An Easy day

Well, today wasn't too exciting. I found out that I'm placed in Level 4 for both Speaking and Reading /Writing. Hopefully I can keep up with speaking. I think I'm going to see how it goes having the 5th class too. I've done it in Gettysburg just fine, and the courses are remarkably easier here so I hear, so I think I'll do it for now. I have a while to drop a class yet.

I also heard from Yukina! I might get to meet her tomorrow, I'm excited. I hope I can become really good friends with her and or with some of her friends.

I took the bus to Hirakata Station to take care of my Gaijin card but someone forgot his two ID pictures, so that was fruitless. I bought some other things I needed plus a nice shirt for 500 yen. I still haven't found any good silly-english ones that I like. I will get some other clothes eventually because some of the stores have a really nice style that you can't find in the US. I still need to get an umbrella at some point. I want to find one that isn't plastic-see-through like at the school store. I bought some food too, a milk-tea drink that I enjoy and some mugi-cha which is buckwheat tea that is quite good, introduced to me by Hentys (Hi if you're reading this!) I got these nice rolls with a sausage in the middle with some kind of dressing on it. Good breakfast food.

The bus ride to the Station and back was kind of lonely though, with the whole "being a minority in a country where you can't understand much" thing. That and a few "ほら！外人だ！" (Hey! a foreigner) were getting to me. I wish I could understand what comes after just that though.

The odd thing is though, is that you can be put off by these feelings of cultural and lingual exclusion, yet when I decided to try the tiny restaraunt next door I was immediately pleased to be there. There was a small counter with maybe 8 seats and two 4-person tables behind that. The stove was on the counter too, so you couldn't outstretch your hands. I ordered some grilled noodles yakisoba and it was the first time I had the real deal. So good, and only for 580 yen. The atmosphere was nice. Two women cooking that were probably related and some local guy there for dinner. I think they were commenting on the cooking show on the TV or how I had difficulty breaking my egg with chopsticks, haha. The lady who ran it was so nice though. I conducted everything in Japanese until she wanted to try a little English she picked up. I told her I'd come back here often since I live next door and she seemed quite happy. I recieved a 50% off coupon for the next time too!

So I suppose what I mean to say is that even though you can feel left out and if not lost at times, there will always be experiences that will warm you up and will redeem any feelings of not belonging. Finding a nice little place like this is one of them.

I'm very happy to be here and consider myself lucky.