Tuesday, Nov 26
- tomato plants maintenance (tying heavy branches to support the horizontal growing ones, picking sprouts, pruning), great conversations with Yさん!!! (glad the greenhouse is warm)
- met the main host K., his children, and other vol G. who is leaving tmr
- real nice community space, K. holding farewell party for G. who stayed for 2-2.5 months! met other townspeople, mostly who moved from city to inaka, real interesting
- did a little (of my own) work before sleeping, long ish day, slept without the electric heater (cuz $$ and electricity) + with more clothes/blankets, and was pretty comf
- glad i can practice japanese basically all day!!!
some of the surrounding mountains, more pix later, air is SO fresh 
breakfast: milk tea, toast + eggs with bacon 
lunch set, pork? hamburg, pasta, salad, rice + miso, shiitake! 
tomato plants in the greenhouse! left side growing sideways 
right side growing vertically, Yさん‘s test! 
freshly picked vegetables from Yさん ‘s greenhouse: chrysanthenum? stalks, spinach, lettuce 🙂
another thing i am grateful about this stay:
this morning, Y.さん asked me, japanese or english? i said i wanted to practice japanese. spent the rest of the day speaking mainly japanese with him, then the other host, then their friends and community members during dinner gathering, and legit i spoke more japanese probably even just during morning shift than my whole trip combined so far. have used japanese in konbini and maybe a couple short conversations, but mostly when stayed with hosts etc, the last two preferred eng/i didn’t spend most of the day with them, and if i tried, they either insisted on eng or because busy you know there’s not much space to process and figure out your words etc
ahhhh, just so glad i can practice more japanese! spent a lot of time talking during the day, about our backgrounds, what music we like, our families, and got deeper into more complex topics that i didn’t really have the vocab for like HK protests and political system in HK and how elections for CE work etc. also had a fun tangent conversation about the air quotes gesture, which he says he sees many vols in the past do, and i did too, but just didn’t know what it meant. was real fun to explain because i also didn’t realize all the layers to it, as we exchanged examples to put it in context for him to understand.
thankful for his patience, and he understands the language struggle as he backpacked SE Asia ~30 years ago, knowing no english, for 2.5 years, and i’m just so awed
got to talk to other townspeople too and play and chat with their kids a little and dinner included (no pix rip): japanese kiwi (so small and darker color, not so furry, and brighter sparkly golden flecks!), chicken sashimi! (from H.さん), tried some kind of shochu that Hさん says is like grappa which also does not mean much to me, soggy karaage but yum cuz chicken, much edamame, soft preserved? kaki (persimmon) from yamanashi (lol- and host was telling others chloe weren’t you like just there), endless corn + cheese pizza (when host Kさん said endless he really wasn’t kidding lol), and more food but i don’t remember lol
talked to other townspeople about HK protests which they seems interested about (and which i had talked about probs 4+ times separately all day, which also meant that i got to practice my vocab + grammar related to it more and more!), talked to L. and G. about Tokyo recs, etc. slowly pushing myself to speak in japanese more and more even if i don’t have most of the sentence crafted, which is important and i’m glad i have the chance to do!
+ took a warm shower :’) in the community center which was real nice because my living space one is warm but not as insulated so that was 🙏!!!
chloe eats 
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