Cheesecake vs. Cheese Cake

Perhaps the last couple of posts have been less than enthusiastic, but that's definitely not the entirety of my time here. (Once more, total disconnect between photos and text- ごめんね！)

Monday night, I finally saw the nightview from the peak of Hakodate Yama, allegedly the 3rd best nightview in the world. My camera fails, but it's pretty.

Right now, I'm an aspiring Judoka- I was taking Judo classes with a high school team, but then it became evident that for their practice and tournament schedule the newbies weren't entirely welcome. Now I take classes at another dojo- as it was first explained to my minimal comprehension, its "at a jail" but its "not with criminals" and its okay "because sometimes even children go there".

We learned to make 和菓子！ We'll pretend that my attempts at Dango were actually as pretty as these.

Turns out its completely non-sketchy, though,and the sensei even speaks in a way that I can actually understand (mostly). Considering every other 柔道家 in the dojo is a blackbelt, it's a little bit hilarious when we spar. There's the middle schooler who looks and is built like a rock and has no qualms about beating the crap out of me. There's the wise 50 year old who probably weighs twice as much as me- my attempts at throwing him are futile, but he'll give me lots on pointers before casually throwing me to the ground. There's the sensei who makes little noises somewhere between encouragement and amusement with every move, and there's the really nice guy who lets me throw him a couple times before he makes it very clear that he's going to throw me and there's nothing I can do about it (repeatedly) but does so in the nicest, gentlest manner possible. All in all, lots of interesting bruises and blisters but I'm loving it.



Also learned 生け花 (ikebana) the traditional art of flower arranging. The purple ones are surprisingly sharp.

Also, somehow it's been arranged that a wise 60 year old, Suda San, who was also a black belt in his younger days, gives me a ride home to the next city over. Older people are much harder for me to understand: Suda-San's voice in particular reminds me of the way Grandpa Keith talks, just faster. But I'm getting better at comprehending him and we've had some interesting conversations. Including the conversation where I got the impression he was inviting me to something but didn't really know what so just politely agreed. Turns out, I just discovered we're going to an onsen in the morning! And then maybe drinking or something. He likes his booze, apparently. Little nervous to hang out one-on-one, in case my listening abilities fail me, but 頑張るぞ！

The store calledドンキホーテ (read: donkihoute, or Don Quixote) is like a General Store but exploded in pink and glitter. One of the best things I found is this FEELMAX brand underwear. It's a monkey eating a banana. Guess what goes where. If you'd prefer, you can also go for the elephant with a cute trunk. Fetish has never been so adorable!

And beyond that, talking with my host mom continues to be awesome. She's very willing to badmouth (lovingly) the other members of the family, which is actually quite entertaining. She's actually looking forward to the twin girls hitting puberty, because once they become interested in boys, maybe they'll CHILL THE FRIG OUT so that boys will like them. We've also discussed the above mentioned novelty underwear at length; apparently everyone wears it to end of the year office parties. We sometimes marvel at the skill of Beyonce and strip dancers who can pull off the "Ｍ字開脚" (according to Jisho.org, "pornographic pose (spreading one's legs open wide with knees bent, creating the shape of the letter 'M') ") after Hikari was sitting like that at dinner. Sometimes I don't believe the sheer amount of unlikely silliness that occurs in my life.

Contrary to expectation, this cheesecake was actually cheese cake. As in, cake that tasted like Cheeze-Itz. Um, what?

Also looking forward to Sunday- Hokutoshi has a particular summer festival, and James and I will be participating wearing traditional gear. There was also the possibility that we'd be clad in happi and fundoushi--think the pants (or lack) that a sumo wears--but turns out we'll wear real pants. I guess that's okay too.

Cutest ice cream ever: Pikachu. Other options were Jigglypuff (strawberry) and Torchic (vanilla) but I couldn't really not order Pikachu.