Yes We Can

The Internet was hooked up yesterday afternoon, but I haven't had to time to blog until now.
So, the journey was long. Very long. Like, more than 13 or 14 hours long. Three planes in one day, and I've discovered that, when landing, the pressure in my ears is agonizing. The worst was landing in Sapporo. I could hardly hear anything for an hour after landing. A lot of smiling and nodding to people trying to talk to me. The welcome party was pretty unexpected. And very nice. There were maybe ten to fifteen people there, and I was given a flower bouquet. Another girl from America arrived shortly after I did.

Wow. The toilets here are crazy technical. There's all these buttons everywhere. All I want to do is flush! It took a little while for my host mother to explain to me how to work everything. Potty training here must be like rocket science.

And everything is backwards. Even the littlest things. Steering wheel is on the right side, people drive on the left side of the road, toilet handle is pulled up to flush instead of pushed down, tap is pushed down to open, books are read from back to front and writing is vertical. Even the sentence structure is backwards. Subject object verb. I like it.

And the food is excellent. Last night we had sashimi, which is basically raw slices of fish and soy sauce to dip, beef slices, pasta salad and kiwi. This morning we had some sausage, fish, yogurt, boiled egg and this pumpkin...mush...stuff. Think of potato salad, only with pumpkin instead of potato, and pieces of meat in it. It looks very weird. And most people probably wouldn't risk trying it. But it's actually pretty good. Very similar to potato salad. Oh, and they loove sweet stuff. Like pocky, which is like a thin bread stick coated in chocolate. You can get different flavours. And these chip things, that look and taste like mini pringles. Lots of chocolate stuff. And lots of ice cream. The only thing that I couldn't bare was the cold green tea. Veery bitter.

Yesterday I went around Sapporo with Shuji Chida to get fitted for my school uniform and gym strip. Sapporo is so nice. Very green. Trees and grass everywhere, little gardens and flowers and such. And goats. There were goats, just chillin in this little grassy field. No fences holding them in. The cars are all, in general, smaller than the ones in Canada. The people here are big into the hybrids. And there is a surprising amount of English in scattered random places. For no particular reason. Oh, and they have alcohol sitting out in the open in the supermarket.

And there are elections going on right now. They do their campaigns so differently. The candidates actually walk around the city with big megaphones, personally advertising their campaigns and meeting people, talking to people and the like. Or they drive around in these vans with megaphones on the roof, advertising themselves. And they all look so happy and nice. It's weird.

A little bit about my host family: The family name is Kawamura, and it means 'river bridge'. Sachiko, my host mom, is a nurse. Her name means 'happy child'. She cooks all the meals and does dishes. I've tried to help, but she just smiles and tells me to sit down. Kazunori is my host father, and he is a highschool teacher, but not at the school I will be going to (SIT). His name means 'peace constitution'. I know. He helps me with my hiragana/katakana and basic Japanese. My host sister is Aya. She looks like she could be 18, but is actually 26. Very shocked when I found this out. I can't remember what her name means. But she teaches disabled people. I might go to her school one of these days and meet them.

Oh, and they have kindergarten buses that are designed to look like cartoon characters or animals. I saw one that was Thomas the Train. Shuji said that there are dragon buses and cat buses, too. Makes me wish I was in kindergarten so I could ride on one of them.

I think that's it for now. Remember, you can leave comments if you like, without having to sign up to blogspot ^^.