Homestay!

Today, I finished up some business around town with Kazumi-obachan and then left, on my own in Sendai for the first time ever, to meet up with my host family. They are really nice! My homestay father, Yoshikawa Kiyotaka, is an old english professor at Tohoku Daigaku and once did a Fulbright in the United States in 1957 at Indiana University. Amazingly, he took a 3-week long boat ride from Japan to Seattle and then a train ride to get to Indiana back then. I talk to him in English, which while not good for my Japanese, helped me settle into the house better. I speak to his wife, who is really sweet and funny and named Kyoko, in Japanese. Their house is about 70 years old and traditional Japanese style, which is pretty cool. THey have a beautiful garden outside in the walkway leading to the front door. It is relaxing to be back in a traditional style Japanese home again. Seems like Kiyotaka likes to drink quite a bit, so I will be drinking sake nightly while I'm here it seems. Tomorrow, Fujii Sensei is going to help me move some more things into my apartment (he is also a professor at Tohoku Dai and a former Fulbrighter). Things are finally getting underway... Oh, and until I can figure out how to tap into the wireless network here, I might be irregular in my internet usage for about a month.