Minakami 1

This post is the first of (I hope many) about my "spring practicum". This is a month-long even that the Japan Study Program (the program I am in for my year abroad ^_^) sends it's students on. The purpose is for us to 'experience Japan', under the theory that Tokyo is not Japan (It's the same idea that New York City is the United States...it's not). We are being dispersed all around Japan, but still on the main island. Some are going to Shimane to teach English and United States culture to small-town Japanese children, and others are spending a month in a Buddhist temple, doing all the things monks do (wake up at 4:30 am, pray, eat, pray, clean, pray, eat, pray, etc). Those are just two examples. Needless to say, we are being taken away from our simple, get anywhere you want on a train, shopping anytime-we-want life. It should be interesting.

I started writing this post 2/07.

Today is my first full day at Nakajima’s Yamaji. It’s a small Inn, nestled within the mountains near Minakami-machi in Gunma prefecture. My host father is a trained-chef, who specializes in French cuisine (I believe). I have a brother, Ryota (12) who does Judo and skis, and a sister, Mitsuki, who does piano and skis…all this among other things ☺ they are traditional Japanese children, in that they have many after-school activities. My mother is the lady of the house, and can turn on and off the “Japanese service-lady” voice in an instant, a very admirable skill!

Here is a run down of my first day in terms of a time table:
6:30- Wake up.
7:00- Go to the kitchen for breakfast (a traditional Japanese breakfast)
7:35-Begin washing dishes (our own, and the ones my host-father used to cook)
8:00-The guests come in to eat (today, there were only 7, 2 of them being children)/ I’m still washing dishes.
9:20-Cleaned the men’s bath
9:40- I get a little free time- I use it to clean my stuff out of the room, and move it into the grandparent’s house
10:00-Make beds
10:30-Mop/dust the whole Inn (minus the rooms)
11:30-Coffee with the family (Mama, Papa, Ryota, Mitsuki, Grandma and Grandpa)
12:00 Lunch
12:40- Free time (I watched ‘The Dark Knight‘ ^_^)
15:00ish: Went back to the kitchen, had tea time with my sister. That’s twice today!
16:00ish helped prep food (wrapped pieces of prosciutto around breadsticks -_-) and help prep for dinner.
When dinner came around, I was given ‘drying’ duties. There was a lot of work to be done…we finished around 20:00
20:00ish: eat dinner
21:00ish: fall into my bed after the world’s quickest bath
22:00ish: Asleep

I'm a little shaky on what exactly it is I did that day, as I was so tired. Even now I am so tired, I keep typing in the wrong word (know instead of now, shaking instead of shaky), so I apologize for future (and past) spelling mistakes.

This took me two days to write because 1-I was so tired, 2-I lost power on my computer and 3- I didn’t have a lot of time to myself (when I did, my computer had already run out of battery >.<) So, I just repeated 6:30am-13:0o, except the difference is I had to make 2x as many beds, and do 2x as much dusting. On the bright side, we will not be serving 28 people for dinner tonight, so I have free time until 17:00ish ^___^ I have already taken my shower, and am preparing myself for a nap. I have not had times to take picture of the “pension” , as they call it, but I will include a picture of me in my lovely, lovely (high-fashion for all the grandmothers of Japan) uniform!

I'm in my oss gambarimasu pose. 'oss' is a sound which can mean,
in this case, let's do this! or here i go or it's really just a sound...
gambarimas is hard to translate, you can say it to someone
who is about to run a race, take a test, or do some hard activity/work. It
can mean "fight" or "do your best"

Oh, as I was just writing on my twin's facebook wall...I've been eating some interesting things. Although my host-father is a great chef, schooled in the French culinary arts...He does cook us Japanese style food. We get the simple stuff (Japanese food is very easy to cook), for example...grilled chicken kabobs (called yakitori in Japanese). What sort of chicken, you ask. Well, one was regular old chicken (with the skin included-which I've grown to not hate), and the other was...chicken stomach. The taste was fine, but the texture...I dont like it. I had [three tiny pieces of] it for dinner last night, and this morning I found it in my breakfast. I admire my little sister who was so excited to see we (her parents and I) had it for dinner that she begged for a stick of it. Wow. She gobbled it down!

Okay, that's it. I'm ready for my nap :)

See ya next time...