Wow

This place is utterly amazing.  The cherry blossoms are in bloom, and they are beautiful.  The people are so very generous and kind, and seem really happy and honored to have us here.  It’s nice. 

2 issues up front:

1. the typos and punctuation issues must be disregarded and forgiven.  the keyboard is a wee bit different, and I cannot find some keys, and others are not where they claim to be….

2. the way this is set up, I think Barry has to “ok” my post, so until I see that he’s able to do so, and my posts actually appear, I’ll be brief. 

It is day 3 of our adventure, it is early in the morning, and I am the only one up in my host family’s home.  I don’t know if it’s jet lag, or sleeping on a futon, or some combination therein, but I have been quite the early riser in Japan.

My first host family is very kind, and they present an interesting experience.  He has Japanese parents, but was born in Brazil, and lived there until he was 20; he moved to Japan about 20 years ago.  His children (3 in total) speak Portugese at home, and Japanese at school, and they seem to have created this wonderful blend of the 2 cultures in their home.  The wife is very kind, but nervous and worried, according to her husband, because she speaks no English.   But we have managed to communicate with gestures and smiles, and we learned last night that, in a pinch, translation software comes in very handy.  So now the husband has 2 different computers set up for us (1 with the english to portugese window open, and 1 with the portugese to english program up and running) so that she and I can communicate if he isn’t around.

We stayed in a hotel our first night, which was very nice to have some time, even if it was only a few hours, on our own to get ready for the show that was about to go on.  It also provided an opportunity for me to learn how to operate the very technologically advanced toilets without making a total arse of myself in a public restroom, or someone’s home – i’m sure that will happen at some point and for some reason, but hopefully it won’t be about commodes.

I hear the house starting to stir, so I should probably get motivated.  I hope this makes its way to the blog site… If it does, I’ll write more soon.