Man was that boring. We had a speech contest today with students and host families in attendance. 8 students gave speeches and then about 6 more people each gave a speech on the students' speeches. Needless to say, it was completely in Japanese, and thus not understandable by us dumb students.
Some of our host mothers visited our class today. We had to ask them questions about gift-giving in Japan. I didn't know my host mother was coming. We'd discussed it last night, but I had no idea she meant she was coming to class. I thought she was just coming to the contest. I'd heard nothing about host mothers coming to class. She almost didn't come. She got there right before class ended, and I didn't even notice her at first.
Our little Nanae group consists of me and my host mother, Jakobina and her host mother, and a Chinese girl named Yue Qian (not sure about the spelling cause I didn't actually see the characters) and her host mom. Anytime there's an even, we are always together. After school, we all went down the slope to the Lucky Pierrot by the bay. Lucky Pierrot is a scary fast food joint with large, not-all-meat hamburgers and other scary stuff. Each store has a theme; so far, I've seen an American nostalgia store, Christmas store, and Catholic store (no joke). There is always American 50's music blaring. Today's was the Xmas one. The chairs inside at the tables were hanging from the ceiling by chains. They were swing chairs. That was kinda cool. It gave me an idea for future furniture. For fast food, Pierrot is pretty damn slow. The first time I ever went to one, (today is only my second) there was one customer besides me and it still took forever to get my food. I heard that the bayside Lucky Pierrot is always crowded because GLAY ate there once and said it was good.
Afterwards, we walked back up the slope to the auditorium where the contest was being held. You got money for participating. That still wasn't enough incentive to make many people do it, though. Japanese people like to give money for many gifts, so all the prizes were money, including the 'you suck' prize. Consequently, no matter how badly you did, you still got paid.
When it finally ended, host mom and I drove home and she washed the cats. Anytime they get outside, they get washed before they can come back in. Actually, they get washed quite often becasue they like to get outside.
Yesterday on my walk from Kikyo station to my house, some complete stranger in a minivan stopped me and shoved vegetables into my arms. I got 6 short, fat little carrots and 3 ears of corn. They were damn heavy, so I stopped in the cemetary on my route and stuffed them into my already full and heavy backpack. One of the carrots had a wet brown spot and was leaking so I threw it into the bushes. When I got home, I gave the vegetables to host mom and told her the story. She thought it was funny.
Hiroshi has a new English phrase that I keep forgetting to write about. The other night, out of nowhere, he said "Oh my god!". Since then, whenever anything's surprising or shocking or interesting etc, he says "oh my god!". It's funny when he says it because it's usually out of context and sort of incorrect.
I don't feel like writing right now. Goodnight.