August 8th

Hey guys. Just a note to the lazy bums out there: this one will be pretty short in comparison to the one I wrote yesterday, so stick with me. Anyhow, it’s currently almost 1 PM Standard Japan Time on August 8th. Which means 11 PM on the 7th, for you guys in Bloomington. (Jan, that’d be, what…6 AM on the 8th?) Anyhow, I’ve got some time because my mom went to the supermarket and my dad’s asleep downstairs.

I don’t have much to report, but I finally gave my parents the presents. I ended up giving them….an Illinois coffee table book, a can of Beer Nuts’ peanuts, three placemats that look like the US flag (except the “blue” is made up of blueberries and the “red” is a bunch of strawberries. It’s pretty neat), and a pen from Caterpillar for my dad. Phew. It was pretty cool. They were so thankful. Then I walked my dad through the Illinois book (he, of course, had his magnifying glass =)), which is harder than it sounds because of the whole English/ Japanese barrier. I looked up like every other word in the dictionary XD. At least I’m pretty fast at it. He can’t really do it because he doesn’t know the order of the alphabet well….you know…A B C D E….so on. Which makes it very difficult to use an English dictionary. Anyhow one word in particular I kept needing and kept forgetting: famous. Yuumeina. I wrote it on my hand. I’ll have it by tomorrow XP
Oh, and my dad is really intent on learning English, or at least how to read it. I’m proud of him. Japanese isn’t exactly an easy language, but to their credit, the sounds are incredibly easy. In English we have freaky pronunciations, but none of that in Japanese. Always the same. So it’s hard for him, and I applaud him for trying so hard.
Actually, here, I’ve noticed a lotttt of crazy English quirks. Like his English-Japanese dictionary has a bunch of side notes on expressions and stuff.
For example, have you ever noticed how you can…
…accuse someone OF something.
…blame someone FOR something.
…charge someone WITH something.
And they all mean close to the same thing. Confusingggg. But undoubtedly the best one I’ve heard was from Mrs. Takasugi. She mixed up housework and homework. And if you think about it, house and home mean the same thing. And yet housework and homework are completely different. That’s so cruel.
English is a brutal language.
So yeah, that’s my “two cents.”

Oh, and then one more thing about TV that I thought was really cool. You know when you watch a commercial and think “Wow, that’s a cool song. I wish I knew what it was called.”? Yeah, I hope you think that too, because I think that alllllll the time. Well, in Japan, they put the name of the song and the artist on the bottom corner of the screen. That makes so much sense. Credit the person who made the song, and advertise all at once.
Oh, and I’m gonna admit, watching anime with commercials in between is so weird. I’m used to them cutting those parts out to put them online. Creepy. :-P

So I mentioned how my mom went out to go shopping. I thought it was interesting how she got all dressed up to go. Like she put on some vest like thing, and gloves, and a hat, and got an umbrella (even though there is absolutely no chance of rain), and everything. It was kind of cool.

One more thing. Tomorrow at 9 AM (at least that’s what I got from my mom) I’ll be going to some camp thing with AFS. AFS is another exchange program, except they send a lot of people, everywhere. Not just Bloomington and Asahikawa. But turns out there’s a lady on the Asahikawa Sister Cities Committee that’s also on the AFS committee, and that’s how I’m involved in this. I’m excited though, get to meet some people. I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

But as for tonight, I can’t wait to see the Olympics. I really love watching the games. They’re so intense. Actually one I’ve taken special notice recently is Ping Pong (or Table Tennis, as the professionals would probably want me to call it.) I’ve never really paid attention to professional Ping Pong, but mannnn, it’s intense. Like it just zooms back and forth and they manage to [accurately] hit back onto the table even when it’s like 6 or 7 feet away. Amazing.

I love writing these, because it lets me reflect, and think some in English to myself. And I open iTunes and listen to music, which is cool too. =]
But for now, I’m going to go enjoy what this house has to offer.