Hey, everyone out there in America land!
Don't worry, I'm still here. Go-anshin kudasaimase. ;)
...here, and owing apologies to those I haven't properly kept informed of happenings here and there. First I ought to start by summing up my stay with the Nishikawas, my second host family, with "boy, am I glad to have gotten the hell out of there!"
At first everything was great. I didn't mind riding my bike 20 minutes to the station; I thought my host siblings were cool; my host family prepared a lot of things for me; Grandpa and Grandma were rather laid-back... But soon enough things started going downhill real quick. I don't think mom particularly liked my going out late here and there with teachers or Zuri (the Costa Rican exchange student at Kokusai Joho High School) in December, and she got mad at me for being lazy even though she'd never let me do any chores... Then she started to tell me to do all these sorts of extremely minute things, like I had to make sure I spread the bath mat neatly over the basket when I got out of the bath... and don't eat breakfast in my pajamas... and... I could go on and on.
Well, it was just as Naomi, my counselor, warned me: Regular Japanese people who haven't had any such experience hosting an exchange student (maybe even some who have) tend to treat them as a guest at first. So even if some of they don't like some of the behaviors, they won't say anything. The Japanese tendency is not to be direct about those kinds of things anyway. Then the stress builds up gradually and one day all of a sudden - without warning - even a small thing will light the fuse, and then !BOOM! the bomb explodes.
My host mom never said anything about folding the clearn laundry and taking it into my room. For the first month or so she always did it for me, so I thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden she came home and got really mad at me for a couple things, including being too lazy to take my laundry in. She yelled at me, and I cried myself to sleep that night. From then on I saw my host mom as a particularly scary woman and it was hard to talk to her, so even if I didn't understand something, I was too afraid to ask.
Then she started complaining that I eat too slow, and she wants to clean up early so I have to eat quickly. Also "Japanese people don't have much conversation at mealtimes" (seems to be only the case with families as cold as them) so I reluctantly got into the (unhealthy) habit of shutting up and eating as fast as possible. (Which made me sick a couple times)
Well after a while she got even more irritated with the fact that I just "do as I like and don't ask," but gee, I wonder why that is? Maybe because my host mom's a witch who made my life such a living hell that I enjoyed school about 5 times as much as before and anytime I heard "Ohmihachiman" on the train announcements I just thought "Not home already..." Not to mention she always had a sort of angry expression and always talked to me with a slightly irritated tone of voice. Of course I tried to avoid talking to her as much as I could.
The rest of my host family except grandma was hardly ever home, so I might as well have just lived on my own. I got very depressed more than a few times and thought about coming home still more. I'm not sure what their purpose was in hosting me. I honestly think I was psychologically affected by it. After all, that was my first time in such a cold household. Actually that was my first time ever not getting along with someone. Now I think I'm a little closer to understanding what it was like for my friends who didn't have such good home lives (okay, that might be going a little too far because nothing crazy ever happened, but...)
Maybe I put up with more than I had to. Maybe I had grounds for changing host families. But I never felt pushed to do so. After all I had 3 meals a day and a bed to sleep in so I guess my host family's doing their job, I thought.
Anyway, putting that topic aside for a little bit, there were some good things that happened during that time-
: I got to know my way around Kyoto decently well- I went there every weekend in an attempt to escape the house
: I changed my attitude toward school because being there was much better than being at home
: I passed the Level 2 Japanese Proficiency Test (2nd hardest of 4, not 2nd easiest. With just level 3 you can teach Japanese)
However, the amount of time I spent doing anything music-related hit an all-time low and I felt particularly alienated even from my own self. It is a strange feeling to have your life's passion taken out of your reach... like a hamster on a wheel who wants that cheese hanging in front of him. (I took tons of flyers for coffeehouse live acoustic shows but couldn't go to a single one...) My inspiration is nearly zero these days; I haven't written anything new in ages.
