One of the Fam

5/3

So today I finally stopped using teinei-go (polite language) with the family and it was a lot of fun. I felt like I belonged there and that I was welcome in their family discussion. They said the funniest things today! Fukuyama shimai was trying to explain what something was but didn’t know the English term and she looked at Asuka for the translation which she didn’t give (she is fluent in English) and she kept going into the description and for the life of her tried so hard to get everything to make sense but she couldn’t do it without this one word and Asuka finally said it afterwards, it was hysterical. She purposely held out to see how her mom would do in explaining the situation. Then her mom got her back later that night by asking her if she was planning on going jogging with me in the morning, it was really really funny.

Anyways we went to kiyomizu dera today, such a cool place hoarded with people. It has this dark tunnel you can pay a 100yen to go into, and while in there you are only led by a hand rail that turns every which way and you can’t see anything period. It goes down and up and all around and then finaly a light appears in the middle and there is the will of hotokesama, (GOD) and then it leads you out to the place you need to go to get out. Very symbolic I might add, I can see some of your heads making the connection right this minute,, eh? Eh? While we were there we met these girls from Thailand, very nice here studying engineering. They accompanied us for the duration of our stay at kiyomizu. They spoke no Japanese and a little English. It was pretty fun communicating with them. The above girl's name was Kro? the scene where im picking up that big steel thing is this tradition that if it is easy for you to pick up you must have done really good things and good luck will follow you...as long as you pay 100 yen

Then we went to Shimogamo Jinja where they had this annual arrow shooting contest from a mounted postion. They rode horses full speed towards these targets and shot them as they rode by. It was AWESOME. We got some really cool videos of it. This one guy who was in the Last Samurai for his talent in horse back riding and shooting arrows hit all three of his targets. He was very jozu. Then we ate at this spicy ramen shop. It was really good. Pretty easy day but really cool. Cant wait for tomorrow!