Homu sutee - Feb. 2 2007

I spent most of the day cleaning up my room and preparing it for inspection before I can check out. Once I am done, it is 2pm and I decide to skip my afternoon class because I cannot check out and arrive on time to school. I head to see Okaasan (the “mother” of seminar house) and tell her I am ready. She brings her form and we head up to my section, and as she enters she excuses herself innumerable times although there is no one else in the dorms at that time. As she opens my room door she excuses herself profusely again (although there is no one in the room). The rooms are tatami mat, traditional rooms. When you enter there is normal wooden floor for a few centimeters and after the floor rises and the tatami mat starts. One of the golden rules in Japan is to walk with your socks on or bear foot on tatami mat, not with your slippers and even less with your shoes (monumental error). Ceremoniously Okaasan turns her back to the tatami mat part, stands heels to the elevated part and delicately removes foot by foot from the slippers before stepping on the tatami mat. This way, when she leaves, the slippers are facing her and she can slip into them without touching the ground. As I see Okaasan doing the most mundane actions in such a graceful way, it reminds me how the Japanese fundamentally think and behave differently from Westerners. When I enter my room I sloppily throw off my slippers and sometimes I totally forget to take them off before stepping on the tatami mat. However, I easily assimilated to the “no shoes on tatami mats” rule because I always made sure my extra pair of shoes never touched the ground as I was packing up, although I did through my shoes on the ground once before I take them to Permissible Grounds To Put Your Shoes On, luckily out of Okaasan’s ubiquitous peripheral view.

When everything is done I bring my luggage at the main entrance where they will be parked until they are embarked in a car that will be driven by my new Okaasan. It is 3PM and in one hour and a half I will meet my new Okaasan.

Later that day I walked to the campus and met some friends in the lounge until 20 past 4 and the person in charge of the contacts between my family and I fetched me from the lounge and I did not even have time to say goodbye to my friends and I was in a small room with the coordinator and Okaasan. We went over a long agreement form (not to say a contract) that goes over a few house keeping rules. There is no curfew (good), I am not allowed to shower in the morning ( I had previously been informed) and the rest is pretty standard. Both seemed genuinely surprised with my Japanese but it is only in rare and short circumstances that the words flow out of my mouth. After the meeting I am driven back to the seminar house and the luggage is packed into the compact car and I say a final goodbye to Okaasan and Otousan from the seminar house. We slowly drive back to the family house, about 10 minutes away by car and I arrive at my new home for the next four months…

I meet my host sisters, and my host dad and they all seem very nice and the whole family also seems to have strong ties that we do not see so often in the West.