techno-toilet.

finally, another weather-icon! it rained today for a few minutes but unfortunately, the weather's still as hot and sticky as the days before. the only thing this change of weather gave me is a severe headache.

yesterday in the afternoon we arrived in tsu. after the orientation with o.-sensei there was a little party with the tandem partners which basically means we were thrown together into a room with music, crackers and a couple of bottles of tea for one and a half hour to get to know each other. anastasia and me were talking to the two boys in our group about squirrels (リス risu) and sunburn (日焼け hiyake, my shoulders still burn like hell btw). after that little party we met our host families.

i'm still a bit unsure about mine. they were extremely distant the first few hours which gave me a really bad feeling. they kinda ignored me, especially the kids. now i know, japanese people are shy and stuff but my other family in ogaki (in 2003) was so different. so when we came home yesterday they just showed me my room and disappeared. it wasn't until my okâsan (host mum) showed up about one or two hours later and told me that we were going to a restaurant with julian and his family in the evening (his family lives only a few yards away) which cheered me up not only because i wouldn't be alone but also because she actually TALKED to me!

the food at the restaurant was delicious! it was sort of an all-you-can-eat open buffet and at some point of the evening, the chef pounded mochi for everybody. some kids and julian and me were also allowed to pound the wet rice a few times which was fun. also, during the evening things started to loosen up and i started to feel better around my host family.

although i've got an air conditioner in my room, i could barely sleep so i was feeling really exhausted this morning and got sick on the bus on our way to the ise shrine (伊勢神宮 ise-jingû). in ise, our group and the tandem partners went to some place where we learned about japanese food and then we even cooked our own lunch: miso-soup, pickles, fish and rice (w e had to make onigiri!). it took forever, especially roasting the fish, but it was worth the wait because it was quite delicious. afterwards, everybody washed the dishes and/or cleaned the whole place together before we had the afternoon off to walk around the area around the shrine(s) with our tandem partners.

it was very hot but the gardens and shrines were beautiful, also the restaurants and shops. i finally got to eat macha (green tea) icecream, my favourite!! (and i usually don't like icecream at all!) they selled lots of delicious and weird stuff, for example cooled salted cucumber (which is a great idea for hot summer days!) or sweet potato icecream, ugh!? anastasia and me even tried some black(!) icecream with 黒ごま kurogoma, black sesame!

back at home we had japanese food for dinner: a large cube of tofu with soy sauce (i never ate tofu before but it was good), rice, fish, edamame (which i LOVE), yellow tomatoes (they're really good), pickles and some soup. tomorrow okâsan wants to make ramen for dinner because i never ate that. (...) we came along better today. they even gave me a pretty pink yukata and showed me how to wear it (but i'll forget how to bind the obi by tomorrow anyway it's too complicated).

i wish my japanese was better because everytime i try to make more than one proper sentence i fail or completely forget the grammar or don't remember the easiest words. it's also annoying that the japanese aren't really correcting us as long as they basically understand the meaning of our babble...that doesn't really help me, y'know.

i took over 300 pictures the last two days and i'm just too tired to go through them and upload them now. but i'll publish them soon, i promise!