Planning, Yukari, and a New Dining Option

After writing about the Asa Banana Daietto this morning, I got to talk to my family for a long while on Skype, which was very nice. I also got to talk to David for a while, but not as long as I wanted because I had class. But I skipped lunch, so that gave me some extra time to talk. I snacked on some strawberry Pocky in art history to tide me over.

At 2:30 I was supposed to meet Saho. We made plans for Saturday; we're meeting at 11AM at school, going shopping in Shinsaibashi, and cooking some potstickers. It should be fun.

At 2:45 I met with Yukari, my speaking partner. I was really glad to get to talk to her. She was so friendly in our emails over the summer, but we've both been really busy (and kind of shy after our first meeting, I think) so we haven't seen each other in a month. Today we made plans to go to an onsen, or hot spring, on Wednesday afternoon. I'm so excited! It's one of the things I really, really wanted to do in Japan. After working out the details, we went together for a late lunch at the small school cafeteria, which I hadn't used before.

This cafeteria was a little different, which is why, although I had checked it out, I hadn't eaten there before today. When you go in, you look at the plastic food choices on display and pick out what you want, which is typical of a Japanese restaurant. But then, in this cafeteria, you have to purchase a ticket from a vending machine saying what you want. Then you take your ticket to the cafeteria workers, who then get your food for you. It wasn't complicated, but I'm still not sure why they use the ticket system instead of just asking you what you want. Oh well. In any case, I had some really yummy beef curry, and Yukari had tonkastu don. We were able to have a fairly smooth conversation.

Yukari is really sweet; I like her a lot. I do have some trouble understanding some of her phrases, though. I'm glad I'm getting to talk to people with lots of different speech styles. Saho uses a more tomboyish style, while Yukari is very timid and uses hyper-feminine patterns. Momoko is somewhere in between; her grammar and vocab are pretty standard, but her inflection makes everything sound so cute. I have a lot of trouble understanding Japanese boys, still. Probably because I haven't talked to them much, and also because they tend to use the more direct types of speech that we don't practice much in class because it can sound a bit rude. I seem to be best at talking to middle-aged women, actually. Every woman between about 35 and 55 has been really easy for me to understand.

After lunch with Yukari, I returned home for a nap. At 6:00 we had our monthly seminar house meeting. It was really uneventful; basically they reminded us to do our dishes and not get too loud at night. Then I studied, fixed some supper (rice pilaf, potstickers, and pizza toast this evening), showered, and studied some more for my lesson test in reading/writing in the morning. Now I'm here.

I'm completely wiped out from the day, and I'm not sure why. In any case, I'm off to bed a bit early tonight.