Christmas!!!

Guess what?! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! I can't believe it. It feels like it should be another four or five months at least. So anyone curious about how I'm going to celebrate my first Christmas abroad? Well, I'm going to kendo practice of course. For four to five hours. And then I'm coming home and studying while I wait for my parents to get home. And then I'll probably eat yakisoba or something and then I'll take a bath and go to bed. But I'll have to do something. At first, I considered taking a day off from kendo on account of it being a particularly important day in my culture, but then I couldn't really think of a reason why. My parents will both be at work and my host sister will be in New York (a little ironic), so I'd just be home alone probably dwelling on the fact that I'm spending Christmas in my little room all alone. I thought going to kendo was a better alternative. I'm actually not so upset. It would be different if there were signs of Christmas everywhere, like in the States, but there's rarely any Christmas music and nobody (but me) says "Merry Christmas" when they depart and there's just not much festivity. Here, Christmas is a holiday for lovers and for children, not so much for families and religion. So I'm celebrating by dressing in traditional Samurai clothes and learning how to kill opponents with a bamboo sword. Meanwhile, I'm preparing by downloading and listening to Christmas music, buying presents for my host family, wearing festive clothes, and trying to get the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. I don't even know if I should call my family when they're opening presents. It'll be the day after Christmas for me. Or maybe Christmas night.

It's fun explaining what I do for Christmas to my friends. We all did a Secret Santa type thing (where everyone draws a name and secretly buys a present for the person they picked) because my friends thought it sounded like fun after I explained it to them. We spent about $15 on each other, and I was interestingly the only that didn't spend the majority of it on junk food. I think it's because the houses are so small that they have no room for extra clutter. It's a good thing I was only allowed two suitcases, because there's so little storage space for all my stuff.

On the other hand, everyone is preparing extensively for a big New Years. Year of the boar is coming up and it's all my friends are talking about. I discovered that we're holding a huge party at my host house and all the relatives and neighbors and close to 100 people will be gathered at my house to eat New Years food, play New Year's games, and help bring in the New Year. And then we have the week off for continued celebrations. I'm really excited. This is going to be a really spectacular New Years.

Oh, and I sparred Sakai Sensei today for the first time. It was rather successful, I felt. Okay, of course he creamed me, but I didn't just stand there stupidly. It was a little frustrating that I wasn't so mobile as I'm used to in karate. Sensei Cummings of White Eagle always tells us that we have four weapons - two feet and two hands. We are instructed to always be considering which weapon to use. Our feet and weight should be situated so that we can easily access at least two, if not three or four weapons. At any moment, you should have a wide variety of options. You can also easily see a person's fighting style right away. Do they keep their weight evenly distributed? Are they fast? Do they like kicks? Do they go around strikes, or intecept them? Do they prefer opening blocks or closing blocks? Do they aim for the head or the body or elsewhere? In kendo there are three legitimate striking points and a few variations on how you can strike. Because of that, you are much more limited in what you can do (especially if you're a beginner). There is one stance that I know and I've seen one person do it from the other side. I only know the stance on my right side. Because the shinai is so huge, it's very easy to see it coming. In karate, you should always have your hands up for a few reasons. The biggest is so that if someone goes to strike you, you'll be ready for it. A not so obvious reason is so that when you decide to strike someone, you'll be ready and the opponent won't know it until it's too late. In kendo, there's a position to put your hands. If you move from that position, you're leaving your stomach region open and are bound to get hit. You can't put one hand up and leave one hand down. You have one weapon, and that's the shinai. Your weapon can only be in one place at one time. You can't go for the head with a hand and then fake out and kick the solar plexis. When I see a strike coming for the head, I can lift up the shinai, but I often forget to lift both hands and get hit anyways. And I have a lot of trouble returning the hits. As soon as you block a technique, you should automatically return it, but in kendo, the weapon is so big that as soon as you block a hit, you're usually too close to do any real damage to the person. On top of that, I feel all akward and my shinai is jumbled up and I have to get out of striking distance to straighten myself again. Does this make any sense? An interesting thing that I like is that size isn't an advantage (of course, now that I'm not the smallest anymore...) in kendo. Everyone's distance is the same - the length of the shinai.
One more problem I'm having is turning my back. In karate, if you turn back you might as well be dead. Spin techniques are strongly discouraged until a student is fast and sure enough to do them, simply because to spin means to turn your back deliberately on the opponent. That's access to your kidneys and the back of your head and neck and your spine and you have no very little protection back there. In kendo, you're supposed to run past your opponent with many of the techniques. Running past is part of the technique. I've been doing this funny little half run, where as soon as I passed my opponent, I'd face them again and be running half backwards and half sideways. Sakai Sensei told me I look a little like a horse and besides that, my technique is all wrong when I do that. So I forced myself to expose my bare, unprotected back to a person aiming a weopon at me. Very nerve-wrecking and I forgot to do it whenever I wasn't thinking about it.

One of my kendo friends lent me a book that must belong to her little sister or something. It's really exciting that I can read it. It's like second grade level maybe. A chapter book! Woo! I can read a whole chapter book!

Yesterday, there was a bag of oranges in my bath. That was wierd. I think last night was the longest night of the year or something, and that's why.

