1998.06.23 TUE

Well, I've been reeeeally busy. Yesterday I was running around all over the place trying to get my money transferred and my alien registration card taken care of. (I can even write my own address here, now, aren't you all proud of me?!) Not only that, but I met my new host family. More on that later, if I have time.

Since the last letter it's gotten really fun here. Friday night we went out to eat with Dr. Spence. Altogether, the people who ate with us included Hasegawa-sensei (the head of the foreign exchange educational division), the president of Osaka Kyoiku University, Dr. Spence (duh), Yonekawa-sensei (I think he's the foreign students liason to the US, he's the one we talked to most to get here), someone in Child Development who might be coming to the States, and the three exchange students who are going to be coming to ECU in the fall. It was all pretty fun.

Weird, though. Hasegawa-sensei freaked me out by introducing herself in fully fluent English. "I usually don't like to speak English in front of my students," she said... whoa. x.x I knew she knew English, but I didn't know she could speak it better than I did x.x The other foreign exchange students spoke pretty good English as well - in fact, the only person who didn't speak English at the dinner was the president, and he could still understand us, too!

Anyways, after that we all got on the train and left. When we got back, the manga circle was running that all-weekend thing, so we went ahead and dropped by there. It was pretty fun, too... just about everyone but me got blitzed. Weird seeing everyone else who normally doesn't do anything falling all over the floor ;b We ended up watching Otaku no Video, too. When they interviewed the American guy, I had to explain to the people that what the guy was saying in English was NOTHING like what they had him saying when they re-dubbed over him in Japanese. :)

Saturday - we just went shopping. Sunday - same thing. Monday, I pretty much told you already, except about the hos family. Turns out Chieko Yamashita, the person who will be sponsoring me, knows LOTS of English. She's got two kids - a 20-year old daughter going to Keio University in Tokyo, and a 3rd year high school son. She marked them all down as being fluent in English, as well. I'm not sure if I'm going to live with them or not - they live two train stops away - but if I do, I might learn how to cook Japanese food while I'm here. I mean, food other than rice, y'know. ;b

Anyways, my time's about up for today - I'll write later! Take care, everyone!