some thoughts

So,

It’s really time consuming to paraphrase a day’s events and put them into witty sentences ( maybe not that witty) and chronoligify them and everything, SO, maybe only expect a good post like that once a week, I’ll do what I can, but for now here are some sentences you might like to read.
I have now eaten raw egg, raw chicken, semi-raw horse, skewered pigs nipples (It tasted like pork, but when I asked what it was my host father just pointed to some imaginary nipples. Maybe it was dog.) It was all really good. The food is like one of the best parts about being here.
Every dish is a surprise, and usually I don’t like surprises, but not when it comes to Japanese food.
I’ve picked up two of the three alphabets, I can READ Japanese! But alas, I cannot understand what I’ve read.
Manners are really different here, and privacy is kind of different, I’ll get back to you on that.
Me and my host dad went for a longlonglong walk in the park today, and he like power walked, and I lost him, and then I got lost myself, and then I asked someone for their cell phone and called home. I wasn’t worried and I knew my way home, I just didn’t want anyone else to worry, but when they picked up the phone, it was difficult to explain my situation. You can’t use hand signals on the phone. Anyway, I got home in ok time for my in home Japanese tutor who makes things very easy to understand, and has quite a vocabulary despite being very firm about not being able to speak English.
These two Mormon missionaries live near me and I see them all the time and kind of talk to them, kind of.
Oh yea, book stores are huge, electronics stores are 8 floors, train stations are attached to massive department stores, then the next station is attached to another one.
Baseball is 10 times more popular in Japan than in America, Kentucky fried chicken too I think.
Today I climbed a mountain. And at the top of the mountain was one of my teachers, crazy.
Everyone has a bike, no one has a helmet. They go so fast on the sidewalk, never on the road.
I was in my first car in Japan on Friday, it was so scary being on the other side of the road, in a car about as big as a cabinet zooming around corners, I don’t know.
There are bears in Japan. I didn’t know that. Well I think that’s what they were trying to tell me. I’ll look it up.
There are active volcanoes in Hokkaido where I live,

There is massive flooding in some of the other islands. It’s like New Orleans or something, but you guys probably don’t even hear about it.
Here the commercials are 10 to 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds; they come at you fast, and are usually awesome if they don’t give you a seizure. You know who you are.
Everything is about consumerism in Japan, well anything that’s not traditional, maybe I’ll wait until I've experienced more here before I get into that.
School is awesome and my classroom has an awesome view and there are no bars on the windows and no one will steal your stuff. I’m not expected to do anything and only study Japanese on my own during class, or sleep.
They try to avoid waste here, there’s still over packaging but all garbage is recycled or incinerated, I think out of necessity rather than ecology, see there isn’t a lot of room for junk. They make good use of recycled tire pathways and the like, but incinerating so much garbage caaaaaaan’t be good.
Wow, I didn’t think I had this much to say.
Game shows are hilarious.
People point at me.
Some people like walk extra fast to get past me.
We have a pretty crummy TV. I was like, this is Japan, where's the HDTV? Then I found out they have a huge HD projector attached to the ceiling and pull down a screen to watch movies on it.
I have a classical music class. Hmm.
My bed is so hard and so fantastic, my pillow is hard and not so fantastic.
Watermelons cost like 20 dollars, but I told them they're my favourite before I knew that, and they keep buyin em.
Here, we buy groceries 30 bucks at a time, and one or two days at a time and anything you could ever want to purchase is within walking distance.
The cars. Oh man.
The phone like answers itself and puts itself on speakerphone, suddenly a man’s voice will be in the room, woa. Or maybe that’s the doorbell I don’t even know.
They’ve had like 8 exchange students (留学生) here before me.
This island, Hokkaido (the big one at the top) was originally home to an indigenous people called the Ainu, who were genetically closer to the people of Siberia than to the Japanese. Then the Japanese killed them, there are like 300 full blood Ainu left in the world and many more “Métis” I guess. They face many of the same problems first nations Canadians do today.
Dinners almost ready, but I just ate like a whole watermelon.
It turns out I was using chopsticks (端) allll wrong.
There’s no smog, I thought there would be smog.
The hiking trails are steep, but the mountains are generally puny.
The Olympics were held here in 1928, winter.
I can hear fireworks.