How is a Squid like a Persimmon?

This is just to say:
Talking kanji has got to be one of the stupidest conversation topics ever. My father has a favorite story about how Chinese people love talking about the origins of various characters and have a tendency to prove their points by tracing out the characters on the palms of their hands. While that would certainly save us a lot of time, neither I nor Lisa are good enough at kanji to do this, and instead we end up referencing other characters or describing things in radicals. The result? Total crap. Since we recently had exams (well, the rest of the school had exams; we only had to do the geography one, so for the rest of it we just hung out in the library doing our Sexy Foreign Exchange Student impressions), we had to memorize the names of the prefectures and their capitals in the lower half of Japan in kanji (which encouraged a whole bevy of mnemonic devices and associated ridiculousnesses - no, this is not a word, I know). Thus: "Yeah, so, Naha is the capital of Okinawa. The na's not bad - it's like some weird Euro-sign-tsuki next to that fan-shaped thing in Osaka's saka and byouin's byou - but the ha's a real bitch and a half. It's got nishi - west - on the top and then tsuki to the right and leather on the left. What?! You don't remember kawa, leather? It's, um, kinda-sorta like the top part of obi and then it's like chuu with a line under the kuchi. Got it? Yeah. And then Okinawa's oki is naka with the three water drops on the side and the nawa is that weird foldy-thing with the suko in sukoshi under it, like in owaru, and then it's got two suns on top of each other to the right with a line that goes down through them and ends in a tail like, um, denwa."

...Yeah. As I said. Total crap.

Anyway, back to real stuff. It's October! Leaves are falling, my brothers are getting periodic nosebleeds (the dry autumn air and all), stores sell everything satsuma imo (sweet potato)-flavored (no, seriously - sweet potato donuts, sweet potato noodles, sweet potato candy...). The school trip is rapidly approaching - err, have I talked about that yet? This Saturday all us second-years are going on a five-day school trip to (in chronological order) Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Technically we can go to Osaka too, but my group's not planning to. While most of the trip consists of temple tours and scenic walks set up by the school, two of the five days are almost entirely free! - during which the entire class basically gets loosed on Kyoto and Tokyo, respectively. Um. Awesome. The primary activity, naturally, is shopping, which means - you guessed it! - Harajuku! BABY. We're also planning on going through Akihabara (bwahaha) and Ueno - for the park - as well as possibly Shibuya and Shinjuku, though I doubt we'll be able to afford anything in those areas. Still, nothing against just looking~ Since this is also a lot of the girls' first time on an airplane (let alone out of Hokkaido - ouch), everyone's really excited about it, and it's not odd for kids to be swapping tourism magazines during lunch. So yeah, looking forward to that (even if it cost a bundle... ugh).

But yesterday I peeled my first squid! (I hope you had as much fun reading that sentence as I had writing it. Seriously, peeling a squid? Huh?) My host mother has taken on the enormous task of beating some kind of cooking ability into my thick skull, to limited effect: my range has gradually expanded beyond toast and instant ramen to include foods like curry, soba, cream stew, and cabbage rolls. No easy thing, I assure you, given my unfailing tendency to completely screw up whatever I'm making the first time I try to do it alone. And I do mean unfailing: the first time I made curry, I added too much water and made it more soup than curry; soba, I didn't stir as often as I should and half the noodles were melded to the bottom of the pot; higashi ramen, I forgot to rinse the ramen noodles in cold water after boiling them and they ended up inflated, soggy, and inedible - we had to run out to the supermarket and buy a new pack before my brothers came home. *hangs head* At this rate I'll never be a good Japanese housewife! (Well, at least I've got my squid...)

Next time: marimomarimomarimo! (And I really will talk about marimo, because they're just so dang cool. To hype yourself up about it, why don't you go Wikipedia it or something?)