二人で交わした小さな約束 - My Family Life
At last, the promised entry. I will detail my daily home life in Japan with the Miyazaki family.
I wake up normally around 6:30 every morning, and my breakfast consists of coffee, toast with jam, and some fruit. Sometimes, when Mrs. Miyazaki gets filtered water from the sink, a little machine next to the faucet chimes out Maurice Ravel's "Bolero". I don't know why it does, except maybe to count out exactly 20 seconds in case you need 20 seconds of water flow. The funny thing is, Mrs. Miyazaki's ears aren't too well off in her age, and she can't register high tones. In other words, she can't even hear the cheerful 20 second timer.
After breakfast, I go to my train station by bike. It's really something to ride a bike through a Japanese suburb. Before I go though, I take out the previous day's trash. And so every day goes on like this.
The trains. Ah, the trains. So very convenient, so very necessary, and so very crowded. The morning commute is just like the rumors you may have heard. The pressure of people around me is enough to support my weight.
I usually return home around 6:30 to 7:00PM. Then I have dinner with the family. My host sister doesn't usually eat dinner with the family though, so it's often just the parents and myself. Lately, we've been having wine with dinner a lot. I was told at the beginning of my stay that the family has wine with dinner on special occasions. Dinner is always some fine Japanese cuisine. Last night, I had sashimi (raw fish) with a large bowl of rice and miso soup. Quite the tasty.
Bedtime for me usually gravitates towards 11:00. I take a shower at night now, since it's more convenient than in the morning.
And that's pretty much my daily life in the Miyazaki household.
This is the apartment building I live in. I'm on the fifth floor. The stairwell is actually pretty cool during the mornings and evenings, even though I'm pretty tired from the day and from biking from the station.
On the landing before the fifth floor, my host family raises some bonsai. Aren't they cute little mini-trees? So many things in Japan are cute.
This is my "backyard" as viewed from the above bonsai landing. It's an orchard of some kind, and there are about a few thousand crows there, cawing all hours of the day. They even invade my dreams in the morning.
The door I use to go from world to home and vice versa. There are chimes hung on the inside. The nameplate in the upper left reads "Miyazaki Eisuke," my host father's name.
Here's my room, which I think I already posted a picture of. It's the same picture, actually.
From my room, you can see more orchard, or you can see the street below.
Here's what my host father called the model picture of the Miyazaki home. We don't usually eat dinner in the living room, but this was a special occasion when my host brother visited. Dinner is normally taken in the kitchen.
And finally, the one picture you've all wanted since the beginning of time. My host family.
From left to right, Norie, Eisuke, and Kyouko. We all know who the creepy-lookin' dude in the back is.
And now I must hurry on to my Japanese class, which has been covering only things that I've already studied at great length at the University of Texas at Austin. Boring? Naw. Only slightly mind-numbing and suicide-inducing.
Bonus points to the one who can name the song whose lyrics I used in this entry's title.
I wake up normally around 6:30 every morning, and my breakfast consists of coffee, toast with jam, and some fruit. Sometimes, when Mrs. Miyazaki gets filtered water from the sink, a little machine next to the faucet chimes out Maurice Ravel's "Bolero". I don't know why it does, except maybe to count out exactly 20 seconds in case you need 20 seconds of water flow. The funny thing is, Mrs. Miyazaki's ears aren't too well off in her age, and she can't register high tones. In other words, she can't even hear the cheerful 20 second timer.
After breakfast, I go to my train station by bike. It's really something to ride a bike through a Japanese suburb. Before I go though, I take out the previous day's trash. And so every day goes on like this.
The trains. Ah, the trains. So very convenient, so very necessary, and so very crowded. The morning commute is just like the rumors you may have heard. The pressure of people around me is enough to support my weight.
I usually return home around 6:30 to 7:00PM. Then I have dinner with the family. My host sister doesn't usually eat dinner with the family though, so it's often just the parents and myself. Lately, we've been having wine with dinner a lot. I was told at the beginning of my stay that the family has wine with dinner on special occasions. Dinner is always some fine Japanese cuisine. Last night, I had sashimi (raw fish) with a large bowl of rice and miso soup. Quite the tasty.
Bedtime for me usually gravitates towards 11:00. I take a shower at night now, since it's more convenient than in the morning.
And that's pretty much my daily life in the Miyazaki household.
This is the apartment building I live in. I'm on the fifth floor. The stairwell is actually pretty cool during the mornings and evenings, even though I'm pretty tired from the day and from biking from the station.
On the landing before the fifth floor, my host family raises some bonsai. Aren't they cute little mini-trees? So many things in Japan are cute.
This is my "backyard" as viewed from the above bonsai landing. It's an orchard of some kind, and there are about a few thousand crows there, cawing all hours of the day. They even invade my dreams in the morning.
The door I use to go from world to home and vice versa. There are chimes hung on the inside. The nameplate in the upper left reads "Miyazaki Eisuke," my host father's name.
Here's my room, which I think I already posted a picture of. It's the same picture, actually.
From my room, you can see more orchard, or you can see the street below.
Here's what my host father called the model picture of the Miyazaki home. We don't usually eat dinner in the living room, but this was a special occasion when my host brother visited. Dinner is normally taken in the kitchen.
And finally, the one picture you've all wanted since the beginning of time. My host family.
From left to right, Norie, Eisuke, and Kyouko. We all know who the creepy-lookin' dude in the back is.
And now I must hurry on to my Japanese class, which has been covering only things that I've already studied at great length at the University of Texas at Austin. Boring? Naw. Only slightly mind-numbing and suicide-inducing.
Bonus points to the one who can name the song whose lyrics I used in this entry's title.