August 15th

Yeah, that last post was pretty deep, I know. Or at least it was to me. I’m not sure I conveyed it to the whole extent that it was, but in any case, I’ve got lighter stories now.

We didn’t stay at the cemetery long: we soon left to meet more family (well, at least I was meeting them. You know what I mean.)

I’m still kind of confused about who’s related to who and how, but I suppose that’s natural when you’re meeting like 10 new people at once.
But from what I got out of it, one of the guys there is my mom’s older brother, and then his sons/daughters/cousins/grandchildren/etc.

But yeah, it was pretty fun. They would ask me all these questions, and I could answer about half, and then my parents would help me out when they knew what I was trying to say.

In particular then, this one married couple and their eight year old appeared out of nowhere (or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention when they came in) and I probably liked them the best. The couple was probably in their mid thirties, and they were probably more in sync with stuff like Internet and Harry Potter and such. And the kid was pretty clingy, but I liked him too. His name’s Takumi (not to be confused with Takuya, my thirteen year old family/friend guy).
So yeah, it was cool. And Takumi had his DS with him too (I told you everyone here has one.) And he showed me some games he was very proud of, one of which I recognized to be Naruto, the rest were some different Japan-only games I’ve never heard of. But he let me play too, so that was cool.

Oh, and they all loved it when I read the English that was written on the can of Asahi Beer. It was really funny then, because Takumi started showing off reading something in Japanese really fast when I was struggling through it, and then I just blazed through the English on the can. It was pretty great. Everybody laughed.

Oh, and I mentioned Harry Potter, there was a story with that too. See, in Japanese they don’t have as many sounds as we do in English, and pronunciation is incredibly simple (I may have talked about this before, but bear with me.) Like something written “ta” is always read….”ta”. Not like English where practically the same word (spelling-wise) can have a completely different pronunciations.
I think you get my point, so I’ll move on.
Because of this, when they’re adopting English words, the Japanese often have to change it slightly.
For example, McDonalds becomes Makudonarudo (it looks silly, but read it out loud; it’s pretty close.)
And Harry Potter becomes…Harii Pottaa
ONLY SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT.
And yet when I say “Harry Potter” the American way, they don’t understand. Same for when I say McDonald’s or Caterpillar (they say Kyatapiira).
Go figure.

But all in all, it was fun, and explained some things to them, such as www standing for “world wide web.”
To get them to understand web was difficult though. I went off on some tangent about Spider-Man (Supaida Man) and explained how that mushi (bug) was the one that made a web. See where I went with that? Hey, whatever works.

Oh and then the food. Kind of like the last time I ate with a bunch of family, we had soooo much food. It was almost too much. I kinda had the same as always, though. A bunch of rice, with some sashimi (or raw fish, for those who aren’t in the know), as well as sushi. The one interesting thing I had was a shrimp. Well yeah, that doesn’t sound interesting, but that’s because I haven’t mentioned it was the whole thing. You know, head to tail, or whatever you want to call it. I hate it when they serve seafood like that. It would be like putting a snout and cow udder with your ham and cheese sandwich (sorry if I just ruined your appetite).
Seriously though, whyyy?
But what the heck, I figured I’d try it. And yeah, I took the hard outer shell or whatever you want to call it out. And then I went for the head. And when I did, its brains, or whatever they were, sprayed all over my hand. It was kind of the most unappeasing food experience I remember thus far.
I didn’t eat after that, but I was okay, I had eaten enough.

Anyway. Isn’t that a great place to leave you guys off at? Ahahaha.
Well, I don’t have much more to share, but we did stay there like all day.
It was a lot of fun. I hope we go back sometime soon.

Anyhow, it’s really late, and I’m psyched for tomorrow because Alex and I are going to hang out. Maybe the others too.
I’ll probably have something to write tomorrow anyways.
Actually I hope at least one of you hasn’t given up on checking my blog every now and then, because then at least that person can tell everyone else to check. Haha, oh well.

Take care guys.