Today was a great day! I slept late, and came down to find a typical Yokomine breakfast of sweet egg, sausage, edamame, and toast. Mama must be cooking all day long… she works as a cook at a nursing home, then comes home and cooks dinner, then usually makes breakfast for the morning… it’s crazy!

Aya and I woke up kind of late, so we didn’t think we would have enough time to go shopping and get back before going to shuji (Mama’s brush painting class), so we sat around for a bit. But that didn’t last too long, beause we were soon on a train anyway for Kurosaki to search for an English book at the huge bookstore they have there. Aya wanted me to help her pick out something easy to read. She ended up with Anne of Green Gables (I’ve never read it, but that’s what she wanted), and we looked around for a while more. It took just enough time to get home to eat lunch, and then I went to shuji with Mama, but Aya stayed and slept (that girl can outsleep me any day!). It’s been 4 years since I’ve even attempted shuji, so I didn’t remember how to do it well, but I did remember some faces!

I tried to write “sakura” (桜), and managed something passable after 6 or 7 attempts (with a lot of coaching, of course), so I’ll be bringing that home. On the way out, I told the master teacher that I still had the scroll she wrote me last time (which is also the tagline for this blog: “天に星、地に花、人に愛”), hanging over my bed, and she seemed very happy about that. So happy, in fact, that she asked us to stop by her house so she could give me a present. It was something else she had written, and so beautiful! I was so surprised! I’m not sure what it says, but it’s on beautiful sakura paper, plus she gave me a scroll to hang it on, and a plastic sakura branch from a decoration in her house. How sweet! 🙂

Tonight we watched Avatar over dinner (English with Japanese subtitles), and tomorrow Aya and I will go to see Sherlock Holmes and go shopping. I also found out about Tohoshinki, a Korean boy band Mama and Aya are currently obsessed with. I tried to explain about The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, back in the day… but it still is a little funny to me that boy bands are so popular in Asia right now. Teehee.