“Apple is my favorite animal!"

Or: A Day With the Mabuchi Family

Today is Sunday. It’s Father’s Day. And once again she’s unable to actually say, “Happy Father’s Day” or “I think you’re awesome, Dad, and this is why…” or even simply “I love you” to her father.  (Nor does she really know if that will happen anytime soon due to the way the Internet Situation is working out…)

She and Katie sat down to another beautifully displayed meal for breakfast (warning now: this blog will contain A LOT of food) the most exciting part of which was the bread and butter and jam she heartily gobbled down and the personal pot of hot tea Okaasan brewed for her (as Katie doesn’t really care for tea… which was unfortunate for today as it was served at every turn). She, Katie, Okaasan, and Otoosan all piled into the car, picked up Okaasan’s Okaasan (or Obaasan) at around 9 am and set of for the 80 minute ish car ride from Nagahama to Moriyama where one of Okaasan and Otoosan’s sons’ family lives.

Listening to a 90+ year old Japanese women speaking Japanese is hard. In case anyone had any questions.

At the house of Masao-san and Tomoko-san, again, she felt a lot of uneasy awkwardness. At first the three children were shy and didn’t come around, so she and Katie sat at the table (and oh, did they get acquainted with that table…). The little dog, Mame-chan, offered a bit of a diversion, and was actually kind of sweet for a small dog [and by small I mean my cat could have squashed it; in all her polydactyl glory <3 ] and seemed to like the two girls (or in Katie’s case, adored her so much she barked incessantly when she stopped giving attention to it) so it helped pass the time. One of the children set up the Wii so they could play a few Wii Sports Resort games (archery+Frisbee+100 pin bowling+ping pong+kendo…) 

(Our Obaasan)

(Katie's rapt look of concentration before drawing back her bow)

Tomoko-san also came over and chatted for a while at the table to help interpret into simpler Japanese what Obaasan was saying which was really kind and greatly appreciated. And it seems that it’s not just in America that Our Traveler’s tastes seem weird: Tomoko-san thought it was very strange indeed to hear her say that she liked crows (or karasu) and was glad to see that Japan had so many of them~

The feast prepared for lunch was a combination of a dish of rice with carrot match-sticks, cucumbers and bean sprouts (with ground beef on top, if you care for that sort of thing, which she politely declined) and an assortment of extra side such as delicious fried tofu. Oh. And something called a “half-boiled/half-raw egg”. Which you are to have cracked over your rice mixture at the beginning… She wasn’t one to not try something, so a compromise was drawn to have her and Katie’s eggs placed in separate dishes…which she eventually put on her rice and found that it sort of tasted like a runny sunny-side-up egg; so all in all not bad with the other food. But then Katie gave her a pleading look; her eyes darted to the egg in her dish… And so, with the quickest slight-of-hand she could manage, in order to save her friend she switched out her dish for Katie’s and with a spoon plopped the whole thing in her mouth. And tried not to gag. And tried not to gag again as she swallowed it whole…

After dinner they stayed sitting to try and stay out of the way. She was feeling bad about not being able to help, but not knowing how to offer or if it would be bad to stumble through what she thought it was when Okaasan had to come over and ask them to help. How many years had she gone to her Grama’s for a Family Meal and always helped out before and afterwards, and yet she just sat there and had to be asked to help by her Okaasan who was probably embarrassed to have to ask…

Fortunately, no one seems to hold grudges over here, and Tomoko-san came up to the two after the lunch dishes were done and offered to take them shopping with her—which they eagerly accepted as something to do and also a way to be away from the table for a while (they had already exhausted the topic of countries by staring at the Katakana names on a world map that was under the clear plastic cover of the tabletop). They went to a bigger A.L. Plaza than the one in Hikone that they had been to before, and were released inside the shoe department for a little under an hour to explore while Tomoko-san went grocery shopping. A new pair of rain shoes was quickly acquired~

The car ride back was one of the most fun and relaxing conversations they had had with their new host family yet. Tomoko-san is close to their sensei’s age, and had a relatable air about her. And like a good Oneesan (older sister) she offered to take them shopping at an actual mall in the next town over sometime before they left Japan!

While dinner was being prepared, she and Katie had a new game to play to while away the time: find a children’s book and read it. They started with a picture book about dinosaurs (that had mis-spelled names in the katakana), moved on to a pig that changed colors depending on what it ate, and ended up with an I Spy! Book and a story called “Karasu no pan-ya” or the crows’ bread shop~

Dinner was make your own sushi, so she stuck with the egg and cucumber, Katie mostly stuck to the tonkatsu (breaded pork cut-let) and left the sashimi for the rest of the company (she was not about to eat another raw thing that day…). And there was a bowl for of one of the most welcomed sights to her fruit deprived soul: sliced apples. Crisp, juicy, not-too-sweet-or-too-tart apples. So feeling emboldened, and feeling the need to explain why she was smiling so much over an apple, she was going to thank Tomoko-san and tell her that apples were her favorite fruit. Except instead of saying “Ringo wa watashi no ichiban suki na kudamono desu”, she said “Ringo wa watashi no ichiban suki na dobutsu desu”. “Kudamono” or “fruit” shares the same end kanji as “dobutsu” or “animal”. So the vegetarian said “apples are my favorite animal” complete with a cheesy grin on her face. And they say you can’t joke in Japanese…

After dinner, they were spared another embarrassing round of trying to help in the too full room by finally going home. As they loaded into the car, the three children came back from playing to call out “arigatou” and “bye-bye” as they got in the car. From inside the car with the windows rolled down part way to try and step the oppressive heat, Tomoko-san reminded them again that she wanted to take them shopping, so the visit ended on a high note.

Heh, and then Okaasan seemed to go the opposite way the navigation system was telling her to go when the way there had seemed so simple…

They arrived back home around 8:30pm—nearly twelve hours after they had left that morning (and oh, did they feel it…). So after trudging through their homework and attempting to study vocabulary words and kanji, they called it quits and left to their side of the house for the night. So after showers and getting ready for their first commute to school the following morning, she fell into bed no later than a quarter after 10. (Not sleeping on the ridiculously hard pillow, mind you, or on the equally hard but much thinner cot mattress pad thing; but using the terry clothe blanket as a pillow and wrapping her other blanket around her head to block out the light that is perpetually outside her window everywhere she goes...)