August 8th Part 2

Mann, I am tired.
You guys better appreciate it, because it’s midnight, and I’ve been getting up pretty early.
Anyhow, it’s still the 8th. I just have a few things to write about.

First. Pretty soon after I last left you guys off, I finally met someone in the family. He’s a thirteen year old guy named Takuya. He’s my host parent’s grandson, so yes, if you want to be technical about it, he’s my nephew. But I’m not going that way, he’s almost my age anyways, so he’s just a friend. Thinking of him as a nephew just creeps me out.
Anyhow, it was kind of cool, he came over for no apparent reason (although he does live close enough to come by bike, which is cool). But yeah. I like him. We had some trouble communicating (of course), but in the end, he pulled out a DS and I did likewise and we had fun. I hope I see him again soon.

Oh, and today was the first time I found something I really just couldn’t eat. Some pumpkin pastry. Man, I’ve never taken fondly to pumpkin. To me, that’s nasty stuff that should only be used for carving. Blech. But there was plenty of rice with sashimi and avocado in it that I found to be pretty good. Not only that but it looked amazing. So I managed.
But now thinking about this makes me wonder how I’m going to deal with nattou and anko, some weird kinds of fermented beans famed for being unpalatable to foreigners. Whatever. We’ll see.

Next order of business…the festival! Matsuri. I’m still not exactly sure what was special about today, but I don’t really care. It was awesome. Basically, it involved a bunch of people dancing around this central “stage” where a bunch of guys were playing drums pretty wildly. Looking back on what I wrote, that doesn’t sound all the great, but trust me, it was cool. I’m hoping to host my 12 second video somewhere on the web. I’ll let you guys know.
Mmm, and at the festival, I also had yakitori, which I’m pretty sure I’ve had before, but whatever. It’s basically grilled chicken with some teriyaki sauce or something. It was really good. They sold them on sticks, 50 yen each. Not too bad. I had a few.

And then of course, tonight at 9 o’clock, I got to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony…live. It was really, really awesome. I mean the opening always is, but still…If you didn’t see it, do yourself a favor and head on over to youtube. It’s gotta be there.
But yeah, incredible synchronized stuff and dance and art. Awesome stuff.
And then I waited for like an hour and half while the teams were coming out to see some, like US, Brazil, Japan, etc. Cool show, in all =]

Anyhow, this is it. It’s about 12:20 and I need to get up kinda early tomorrow to get ready for my AFS camp. Hope it’s fun!

P.S. Lucky you guys. This isn’t even a full page on Word. XD