Cathryn Salamone -- Japan

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Around the beginning of December, my host family and I participated in a Rotaract event held at a local nursing home. We did the mochi tsuki, which is the process of making mochi, or japanese rice cakes, during the New Year period from December until the beginning of January. It is done by taking rice and mashing it with a wooden hammer in a stone hearth until the rice molds together and becomes one large rice ball. We made individual rice cakes with anko, or sweet bean paste, inside them. It was a great event and it felt great to help out during the holidays. We gave the rice cakes to the nursing home residents, and I think they greatly enjoyed our prescence there.

On the 10th I went to a Christmas party hosted by the English night class that I help out with on Mondays. We had traditional japanese food and it was a lot of fun. To spread the cheer, I sang a few Christmas songs, and finished with everyone singing "Jingle Bells". It was a great night. On the 19th was the Nishi (West) Rotary Club Christmas party, which was very big and included all of the Rotary members and their families. Also with Rotaract, myself and the past exchange students who went to America last year from Japan made my Grandma's chocolate chip cookies (she gave me the recipie and I converted it to metric units...I was so glad when they tasted great because I wasn't sure if I did my math right...) We wrapped the cookies in nice wrapping and sold them to raise money for the children in Cambodia. On Christmas Eve I attended the Higashi (East) Rotary Club's Christmas party, which, although this was my third Christmas party, it was the most meaningful to me, because it was on Christmas Eve and this was by far my favorite Rotary Club in Kochi City. I had a great time again, and as always, great food!

I continue to go to Koto club, and even went a couple days during Winter Break to keep myself occupied. And I continue to have Japanese Dancing on Thursdays as well.

I had another fever for a weekend but I was better by the following Monday and didn't need to miss any school. Despite the cold weather, I haven't been sick since.

I have to apologize for being so late with this report...to be honest I just completely forgot about it! December, like November, went by incredibly fast. It proceeded to get colder as the month went on, and I kept adding layers underneath my uniform because neither the house, nor the school has heating. I can say that I'm pretty well adjusted now to living without heat...I know to layer up and wear socks and a sweatshirt to bed. Christmas was difficult to get through, because although the commercial aspects of Christmas were blatantly present here in Japan; the TV commercial Christmas Jingles, the santa hats, the Christmas lights in the park, when Christmas Day arrived it was like Christmas never happened. On Christmas Day, my host parents went to work, some kids went to school (I had koto practice scheduled for that day), and by no means was it a holiday. It was weird to ride my bike to the corner store and see the roads filled with cars and people on bicycle going to work or school or wherever they had to be, just like on any normal day. But it passed thankfully, and the New Year's was a much bigger deal, thank goodness. But I will explain more about that in my January post (which will be sent soon as January is about to end...again my apologies for this being late!)

All in all though, December is really sort of a blur to me. I established a routine of going to school, going to koto practice for three hours and riding my bike home, eating dinner, studying, and then going to bed. It is said that December and January are the hardest months, and I'm very happy that I made it through them and that I'm passed the big hill of my exchange year. I'm making deeper relationships with my friends because I'm learning more and more of the language each day. There are days that I feel like I'm completely fluent and that I've known Japanese for more than only a year and a half, and then there are days where I feel like I've made absolutely no progress at all since my arrival here, that I've "plateau-ed" in my language learning. But I take each day by the day, and I learn something new about myself and about life with each passing month.