あの．．．怒ってる？

4.13.08

今日はヒマ

Hmm… so I am at the end of my day and the beginning of a new page in this lovely offline blog of mine. I tried to hop on the computer at the Matsumoto’s today and was unfortunately shot down. Oh well, that’s what computers at Sophia are meant for I suppose, although it will very well be the day after next before I am finally able to post any of this onto the net. Fortune just does not seem to favor me, not at all.

Tomorrow will be classes all day long, well until late 4ish. After is G-Splash dance practice with the DK crew. Oh yeah! I totally forgot to mention this earlier, but remember how I was earlier amazed at running into Dan and Jen in the middle of nowhere, out of Harajuku and towards Shinjuku? I was trying to catch the Saikyo line to Ikebukuro yesterday night, and guess who calls out to me from the middle of a train!? JEANNETTE AND HUNTER!!! Yeah, weird… the city is either shrinking or we/I have ridiculously good luck with kismet and all that.

But, back to G-Splash, the awesomest of awesome hip hop dance troupes at Sophia. They have practice from 5-7pm, and it might be every day for the entire semester. If not, then it is for these first 2 weeks. Jeannette and Hunter urged me to try it, so I say c’est la vie, why not? It’s not as if I’m in a terrible rush to get home.

Today, I finished all my laundry and then some. For some reason or another, maybe because of the massive load of laundry I jammed into it, the washing/drying machine can’t do both of it functions when it has too much in it, surprise x2. I did all my Japanese homework though and prepped for tomorrow. I even ran it by Meimi to make sure that there were no ridiculously bad mistakes present.

I remember when I used to try and mix Japanese up to say new things with new forms. I am now finally consenting to the fact that there’s a reason why there are example sentences of every grammar structure. My ability to make stuff up is severely limited by what actual Japanese people would say. Japanese just gets harder and harder as the nuances of language come greater into play.

Tonight’s dinner was curry and this afternoon’s lunch was a piece of mochi cake x2 dipped in soy sauce and wrapped in seaweed. Both were surprisingly simple and yummy. I think Okaa-san has been stretching herself for me for a while now and I’m quite happy to see her step back and do something easier. She still jumps on me sometimes, but I’d take criticism over silence any day.

There’s this fat burning machine aka body rumbler aka the shakey shakey SHAKE machine, where one stands and apparently has the fat jostled out of him/her, in the house and I’m a bit in want of trying it some more. The first time I used it, I was really surprised. I’ll probably ask to use it from now on. It’s only 6.45pm but I am right exhausted. Laundry will take another 35 minutes to dry I’m afraid.

Even though I have like hundreds and hundreds of books in this computer, I find myself in want of more. All I read is Kresley Cole, and as amazing as she is, I need other works for sustenance.
Today was a day of small victories. I got my calendar hung, I did my homework, I sorted all the e-mails/texts I received on my cell phone into easy categories, and I actually got my laundry done. I’m starting to lean towards making Sunday and Wednesday laundry days just so it doesn’t pile up as much as it had up until today. It’s been nearly 2 weeks and that’s been nearly 2 weeks without internet and an ever growing pile of dirty laundry, that’s now quite deflated.

Well, that’s that. Tomorrow is a new day and my mellowness continues. Living abroad really isn’t as stressful as I thought it’d be. I’m actually kind of disappointed in how simple the transition has been. Kind of.

*tumbles out*

- T

4.14.08

もう少しだけでももうがまん出来ないよ

Hmmm... On top of a shitastically busy day, I just took the worst shower of my life, was made a fool of twice in the span of minutes, am long overdue for my beddy bye time, and am exhausted beyond belief. I’m so tired of this BS that I’ll just put it out there. I have Finger Eleven as my pacifier right now, so they’re helping me burn through the worst of my wariness/weariness.
The Matsumoto’s are an interesting bunch. The Dad ignores my very existence and doesn’t try to do anything to make me feel any more comfortable in their home. The Mom does everything she can to keep me out as much as humanly possible. Meimi is the only chill one and that’s because she gets even more hassled than I do. I do everything that I can to make my presence here as little of a bother as humanly possible, and instead of being treated with the decency that any other person deserves, I get treated worst than their damn dog. At least Alice always gets her clothes cleaned on time, sits around all day just chillaxing, and eats with the family and all/can eat without getting made fun of. The wireless internet finally came into play today, but it’s dropping out every other second so it’s practically useless. I’m about to become a fixture at their damn dining room table until the internet works itself out.

But, let’s begin this rant with exactly why living with the Matsumoto’s has been a special kind of hell for me lately:

1) The internet, they promised me it the first night I got here, and it took them until now to get it down and it doesn’t even work all that well. I’m about to connect the damn LAN wire I bought at Sophia to see if I do any better.

