Cousin's and shopping

We visited my cousin's in Tokyo last night. I got to see my three-year-old niece for the third time in her short life. Since she has spent about a year here, she has quite a funny mix of Vietnamese and Japanese vocabs/accent so I spoke to her in Vietnamese and Japanese, but only when I'm confident that I was using correct Japanese - didn't want to give her negative formative experiences. They lived a few stations from Shinjuku, pretty convenient if transiting at Shinjuku weren't a giant mess. It's also a pain in the ass to get from my station in Chiba New Town to Shinjuku. It has taken us at least 2 hours each time with quite a few connections. We went to Fuchu for the afternoon/evening where we got food and did a fair bit of shopping (that's the theme of this weekend). We ran into a puppeteer at Fuchu and he put on quite an entertaining show.

After dinner, I left for Shinjuku to hang out with P and L, the other members of the crew and had a good time. Very nice guys, though it was expensive as hell. 2200 yen (that's $30) for basically two beers - with that amount I could have raged for a month in 'Nam. I didn't get home until 12:30 and I was so scared that I would miss the last train (I didn't).

Today, we did more shopping. The highlight was meeting my host family! Yay! It was great seeing everyone and hanging out with my host parents (ももは大きくなってきた!). I'm so happy that they will be around but sad that Tomomi-san is giving birth and I won't get to see them as often. We also met Yoshimasa-san's parents, who were really nice and offered to help me in case of emergency and non-emergency. They also gave me a sofa and a table to use! It's true what they say about Japanese culture - once you become part of a family, you're really a part of that family. Speaking of my family, my mom drove me batshit crazy these past days, but she left today, and suddenly all are forgiven - family is a funny business.

A lot of things that horrified me the first time around have become second-nature, like finding my way around the train system, grocery shopping and the likes. This is nice, but I think there's much more struggling and thereby self-discovery to be done and hopefully I'll come out on top and a better person.

Not much planned for tomorrow. I hope to get a post-paid plan for my cell-phone and a pocket wifi.

Till next time.