On Communication

Day 4. At home. Latest discovery: someone who appreciates Hikaru no Go as much as I do. (Finally.) Turns out my tou-san has the whole complete series in tankoubon, so I'm slooooowly making my way through my favorite bits. (FYI, for the uninitiated, tou-san - or otou-san, as it should be - is "father" in Japanese.) Tou-san seems to be a big seinen fan... most of his collection consist of these ultra-violent, ultra-sophisticated series from the older Jump magazines. Hmmm... and then there's that weird super-shoujo volleyball series that clearly came out of the Beribara Age. There must be 32 volumes of it in my room... I don't even know if I want to read that. Anything published by Margaret Comics should usually be given a wide berth, after all... but...

[/endmangatalk]

...Erm, anyway! Normal human things beginning here. My English is getting weirder and weirder... I actually had to proofread that last paragraph. Proofread. I haven't proofread anything of mine since at least the eighties. And my sentence structure is all over the place. Lord Almighty. Next thing you know, I'll be misspelling shit. (Not that shit's a very difficult word to spell, you understand... four letters, relatively simple syllabic structure... anyway.)

Communicating has been... interesting. I'm slowly building up my vocabulary, but it seems to still be stocked with useless words. (Yesterday's most memorable word was "hirune" - nap - and today's seems to be either "betsubetsu" (different) or "saboten" (cactus). Betsubetsu's kinda useful, truth be told, but saboten? Eh? What the crap.) Surprisingly, the most fluid conversations I've had seem to be with Nobu and Shimon, my little brothers - though that may be because my responses tend to consist of me going "ehhh" a lot and saying things like "dame" (stop), "abunai yo" (that's dangerous), and "suwaranaide" (don't touch that). Nobu - full name Nobuhito, aged 5 - is, quite simply, ADD embodied in a cute Asian child (though he's thankfully very easy to distract). He's finally gotten the hang of talking to me, I think - he at least kind of understands that I don't actually get everything he says, so he repeats himself accordingly and is always willing to teach me stuff (i.e., this morning he corrected me when I said "de" in a sentence when I meant "yo," and yesterday he stopped me mid-drink to demonstrate the proper way of drinking miso soup without a spoon). We've also established a bit of a running joke with me threatening to eat him... ehhh... but! Yesterday Shimon-chan (aged 2) actually reached out for my hand when we were walking down the stairs, and I got to help him with that. Awwww... kawaii da!! (And then there's the whole "Sara-onee-chan" thing, which has a definite ring to it. Warm fuzzies up the wazoo, I tell ye.)

Talking with Tou-san and Kaa-san's an experience too. They have a little electric dictionary that we use a lot in conversations when we find a word neither one of us can really explain. I had a long talk with Kaa-san over lunch yesterday in which I explained my basic history, my parents, my sisters, my parents' jobs, my family situation, my family's favorite foods, and some of my favorite foods. Typically, it took about two hours. It was pretty good, actually, considering how we communicated almost entirely by typing certain words into the dictionary and passing it across the table to make a point. (Needless to say, I did not get to use "saboten" in a sentence.)

Anyway, other than that, not much to comment on. Kaa-san let me make gyoza yesterday, which was fun, and today I vaccuumed and studied and drank mugicha (barley tea, my new favoritest drink ever, succeeding Diet Coke and orange juice in a long dynasty of liquids that occupy more space in Sara's bloodstreams than blood itself does). I hope to buy some origami paper and a notebook sometime soon. Things are very simple, I feel domestic, etc. etc. I am not homesick, and I doubt I will be until they start teaching higher level mathematics in school a month or so from now. (Like math isn't incomprehensible enough in English.)

Hope everybody is fine and dandy today (which is Tuesday for me and Monday for you lot - God bless the International Date Line),
until next we meet,

-sara

(P.S. The phrase "until next we meet" is something I always, always, inexplicably attach to the person of Seymour Guado, probably because he's the only person I ever heard actually use it and because I heard it from him first. It's like how the word "disaster" reminds me of that single-toothed old ancestor-ghost-lady from Mulan, and "eliminate" reminds me of Freakazoid. All that. Yeah.)

(P.P.S. I also watched Pokemon in Japanese yesterday. It was that episode where Meowth - or Nyaasu, as it were - goes back to his home city and we learn how he came to learn English/Japanese/humanspeak. Needless to say, it was surreal, though it gave me some small joy to see that Ash/Satoshi is voiced by a girl no matter what country he shows up in. And that James/Kojiro is just as gay. No, probably even more gay. Ah, Japan.)