[8/10]

Today is a solitary day; I intend to spend the next eleven hours or so in my house cleaning and organizing and decorating. Right now I’m cooking macaroni with butter and salt. I had some last night and it’s impossible to describe the satisfaction. Last night Alisa and I had pancakes for dinner. It was amazing.

So it’s pasta with butter and salt, and grass. My list of what I miss most. But the pasta at least I can make.

Yesterday I swam in the sea of Japan. It was utterly glorious. I also played Mario Kart Racing, or whatever exactly it’s called. One time I came in 11th instead of last. I was proud. Alisa and I chatted for hours over pancakes and sweet bean dango. We watched Olympic Judo and swimming with Japanese announcing. We went shopping and Alisa pointed out different vegetarian things to me.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling sick. Not medically sick; the mild nausea that I recognize well by now. The kind that means that my subconscious is busy working hard to suppress emotions that my conscious mind wouldn’t know what to do with. Waking up to find myself with a cell phone and a car but with no one trying to reach me and nowhere to go, I felt lonelier than I had when it had been logistics cutting me off from the world. Before I could do anything else, I had to go to the kyouminkan and check my email.

In the grocery store, a young woman with two little children came up to us, smiling shyly. She asked where we lived and we told her; Alisa said we were new ALTs. One of the little girls asked the woman (too shy to ask us) whether we’d be at her school. But we couldn’t quite understand what she said, so we didn’t know. The woman smiled again and said “Kawaii desu. Pretty.” I think she was talking to Alisa, who is beautiful. I certainly wasn’t pretty at the time: I’d been swimming in the ocean and hadn’t even brushed my hair since. In any case, it was incredibly sweet.

Jeff is going to Canada for two weeks, and will leave his apartment open, with its unsecured wireless network which we have been warmly invited to use. I will be there on Tuesday to do math (at least such seems to be the current plan) and I will also take the opportunity to catch up with emailing people, since I’ll be able to type on my own keyboard where I don’t have to pause every time I want to contract two words. If I have nothing better to do Monday afternoon I might go Monday as well, while Alisa is off starting the process of becoming an official person.

Goals for today, in order:

1) Consider each item in the living room and put it somewhere it belongs.
2) Do the same for the kitchen.
3) Put in a laundry.
4) Clear space on shelves in bedroom.
5) Move clothes from upstairs bedroom to new bedroom.
6) Take out and hang up laundry.
7) See if tape will hold things up on the living room wall; if so, put up some paintings/photographs.
8) Finish math reading.

That will be a very productive day.

Tell me, somebody tell me, please tell me;
Koe ni naranai kotoba de mo.
Tell me, somebody tell me, please tell me;
Mada kimi no uta wa kikoenai...