I had a fairly wonderful dream about Bren last night. Unfortunately, I had to wake up so I didn't get to finish it. Because Bren is sitting next me in class again, I had a hard time concentrating in class today.
We had our group picture taken on the slope. Oh wait, that was yesterday. Today, we watched a video about the Akafun part of the Port Festival. This is a parade where the men carry a portable shrine around the city wearing only a red diaper-looking cloth. It's like the thing sumo wrestlers wear, only more diaper-like. The video was made in 1991 and showed the HIF students getting drunk and stumbling around in their red diapers. Some of the guys were pretty hairy and gross. The cameraperson was really fond of zooming in on crotches and asses. Women can participate, too. Their job (supposodely) is to fan the guys and give them water (beer) because the shrine is really heavy. The women in the video were all white and didn't do anything but hit the guys' asses with their fans and pour water on people. One of them was wearing one of those early 90's Madonna hats and they all had blonde wavy hair and big hoop earrings. Man, they were trendy. Their costumes were happi coats and shorts.
The Port Festival was started to commorate Commodore Perry's arrival in Hakodate. Why they would want to celebrate that, I've no idea. It lasts 5 days. Host mom warned me that those grandchildren would be coming for it and that they are really loud and obnoxious. Great, I can't wait.
For lunch, I went to the cafeteria and bought curry rice. While I was eating, I was joined by Bren and his Japanese-Russian friend. (Our school shares a building with a Russian university.) He said he was Russian but looked Asian. His Japanese was quite good, so I didn't know whether to believe the Russian part. He was pretty silly, so I tried out one of my rude lines that an American friend taught me. I said to Bren (in Japanese) "Quit fucking staring at me" to see how the other guy would react. I guess it worked, because he thought it was funny.
The other day, Bren and I met another student from the Russian university. She was white but spoke Japanese natively. Her father was Canadian and her mother was American and she was raised in Japan. When she spoke English, she had to think about it before she could say it. Her name was Mary.
I came home and host mom was in her office. I said "tadaima" but didn't hear a response. I figured she was asleep. About an hour later she came out looking very groggy and said "I fell asleep". A few minutes ago, I went downstairs and she was sitting in a dining chair in the living room doing little excercises from tv.
Dinner was "Okinawa soba", which was fatter than normal, almost as big as udon. It was really good except the pork was exceptionally rubbery and gross. I really wish they would TRIM OUT the bad bits here. No one does.
No one was home at dinnertime but me and host mom, and she went out right afterwards. She was also the first to get home. Host dad and host brother both showed up around 9. They'd been working late. I expected that was the case, so I showered early for them. They like to bathe when they get home because they get so dirty at work.
Because I was already wearing pajamas, I said goodnight to them. I don't usually hang around after bathtime.
During most of my stay here, I've had a bad attitude and done as little studying as possible, mostly because it was all review. Today, I felt different. I've been studying almost since I got home. And the grammar dictionary I bought at the beginning but never looked at is wonderful. I wish I'd known about it years ago. I needn't bother with the grammar dictionary Newtonbook I was writing.
Earlier this week, I played with the Zaurus a friend bought in Tokyo. It has amazing kanji HWR and has several built-in dictionaries, built-in email and mp3 player, and many other unidentifiable things. I kinda wanted one, but I'd never come close to working out all the Japanese in its OS [Linux, but a highly customized flavor]. Kinda like how I can't use winblows-J because I can't use winblows-E. I really want a kanji lookup program for Newton that is searchable by radical and stroke count, recognises strokes drawn with the pen, etc. Like that will happen.