Alright, so that's what my life was like from December until a few days ago. I'll continue this in a separate entry.
...here, and owing apologies to those I haven't properly kept informed of happenings here and there. First I ought to start by summing up my stay with the Nishikawas, my second host family, with "boy, am I glad to have gotten the hell out of there!"
At first everything was great. I didn't mind riding my bike 20 minutes to the station; I thought my host siblings were cool; my host family prepared a lot of things for me; Grandpa and Grandma were rather laid-back... But soon enough things started going downhill real quick. I don't think mom particularly liked my going out late here and there with teachers or Zuri (the Costa Rican exchange student at Kokusai Joho High School) in December, and she got mad at me for being lazy even though she'd never let me do any chores... Then she started to tell me to do all these sorts of extremely minute things, like I had to make sure I spread the bath mat neatly over the basket when I got out of the bath... and don't eat breakfast in my pajamas... and... I could go on and on.
Well, it was just as Naomi, my counselor, warned me: Regular Japanese people who haven't had any such experience hosting an exchange student (maybe even some who have) tend to treat them as a guest at first. So even if some of they don't like some of the behaviors, they won't say anything. The Japanese tendency is not to be direct about those kinds of things anyway. Then the stress builds up gradually and one day all of a sudden - without warning - even a small thing will light the fuse, and then !BOOM! the bomb explodes.
My host mom never said anything about folding the clearn laundry and taking it into my room. For the first month or so she always did it for me, so I thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden she came home and got really mad at me for a couple things, including being too lazy to take my laundry in. She yelled at me, and I cried myself to sleep that night. From then on I saw my host mom as a particularly scary woman and it was hard to talk to her, so even if I didn't understand something, I was too afraid to ask.
Then she started complaining that I eat too slow, and she wants to clean up early so I have to eat quickly. Also "Japanese people don't have much conversation at mealtimes" (seems to be only the case with families as cold as them) so I reluctantly got into the (unhealthy) habit of shutting up and eating as fast as possible. (Which made me sick a couple times)
Well after a while she got even more irritated with the fact that I just "do as I like and don't ask," but gee, I wonder why that is? Maybe because my host mom's a witch who made my life such a living hell that I enjoyed school about 5 times as much as before and anytime I heard "Ohmihachiman" on the train announcements I just thought "Not home already..." Not to mention she always had a sort of angry expression and always talked to me with a slightly irritated tone of voice. Of course I tried to avoid talking to her as much as I could.
The rest of my host family except grandma was hardly ever home, so I might as well have just lived on my own. I got very depressed more than a few times and thought about coming home still more. I'm not sure what their purpose was in hosting me. I honestly think I was psychologically affected by it. After all, that was my first time in such a cold household. Actually that was my first time ever not getting along with someone. Now I think I'm a little closer to understanding what it was like for my friends who didn't have such good home lives (okay, that might be going a little too far because nothing crazy ever happened, but...)
Maybe I put up with more than I had to. Maybe I had grounds for changing host families. But I never felt pushed to do so. After all I had 3 meals a day and a bed to sleep in so I guess my host family's doing their job, I thought.
Anyway, putting that topic aside for a little bit, there were some good things that happened during that time-
: I got to know my way around Kyoto decently well- I went there every weekend in an attempt to escape the house
: I changed my attitude toward school because being there was much better than being at home
: I passed the Level 2 Japanese Proficiency Test (2nd hardest of 4, not 2nd easiest. With just level 3 you can teach Japanese)
However, the amount of time I spent doing anything music-related hit an all-time low and I felt particularly alienated even from my own self. It is a strange feeling to have your life's passion taken out of your reach... like a hamster on a wheel who wants that cheese hanging in front of him. (I took tons of flyers for coffeehouse live acoustic shows but couldn't go to a single one...) My inspiration is nearly zero these days; I haven't written anything new in ages.
Alright, so that's what my life was like from December until a few days ago. I'll continue this in a separate entry.