As much as possible

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Some Calm Before the Storm :: Beginnings

How was my flight?

It was long. Very long and just a tad annoying. There's a whole rant about JFK airport that I could go into, but that would probably take up an entire post by itself. Anyways, I made it to Osaka all in one piece around 24 hours after leaving Atlanta, extremely tired and ready to collapse in bed. Thankfully, Kansai International Airport has free WiFi (unlike Hartsfield-Jackson or JFK - another rant in itself), so I got to contact Zoey and Melia safely and hammered out where I should meet them and whatnot. They took me to the hotel (which I wouldn't have been able to find by myself) and we went down to the basement labyrinth to find some food to eat. We found a restaurant and ordered gyoza, edamame, and shumai to eat, and when it came time to pay, I thought I would finally get a chance to practice Japanese. Nope. Almost the second I opened my mouth the restaurant owner started speaking to me in Chinese...actually, up until this point, everybody I had spoken to talked to me in Chinese. Extremely strange. 

View from the hotel we stayed at
The next morning, we met Tommy, got some tonkatsu and udon for lunch (which was delicious), and barely managed to catch the train to Osaka a few minutes before the doors closed. The train ride was smooth and the scenery was beautiful - mountains on our left and the ocean on the right, giving us a chance to practice a CC from a couple months before that went roughly: 
山も海も見える、とてもきれいな所だね
Being able to see mountains and the ocean, what a beautiful place!

Let's fast forward a bit

Alright so after we got to Kanazawa, we met PII people, had fun, had orientation the next morning, and then finally met our host families. I was so nervous about meeting my host family that when we actually finally met I stuttered all throughout my introduction. My host mom and dad were so nice and understanding, though, and after the very awkward introductions, we went to buy my bus pass (which was 35780 yen, so expensive!). Afterwards, we went to eat at a delicious conveyor belt sushi restaurant with another host family and PII friend. The restaurant was bustling and loud, and I wanted to put everything on my plate. 

We ended up ordering a set from the touchscreen (touchscreen!!) menu and had a lot of fun eating and chatting. Afterwards, my host family took us to the ocean and to a specialty shoyu (soy sauce) store that was located in a really old area that produces soy sauce. 
We had a very fun time watching the three little kids playing in the puddle and throwing mud at each other

The owners told us that this store was more than 150 years old. There were so many different types of shoyu!

This was an old room at the back of the shoyu store that's been the same since over a 100 years ago
After we left the shoyu store, we walked over to an ice cream store since it was supppper hot and humid. I thought that it would be a regular ice cream store, but they only served shoyu ice cream. I was a bit hesitant to eat ice cream made from soy sauce, but it was really delicious! 
My host family is on the right, and Koh-san and his host mom is on the left
After we finally made our way back home, we talked for a bit, ate dinner, and then I collapsed in bed. It definitely got easier to talk to my host family throughout the day, although I still couldn't understand most of what they were saying. Most of what I caught was talk about tuyu, or rainy season, and I'm definitely not looking forward to the start of the rainy season (where it'll rain nearly every day). 

Well, I think I'll end this post here since it's gotten just a tad long. Look forward to my post about the first week of classes and all the field trips we took! (It'll be even longer). 

Till next time, and DFTBA

1 comment:

  1. ATL now has free wifi that will support 15000 users. The busiest airport in the world makes a move to accommodate travelers!

    ReplyDelete

Powered by Blogger.