The Kishis

This past seven days was Golden Week, a time in the Japanese calendar when non-festive holidays accumulate like nobody's business. I had school only on Tuesday and Wednesday, and have generally spent my time avoiding studying, seeing friends, and spending way more money than I have any right to. Last night was especially bad. I saw Babel, which is like $15 WITH the student discount, and ate out twice, and went to an arcade/fun-park/bowling-alley. We'd been planning to see Spiderman III, but it sold out while we were queueing, and I somewhat thoughtlessly recommended that we see a movie about language confusion of which only a quarter is English. The rest was Arabic, Spanish, JSL, and conveniently, Japanese itself, all with Japanese subtitles. We were with some Japanese students who could follow most of it, but maybe got less out of it since the Tower of Babel is a little outside their eidos. Jo(h?)nathan, a new exchange student, basically gave up trying to follow the story. As for me, I spent most of my time being perfectly in tune with the motif, less so the plot. I don't know if that means I understood the movie better, or worse.

It occured to me that I haven't actually posted any pictures of my new homestay family, and that maybe introductions were in order. It also seemed like a good chance to take advantage of some pictures I had taken last week when I made Mexican food for everybody. So without further ado, the Kishis (pronounced like the plural of Quiche!).

This is Eiji, he works in something related to welding, I don't entirely understand what it is. He spends a lot of his free time fishing with his friends. He drinks a lot of sake and shochu when he's home. These days he's building a deck in the backyard, but it's raining today so instead he's spent the entire time in bed. Not that I blame him for that - Japanese men really do spend way too much time in the office.

This is Yoko, my homestay mother and a devoted housewife. I am incredibly indebted to her for agreeing to make me vegetarian food while I'm here, since it's kind of a nuisance. She spends a lot of her time asking me questions about English, which she is studying. This probably would have annoyed me, more than it does, if it was the beginning of the year, but because I already have opportunities to speak Japanese I'm trying to be helpful where I can. She also makes a lot of assumptions about foreigners, by which I mean Westerners, that I am trying to correct. (we had a conversation, not 20 seconds ago, about how not all foreigners eat french fries all the time) This is generally a problem I have with Japanese people, but more so with her than usual.

This is Junko, and if she knew how to find my blog she would totally beat me up for posting this picture of her. She's my homestay sister, currently working at an international kindergarten or pre-school a little east of Nishinomiya. Like Kenta, she speaks good English, and is very "foreign" sometimes in the way she thinks. She has a good number of rich Indian friends who buy her clothes and food. She is older than me, but wouldn't want me to tell you by how much. (which maybe is indicative)

There's also another daughter, Yuko, who graduated recently and is working at a trading company in Tokyo. I've only met her the one time when she came back for Golden Week, and she left this morning on the bullet train. She was sick the whole time she was here, and not photo-ready. She spends a lot of her time reading fashion magazines.