Fireworks!

Sunday started out as a lazy sunday. I got out of bed rather late, though I woke up at 5 am (Japan, why are you in the wrong time zone?! 😦 ). When I got up, there was no one in the house. My host mom went to church with a friend of hers, whose poodle stayed over during that time. My host mom said she’d be away for about two hours, but since she didn’t return after three hours I decided to go for a walk. I really wanted to go outside, despite the hot weather. Staying inside all day long isn’t for me. I wrote a little note (in which I used only 1 kanji, though I could write at least 4, but I was too lazy/sleepy to think) saying I’d be back within the hour.

I walked straight the whole time, since getting lost would be a disaster (I don’t know and address nor a phone number), so my walk ended up at the river. I passed a few kids playing outside, or rather, making each other wet because that’s what children do here in summer. I caught a few words of what they were saying and one of them was “Amerika-jin”. Ppor kids, not every white person is American… Then I passed them again and the shouted “Harooooo!” (= hello) so I waved at them. Giggles from their side. I tried finding out how to get up to the river, there’s some kind of dike in between, but I couldn’t see it (turned out walking over the grass was totally okay, hehe) so I decided to return to the house, I was away for half an hour already and the heat started to be too much to handle. So, I had to pass those kids again. They were already 50 meters behind me when again, “Haroooooo!” so I hello’d back. Giggle giggle. I turned around again and heard them follow me, so I turned back to them and saw them waving. I waved back, of course, and they looked overjoyed. ‘The American waved back at us!’ 😉

On my way back, my host mom passed me by car. She said Eri’s kids were at home and they were asking for me. When I returned, these kids were scared of me. 😉 Their mom said she’d go home and clean for a bit, while the kids stayed with me. They played peacefully for a while but then the brother accidentally hit the sister, she started crying and asked for her mommy. So I picked her up and was about to take her to her mommy when the boy wanted to go too. But the dog was lying near the entrance and they were both scared of it, so I had to pick up both of them (they’re 3 years old, so they were a bit heavy ;)) and walked to mommy on my bare feet. The asphalt was so hot! Poor mommy had to stop cleaning and returned to the house with us.

My host mom handed me her laptop, because she couldn’t find the password for the WiFi. At first I had problems accessing facebook, since I had turned on the double protection, but after an hour or so looking for a solution, it finally worked. I hadn’t been online since arriving at the airport, so I thought they’d start to get worried soon, and I just wanted to talk to people in a language I speak well. Full time Japanese is incredibly tiring, especially if your level isn’t that great.

Before I could finally log on to facebook, a Japanese friend who works at the office invited me through facebook to have dinner with her and a friend that evening. In the end she had to contact my host mom because she still hadn’t received any reply from me. Later my host mom went to the office and brought back a little (overly kawaii) note from the girl, in which she invited me again. So cute. 😀

Which brings us to dinner. After being undesicive about where to eat, we finally managed to pick a place; Gusto. Gusto is a so-called family restaurant, where there’s a choice for everyone. There’s both Japanese and western food. The three of us picked a Japanese style dish in the end. It was delicious! Meanwhile we talked about all kinds of things, mostly questions about Belgium and teaching them some English. And having to hear again that my head is small and my eyes have a cool colour (they’re just green, but they all have dark brown eyes, so to them it’s special).

Before getting in the car to go to karaoke, they suddenly decided we’d do fireworks after karaoke. My friend invited her brothers and a friend of theirs, and then we went to karaoke. Which was nice. I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of karaoke, mainly because you don’t hear the artist’s voice (which is why I like singstar better) and because you can hear your own voice (eww, gross!). Good thing there are English songs as well, and since my friend is a big fan of One Direction, we mostly sang One Direction songs…

Suddenly, it was time to go, because we were supposed to meet up for the fireworks. We went to my friend’s home, where we met one of her brothers and his girlfriend. We waited for the other brother and the friend, but in the end it took an hour or so before they were ready. Once everyone was ready, we went to Donki to get fireworks and then off to a parking lot/construction site along the Edogawa river. For me, it was the first time to light fireworks so I was really excited. I’ve only seen big fireworks in the sky, so lighting my own sprakler was something new. It was a lot of fun, the fireworks were beautiful! I hope I can do it again, but since it’s a popular thing to do in Japan in summer, I guess I will. 😀

By the time they dropped me off at home, it was already 1 am, and the whole house was asleep. I was tired, so I went straight to bed, hoping I wouldn’t wake up at 5 am again! I didn’t, I was still half asleep when my alarm went off at 9 am, but I still feel exhausted! I hope I can go to bed early today, since tomorrow I’m meeting up with my friend again, and she has a day off on Wednesday so I’m thinking it’ll be late again. 😉