Yesterday evening, the American girls met up with some Japanese friends to go over to Takagawa to celebrate Shana’s birthday. Chloe and I were told it would be a “all you can drink/eat in 2 hours for $20″ extravaganza. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out that way. Regardless, we had some food and drinks, watched the bartenders do their flair for Shana, and got to eat a chocolate cake.

Chloe and I left at 9pm to head back to the dorm. We picked up some alcohol earlier in the day. I dragged my computer to her room, and together we drank White Russians and played Super Mario World and Earthbound until about 2am.

Today at 1pm, we met up to go meet our Japanese family. We were both really nervous. The building that held the event is 11 stories high, so I was able to get some pretty awesome pictures of the city.

We went into the room, got some papers and a name tag. We sat and watched a power point presentation, then were broken up into groups to meet other students and talk about how families a little bit. Afterward, we split up to meet our Japanese family.

My Japanese mother is named Mari, and she’s 60-something years old (she never told me her age). She has been playing (acoustic) guitar for 12 years, and lives with her husband and dog. She has two daughters, one of whom is married (I think it’s just one). She doesn’t like science fiction. She’s read one Harry Potter book and seen the first three movies. She likes traveling and does Japanese calligraphy. And she’s taking English conversation.

She told me that she can understand English, but can’t speak it very well. I told her I’m the same way, therefore I will speak Japanese to her and she can speak English to me. Hehe.

A picture of the two of us:

After the meeting was over, we went downstairs to one of the restaurants and had some ice cream. I found out that the restaurant we went to makes pancakes… I cannot tell you how excited that makes me! Haha.

Anyway, we set up a time to meet and go to her house on June 7th. I’m pretty excited, actually. She doesn’t live in the same city I’m in; she’s about 15 minutes from here by train. She’s going to meet me at the station and pick me up. Evidently they live out in the country, which is pretty damn sweet. I’m definitely going to take a lot of pictures while I’m there.

I’m excited. I hope she’ll take the time to teach me how to say things correctly as we get to know each other better. I’m definitely going to help her out with her English.