New House

I changed houses yesterday and I am now two train stations west from where I was. My new host family consists of my host parents, their 23 year old daughter, and her 3 year old son. I am speaking a lot more Japanese in this house (and using a translator a lot more) but thats a good thing because it should help my language more. My little host brother is really cute and just learning how to talk so we talked about Micky mouse this morning. I get stuck sometimes when he uses words I don't know but he is always quick to help out; I think he loves being able to talk better than someone. lol. My new house is GORGEOUS!!!!!! OMG!!! and I really like my family. All in all I'm having a fantastic time here.

Someone asked me for directions today! And more importantly I could give them!!!! Granted they wanted to know how to get to the castle and its on top of a hill in the center of the city and the road we were on led right up to the castle but STILL!!!! I understood what was going on and helped them out.

about 30 seconds later I was stopped by an elderly woman on the street and asked what country I was from.

Yesterday some friends and I went to Kobe to the aquarium and the beach. It was awesome!!! Its still in the 70's here  but no one in Japan goes swimming at the beach after August. Once the temperature is below 95 its WWWWAAAAAYYY too cold to go swimming. I, being from New York, went in the water anyway and it was wonderful. I'm currently driving my host mother crazy by wearing t-shirts around the house and outside. "It's winter" she says. "You must wear long shirts and wool sweaters". "Its 68 degrees and sunny" I say, "T-shirt weather". I was asked today if I wear t-shirts in winter in New York. Truthful answer is yes. She said that New Yorkers are crazy. Fair enough. Tomorrow I'm going to buy "winter clothes" so she wont worry so much, I don't want to drive her crazy I just only brought t-shirts thinking it would be warm here. I forgot that people have different ideas of warm. While I was rolling up my jeans and splashing around in the ocean most people were wearing turtle neck sweaters and wool socks. I feel bad for the kids from my area who are in NY and Washington. They must be dying.

Thank You Notes:

So I almost caused a traffic accident the other day, and I wasn't even driving! While walking home from school and waiting for the light to change some guy driving his car down a busy highway thought it would be a great idea to stick his head out the window and turn around while driving to do a double take at me, comment that I'm white, and drive away. The other cars behind him did not appreciate this. I thought it was kinda funny. Thank you driver, for reminding me for the 8000th time that I'm a pale outsider here, I might have forgotten if you hadn't informed me thus.
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On the same day, I was on the train with a group of 7-8 year old boys who looked like they were coming home from soccer practice. The were all running around and goofing off and being adorable. When we all got off the train at the same spot one of them spotted me. The following conversation with his friend was in Japanese but I understood enough to get the drift.
           "Look! Theres a foreigner behind you!"
            "No there isn't"
          "No really! Look behind you" (friend turns and looks at me, I pretend to not know whats going on, all of the kids do their best to not look like their staring at me.)

The kids all crowd together and whisper at this point. Thank you soccer boys, for putting me on the same level as spiders, bears, monsters, and snakes. Also, thanks for making me laugh.
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Thank you Animae, for totally confusing me even with english subtitles, Japanese TV is very different and the cultural differences confuse me, there are huge differences in humor so even though I understand something is supposed to be funny based on the tone, I don't get the joke. Also, thank you for teaching me how to insult people.
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Thank you Japanese language for not really having swear words, things are insulting based on the context their in but there aren't any words that are insulting by nature or forbidden on TV or anything. This makes it so I don't have to worry about accidentally using a terrible word that I didn't know was terrible.
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Finally, Thank you Jimmy Fallon for writing your book of thank you notes and making me laugh.