After 90 days in Japan, I think I can officially declare myself settled in. I’ve created a routine, I’m cooking for myself, my plants are growing, and I feel comfortable using the public transportation system (for the most part). I’d say I’m pretty good at using chopsticks but on Fridays I eat dinner with a fork, just for fun. I’m slowly getting used to seeing cars on the other side of the road, the metric system, and Japanese humidity. Here the top 10 highlights from the past month ranked in order of most exciting to least exciting (but still exciting):
1. Eating octopus at a Rakuten Eagles baseball game
2. Singing karaoke with people I’ve known for less than 3 months
3. Comparing Japanese beach culture to Oregon beach culture
4. Finding a five-leaf clover in my favorite park
5. Teaching an English lesson in front of my students’ parents for Kids and Parent’s Day at MeySen
6. Eating Turkish pizza and baklava in an underground Mediterranean restaurant
7. Shearing a sheep with my kindergarteners at school
8. Finding 6 four-leaf clovers in one day
9. Packages! (from home and from curly hair product companies)
10. Successfully germinating strawberry seeds
11. A random hail/thunder/lightning storm on June 2nd
Things I’ve learned:
– Japanese people do everything they can to keep their fingers clean while eating their meals
– Killer hornets are real
– Some letters take 12 days to deliver internationally, others letters take 17 days
– It’s a good idea to take an umbrella everywhere
– Dominos pizza in Japan is good, but not the same… & EXPENSIVE
– An avocado with black dots is still edible
– Bulletin boards take hours to decorate
– ‘L’ and ‘v’ and ‘th’ are sounds that don’t exist in Japanese language
– Stand on the left side of the escalator at train stations
– Mirin and sweet cooking sake are the same thing
Things I miss from home:
- my family
- quesadillas
- driving a car
- the cozy pillows at my grandparent’s house
- Portland donuts
- the plants I tended to throughout college
- extra toasty cheeze-its
- burritos
- my friends
- playing piano
- baking things in an oven
- my watercolors and oil pastels because i forgot them
- Sriracha
- People watching in Portland
- homemade blueberry muffins
- Menus in English
- Labels in English
- Street signs in English
- Announcements in English
- Our family dog, Hazel