9/13/08
Ishida House, Matsudo

I slept in, didn't really do much today. I cleaned up my room a bit, although there wasn't much to clean. Played hacky-sack with Yuto for a while. Still coughing.

After dinner, I went over my album with my host family again. Come to think of it, I haven't really introduced them yet.

My host father is Ishida Naoto, a pretty cool dude. He works really long days, leaving at about 7:30 in the morning and not getting home until 9:00 or 10:00, so I don't see a whole lot of him during the week. I think he works as a salesman, though I'm not sure of what.

My host mother, Ishida Tomoko, is a pretty nice lady. Aside from all that mom stuff, she's a pianist (she teaches both her kids every day) and she likes Nodame Cantabile. Both parents are very polite and thoughtful, and they both know just enough English to (usually) meet me halfway in communication.

Yuto, my host brother, is eight years old. He's generally pretty quiet, but maybe that's only in comparison to his sister. He likes hacky-sacking, Tintin, piano, and Labo.

My five-year-old (her birthday was last week) host sister is Mayuko, although we usually just call her Mayu. I guess she prefers that; on the first day, I called her, and she responded with "Mayuko who?" She talks a lot, sometimes to no one in particular. It's nice, because she doesn't really care whether I understand what she says, she'll just keep talking to me. Usually, though, I do understand most of what she says because she doesn't use a lot of difficult words. It's interesting to think that one can learn as much Japanese though a persistent kindergartner as you can through some professional teachers.

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