A Fight to the Finish...

This weekend (Saturday morning) I am scheduled to take a trip with my fellow abroad students to Nara. Of course I am very excited to go to this old city that has the worlds largest brass buddah, tons of old temples and shrines, and tons of aggressive hungry dear. Of course, whenever something exciting is going to happen what happens to me? If you know me, then you know the answer is, I get sick. The day before I came to Japan I got the stomach flu (which I managed to wrestle all day while I ran errands), The summer before college? mononucleosis and my wisdon teeth out. Stevie Wonder concert here? Got a cold. Host-Family trip to Shizuoka? Sick. Trip to Nara? SICK. Of course I have been very light hearted about all of this because I am still lucky enough to be in Japan and being in Japan and being sick is much better than being back home and being sick. I came home from school today took my temp (which rings in at 101 degrees or 38.3 degrees in celsius). Although being sick sucks it does give me a nice break to relax.

Explaining what happens when I get sick is very difficult for me here because my host family continues to believe that the reason I am sick is because I didn't have an umbrella in the rain yesterday. Sure someone could get sick from that, but I haven't slept well for a few days and I've been working and everyone at school is sick, not to mention the packed trains where I am face to face with people who are wearing masks full of their germs.

The strange thing is about being this sick is that even though I should be angry and frustrated (as I was right before I came to Japan.) I haven't really. Everytime I'm about to get angry or frustrated something good happens. For instance, I was in my room translating song lyrics and my host mom called me out for dinner. I was really really tired, had a horrible headache, and a serious case of the chills. My host mom went into a frenzy of Japanese and I was having a hard time understanding as my head wasn't all together. I just kept quiet (I am good at it) and started eating. In Japan, it's easy to feel better when you're feeling beat and down, just turn on the TV.

I watched a TV show where two men have little houses attached to each other and there was one wall missing. There was a big gate that opened into a little fenced off field that was full of Goats, Sheeps, and one cow. Their mission was to live with these animals for one week, every morning they would have to get them to enter thier little houses and then milk them and that's all they could use for food for one week. They pretty much just ate cottage cheese for a week. It was perfect to see because it was so ridiculous seeing two Japanese chasing Goats and sheep around. There was one black sheep that hated being milked and they would chase it screaming "Kurochyan! ochichi!" which means "Ms. Black! Milk Please!" I don't know if that is funny to anyone, but I find it hilarious.

Japanese people put "-San" "-Kun" "-Chyan" "-Sama" after everything. Mt. Fuji? Fujisan or Fujisama. sama is usually what people would use for a king or a god or someone who is very very important. Sometimes they will refer to fish they are about to cook as "Sakanasan" which means "Mr. Fish" I am not sure, this is an educated guess but I think it has something to do with shinto, it is believed that there is souls and deities in almost everything...all of the "incredible natural wonders" at least. Mountains, Trees, Flowers, Animals, the Ocean...things like this.

Anyway, I am sick with a temperature and if I don't feel better tomorrow I'll miss a Kanji test and a trip to Nara so I am going to go to sleep.