2) Last night, Meimi had her piano recital, so her and Okaa-san went out for it. That morning she had told me that I’d be home alone, and I wanted that because I love being here without one of them constantly present, essentially keeping me a prisoner in my own room unless I want to be harassed with a bombardment of Japanese and made to feel a fool by their constant use of electronic dictionaries. Well, right before they left, they just announced to be that Otou-san would be home the same time I was. So, I never got to be home alone. I never do. I wouldn’t steal anything even if I had that urge. Okaa-san makes it ridiculously painfully obvious that she wants me out of the house as much as possible, and when I am out late, I get punished with her wary vigil. She’s like a hawk.

3) Back to last night, Otou-san finally gets home. Apparently, he was waiting for my pants to dry before using the bath, so I took them out at like 7.30ish. I wanted to use the shower early because I sleep at 9.30pm every night. There’s no TV, no internet, no distractions to keep me up late. Hah… and people wonder why I love going out to drink with friends, now there’s a fun distraction. Well, he hops in at like 8ish and I’m waiting and waiting and waiting for him to finish. I couldn’t really hear what he was doing downstairs, so I just figured he really likes to take long baths like Meimi. Uh no. I went down at like 9.17pm, which is so close to my beddy bye time that I was about to pass out, and he was just lying down on the couch chilling. I ask him if it’s okay to shower now, and he just looks at me and goes, “Oh, you didn’t go in yet?” Uhmmm… no, I didn’t, that’s why I’m asking if it’s okay now. Honestly, would it have killed the man to just give me a little shout and be like, “Shower’s free!” I had asked him earlier if I could shower and he told me to wait while he bathed and I did. I waited so late that I was right exhausted. WTF…

4) Well, I got home at like late 9ish tonight and Okaa-san greeted me/let me into the house because giving me a set to come and go as I please is beyond their comprehension. Mia has a set and I doubt she realizes how much I have come to envy her freedom. Okay, well I proceeded to heat the food in the microwave and instead of telling me how to microwave it properly, she just sits there as I do as she has told me. When it doesn’t finish in time, she runs over, gives me a condescending frown, and tells me “yame nasai” which is the equivalent of saying “stop that!” to a child or pet. Apparently, I’m only supposed to microwave one item at once. She never told me. How was I supposed to know? She’s done this a couple times. Correcting me only after I do something wrong, not even trying to teach me beforehand. I feel like I’m playing a really complicated game with only a half deck of cards. I have no way of knowing whether I’m doing anything right or wrong, no way at all, and they won’t tell me until I offend them. It’s either offend away or ask before doing ANYTHING. Use the restroom. Take a shower. Pour a glass of water. Watch television. Use the laundry machine. Be home.

5) I’m still on the blarghness that was tonight. She called me fat. To my face. Told me to lose weight too. I’d been wondering why on earth she was so dead set on mentioning to me every time I did some form of exercise how I must be getting skinnier and all that. She was like, “I was surprised at how different you look from your picture! You got fat!” Uhmmm… thanks? That picture was a damn head shot, you’ve never seen a full body shot of me before. How on earth would you know? Better yet, why the freak do you care?

6) Uhm, remember how I said that they all wait until I do something wrong before telling me how to do it right? I took the first cold shower of my life because not one of them could be bothered to tell me how to turn on the hot water. That, and the hot water takes 40minutes to prep, so somewhere between me eating dinner and getting into the damn house, Okaa-san should’ve realized that I might not take a normal shower as the rest of the family had bathed and thus turned off the hot water already. She even rushed me off to shower. Really? Did it not occur to you even once that I might want hot water and you have NEVER TAUGHT ME HOW?

7) She blames me for her cold. I say the fact is that almost every Japanese train you’ll ever ride is covered in germs and that has no bearing on me. I catch a cold in the morning because my room is damn cold and there’s nothing that can be done about it, or so I believe, again, they haven’t TAUGHT ME ANYTHING. I get better by the afternoon, after I’ve left the house. She’s the housewife, why doesn’t she figure out why she got sick in her own home? Lord knows I do, every single morning I’ve been here. She kicks me out the house as early as she can and then does I don’t know what for the rest of the day. I understand that being a housewife can be difficult, but to my knowledge, she does NOTHING else but stay at home and shop for the home. She has Alice, the dog, to take care of during the day and that’s it. She gets exhausted from running out for groceries. Seriously? What is that? No, really.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH~

Today I had classes all day, meaning from 9.15 in the morning until 4.45 this afternoon with a 1 hour break for lunch and 15min between periods, of which I had 4. From 5-8 I had G-Splash dance practice which was amazing, but utterly exhausting. By the time I’d gotten home, I was so fatigued and tired of not having internet that I couldn’t take it anymore and was nearly in tears.
I’ll just leave it here for now. I still have to do my Japanese homework, which I didn’t know I had to print out until Jen kindly reminded me.

*angry… grrr… barrrk…*

- T