A New City

Today I met some actual Japanese people! Everyone was assigned 2 or 3 Doshisha University students to help with getting alien registration cards and commuter passes and find the best routes to and from school. Since my home stay is only a 15 minute walk away from the University, it really shouldn’t have taken all that long to get there, but we got kind of lost. When we did find my house it was beautiful! It is a very traditional-style Japanese house with tatami (straw mat) floors, sliding panel shouji doors, a garden in the entry and then another in the inner courtyard. My host mother served my guides and myself tea and snacks and was very nice, though I was really worried the whole time about having arrived unannounced when she might have been busy. I think I’ll just apologize tomorrow at the welcome party. I just finished wrapping the gifts for that, actually. ‘Omiyage’ are very important in Japanese society, in case you don’t know, and are meant to be given to thank people for various things, and in my case they are to start out my home stay on the right foot. Based on suggestions from a Japanese friend of mine, I got my host mother smoked sockeye salmon, my host father a Colorado Rockies baseball cap, my host sister some of my favourite earl grey and lavender tea from a shop in my home town, and the host dog a blue toy bone with white stars on it. I also saw the Kamo river today with my guides. Right in the middle of the city is a big, clean river with cranes, tall grasses and manicured drops, and at one section it is flanked by the geisha districts of Gion Kobu and Pontocho.
Anyway, people were going to go for karaoke tonight, but it’s gotten too late for me after such a long day. There will be other chances, since this is the land of karaoke anyway.
Lessons from today:
-Though a great many bathrooms are thoroughly modernized, there are still a lot of old-fashioned toilets left in Japan (read: no seat).
-‘Akan’ is Kyoto dialect for “bad” or “no good.”
-The Mister Doughnut in Kyoto Station doesn’t open until 8am.
-It doesn’t matter what side of the sidewalk you walk on, you are in constant danger of being hit by people on bicycles.