Last night for dinner, I had spaghetti noodles and squid's ink sauce. It was delicious. After I finished, my lips were black.

I've officially finished my text book and have started the next one. That's pretty exciting. The next one also includes kanji, thankfully. I've really been working hard to learn kanji and reading it is one of the coolest things that happen.

I'm going out to karaoke making today or maybe tomorrow. Not sure which. It's sure to be fun.

My host parents take their two dogs out on a walk every evening. I think it's really sweet. They have that hour or so just for themselves and the dogs. When I get married, I think I'd like to do that too.

I have to give a speech to Rotary during our January meeting. I've already written in English. Unfortunately, I'm the only that can understand it as it is. Maybe they'll just take my word for it that it's really good and well-written? I don't know what'll be left of it after I translate it. *sigh*

The language learning isn't as fast as it was before. I now know enough that I can understand other people and make myself understood. I'm rarely ever grammatically correct and don't catch the little nuances of the language, but I understand. I miss nuances. I miss feeling like a had a strong control of my language. I stutter sometimes. I never did that before. I stop and think in the middle of sentences, even in English. I'm never sure if I'm right. I've become so accustomed to not understanding that I assume people are talking to me whenever I do understand. I laugh out of habit when everyone else laughs. When I understand, I assume it's in English and am often superised to find it's Japanese. Likewise, when people speak to me in English, I assume they're speaking in Japanese and don't understand. The idea of American food sickens me. I remember a lot of the things I found baffling in the beginning, but I don't remember why they were baffling or how to do it any other way. What's so weird about going grocery shopping every day? I remember being surprised. How often do we go shopping in the States? At least every other day, right? Every three days? I don't know. Something shocking. I feel like it should be once a week or once every two weeks, but that can't be right. And we had to eat rice at least once every two days, right? Once a week? Geez! Once a week! Try every day, every meal! I can't remember what it's like otherwise. And showers in the morning. And no school clubs every day. And our teachers actually gave us tests whenever they felt like it. I think. Students actually drove to school. Sometimes in their own cars. I think less than half of my school rode their bikes. Wait, I'm not sure any kids actually rode their bikes to school. And some of the shirts I brought show so much skin! I can hardly believe it! And do we really heat the whole house? And not just the floor or the seats or tiny spots? Do we really scream when we clap our hands? Often? Are boots with shorts really a taboo? Why? Did I used to sleep with more than two blankets? How many? Where did friends sleep when they came over? Not on futon mattresses. Where? And where do we keep our altar? Not in the tatami room. And my house can't really be double this house's size, like I remember thinking when I first got here. I've always been fairly tall of course we had to wear uniforms to school. I can't believe I actually opted to live away from home for college. How will I pay for it?! Why is it so bad to shake hands with the right hand? And does the vigorosity of the handshake really matter? And what in the world did I really do with all my free time (did I even have free time?)? How can I have such a huge family and who will my grandparents live with when they're too old to live alone? Is it really true my mom actually didn't work at home and that I did my own laundry and that I really had a job in high school and that there are a whole four years of high school? That's so wierd. Foreign.

I feel a little displaced. I'm akward in any language and I don't understand any culture. I feel the most at home with my fellow exchange students who also are without a culture.

I want to dance. And drink. Or do karate. Spar in karate. Or rondorei and then go out with the karate guys after class. When I get home I'm going to lead a really high-energy class so fast that I'll barely be able to keep up. I love those classes. I want to write something and then feel good about the poetry of my composition. And I want to be sure of the spelling of what I wrote. I don't ever want to go home, but I want this to be home. I want to understand without thinking. Does that make sense? I want to just be. I want to understand my friends' jokes and why they think they're so funny. I want to be able to sit on my knees on the wooden floor and not feel pain in my knees and ankles. I feel like it's one of those children's games where you put the block into the hole. I'm a triangle and Japan's a square and I'm just not going in.

I'm not homesick. Not really even sad. Worn out maybe? Everything's still going well. I'm getting along really well with my family and my school friend's are really great. We go out more than I did in the States. On top of that, I have a plethora of exchange friends a phone call away. I still really like Japan and find it exciting to look out my window and see the mountains jutting off in the distance. I still eat lunch at Kyoto Station when I can and watch all the people coming and going and wonder about them all. Only now I understand when the little girl next to me says "Mom, I think that girl is writing in English in her little book. Look, she has blonde hair and she's wearing a school uniform. Where do you think she's from?" I still enjoy inspiring that kind of curiosity in others, but no matter how well integrated I become, little girls will always wonder about me. I'm still excited about the language, but I don't even remember what it's like to understand everything. I'm baffled by the television.

I should look on the bright side because Nakai Sensei told me I should always look on the bright side. I have my lovely nightly baths and an amazing host family and a Nakai Sensei who tells me to look on the bright side and at least I can think in English and today wasn't so cold. And it's funny to think what my family must think when they hear me dancing around me room. I don't think my American family could hear me as well as they can. Haha. And I wonder what they think when they hear me sing in the shower. And I love tea.

And now I'm stalling because when I finish this I have to study and that means turning off my Howie Day, who of course is singing in English.

So goodbye. Have a Merry Christmas.