Monday, June 14, 2010

Hakodate-shi

So, I can't figure out the international keyboard on a PC and I really don't care to take the time to learn how. I miss my Mac xD

Saturday was the opening ceremony and we got to meet our host families. I live with the Oohasi's - Mama, Papa and Risa, a 13-year old middle school student - about 35 minutes north of HIF. They're extremely nice and apparently Risa's friends say I look like an actress from some J-dorama, though I find this kind of funny and slightly impossible xD

Mama showed me the house (thank god for Western-style toilets - the school only has the squatters and I swear, I will be a champion at peeing in the woods when this is all over), the bath, the laundry; my room is less of a room and more of a compartment - it's a tatami room, but it's right off the living room of the small apartment so it's not terribly private, but it has a sliding door for a little privacy. Food has been good - so far no raw things, unlike most other people I've talked to. I still have to use a fork to eat my egg in the morning. Cutting through a layer of egg and bacon with chopsticks is a no go, though they did compliment my use of hashi in the depaato this afternoon as I ate some free-sample ramen-like stuff.

My room

Also, newsflash which will be shocking to some of you - I've been drinking milk. Yes, big whopping glasses of milk.


Did I mention the school is at the top of a hill/mountain? And that my family lives up 4 flights of stairs with no elevator?

I made it to class today in one piece. They really didn't come with me to the bus stop so much as show me where it was during our walk on Saturday. Luckily, the bus sytem is pretty easy just as long as you know the name of your stop. Class, though it's not as long as last year's summer intensive, is much more immersing and it should be interesting to see how things go through a different text book.

We also went to Goryokaku-koen, a park around and through the star-shaped fort. I'm not too sharp on the history of it, but Hakodate is where Commodore Perry first landed for trade, and at the fall of the shogunate there were a few important battles-happenings here. I have a Japanese and English pamphlet that I've yet to go through completely, but the park is gorgeous!


Goryokaku-koen

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