was really cool and i liked it. there werent that many people to begin with but by the end there were lots and lots of people. before boys noize there were two other japanese djs i think. there was a boy with a blue bowl cut and big sunglasses. we danced it was lots of fun. i got lost a few times but hideki found me and we went home i think around 3. i fell asleep in the car. hideki dropped me off at home around 5:30am and i went back to sleep.

a saturday or two ago i went to another of ayako's friends soccer games but before hideki met me in okubo and we went to a restaurant where his friend works. it's called a tepan restaurant which is one that has those flat grills in the table where you cook your food. i think i ate raw chicken but you can do that here and it was pretty good. we also had this pancake thing with egg and cabbage and bacon and it was ok and vegetables and meat and stuff... it was pretty good. we drove to the soccer game and i watched with ayako and hideki dropped me off at home after and i fell asleep just as quick as a wink.

on the day that i went to the kilt shop with ayako i went to this place called patisserie tooth tooth that i had seen before in sannomiya after ayako had met up with her friend. its a parisian style patisserie and its really pretty. the bottom floor is a little store where you can buy all sorts of beautifully baked patisseries and chocolates and upstairs is a little restaurant with big windows where you can look at the poeple walking around outside. i sat and drank hot chocolate in a fluted white china cup on a white china saucer with a tiny ring of little white buttons and a little silver teasppon on the side. on a square plate i ate a white white snowman made of ice cream with chocolate for his eyes and he stood on a bed of gingerbread snowflakes beside a pile of swept up poached pear and blueberry jelly and nice warm custard. it was magnificant. i read lolita (valdimir nabokov)... it was the part about rita and how he found the letter from lolita. the stairs to the bathroom were lined with pictures of paris in gold and dark brown wooden frames.

one sunday ago i met nami and jon and her friend from osaka named Taka in sannomiya and we played pool in a dingy little place upstairs. it was really smoky because you can smoke everywhere here. i was on Taka's team and we were solids and i get two balls in... i believe they were the blue and maroon balls, i was pretty proud of myself (i believe i raised the cue over my head and jumped). i only got the white ball in once. i think we won, it was pretty cool. i really like jon, he was really funny and at first i was kindof nervous about playing pool cause im pretty bad and new people and these things make me nervous and he was really nice and teased me and i felt ok. after that we went to have indian food at this little restaurnat called ch something and we all had samosas and curry and it was soooo yummy! i didnt think i was going to have curry for a year so i was very happy. i had cauliflower and potato curry spice level no. 2 with butter nan and it was quite sensational to say the least and Taka had fish curry no.1 which i didnt try and jon had spinach and cheese curry which was very good no. 1 and nami had something i cant remember with vegetables that was very good. everyone was sweating sooo much it was sooo funny and the said i was a trooper cause i didnt bat a lash. it was pretty funny. after that we were soooo full and i went home on the train.

a couple mondays ago after english/japanese teaching/learning at starbucks in sannomiya (there is a common meeting place called something that translates into women's tits cause there are big round pyramids) we went to a little bar where yuka's friends work. it was lots of fun. we ate yummy food and drank lots and talked and yuka's friends were really nice and tried to teach me how to use chopsticks properly (i was a pretty good student) and admonished me for not being able to use my rice cooker in a way that made me thing that they would like to take my under the arm and cook me a bowl full of rice. this monday we went to a korean restaurant and ate and drank and it was really really good after japanese. it was lots of fun. yuka is really cool to talk to. next time we are going to go see a movie i dont know the name of with audrey toutou in it, im excited. yuka teaches high school students and foreign university students high level japanese and she is writing her thesis on how to build a good relationship between the foregin student learning japanese as their second language and the teacher using different methods like the journal approach and shes going to study psychology so she can understand better.

this weekend i had everyone (ayako, chika, nami, and mamiko) over for dinner after work on saturday and we had fondue. first we had cheese with bread and vegetables and then we had chocolate with lots of yummy fruit. it was quite delicious. we had plum wine and mamiko brought white wine from kobe and red wine. it was a lot of fun and im really happy they came. my apartment is claner than it ever was before. mamiko said that in the summer everyone always goes to the beach on sundays and have bbqs and play in the water and stuff and she would invite me so im excited. on sunday i get my haircut at this place called mod's hair (apparently its very famous and there are ones in canada) and i practiced some of my japanese. everyone was really nice and spoke a little english. it was very luxurious with a very nice head and neck massage. i like my haircut she said its a bob ie. amalie. the woman who cut my hair was very nice. everyone stood around and waved goodbye when i left... im not sure if it is customary but it was very nice.

ok well goodbye im off to work.