Nigawa Homestay a Success: Sources

Moved in to Nigawa homestay on Saturday. Forgot only one thing back with the Nakagawas, my cell phone, but I realized I'd forgotten it when we were only about 5 minutes driving away, so we went back and picked it up.

The Kishis, my new family, are fantastic. They are: Eiji, the father, who works in something like the welding industry?: Yoko, the mother (I fear I have her name wrong, since I always call her お母さん) who is very energetic and tends her own herb and mushroom garden; and Junko, my elder sister, who works as a kindergarten teacher. I have another elder sister who works in Tokyo at the moment, so I've never met her and I don't know her name.

It's weird because now I feel like I have too many families. It was hard enough when I had to distinguish between my Canadian family and my Japanese family. I need to work out some sort of code.

Nigawa, the area I'm in now, is quite close to school. I biked here today, which is great because I really miss biking. It's funny that nobody in Japan wears bicycle helmets, especially given that the roads are so narrow. One day, when the rainy season approaches, I will have to master the art of biking while holding an umbrella in one hand, something that Japanese people apparently have a genetic advantage in.

Mmkay, off to the gym.