Wednesday, May 30, 2001

Hello Everyone,
I survived the sports festival. I survived Sclub7. And the most frightening thing of all? I enjoyed it. Yes I know. I can hear you 'What happened to the try-hard alternative, pseudo philisophical, cyncial, fortitude valley wannabe? What happened to aggressive, sarcastic (yet remarkably attractive) Claire? The answer- I dont know. No, thats a lie, I am still remarkably attractive...!
But anyway about the festival. We arrived at
posted by Claire English @ 2:51 PM

Hello Everyone,
I survived the sports festival. I survived Sclub7. And the most frightening thing of all? I enjoyed it. Yes I know. I can hear you 'What happened to the try-hard alternative, pseudo philisophical, cyncial, fortitude valley wannabe? What happened to aggressive, sarcastic (yet remarkably attractive) Claire? The answer- I dont know. No, thats a lie, I am still remarkably attractive...!
But anyway about the festival. We arrived at
posted by Claire English @ 2:44 PM

Monday, May 21, 2001

Well I am sure you have all been very concerned as to whether or not I survived the cake fiasco, so you will be relieved to hear I am still alive and kicking sclub 7 butt. The cake has been nicknamed the 'the rubber rock cake' in the Shigeno household as i am afraid the cake turned out not so unlike a grey car tyre in consistency, texture and unfortunately taste. It was funny watching them eat it though. They are so totally polite they just sat there and consumed their entire portion of the light grey in colour, rubbery, shiny inside, timtam covered, chewy so called 'cake'. I was in fits of giggles the entire way through dinner knowing that dessert was only a few minutes away. My host father and brother kept piling dinner on their plates obviously trying to give themselves the "I'm full" excuse, but they were served a slice by my host mother none the less (they were also served a stern YOU WILL MAKE HER FEEL WELCOME glare to go along with it).
The funniest part was when my host brother tried to cut himself off a bit with his fork only to have the fork fly back at a pace that would make your eyes fall out of your head if you werent so afraid of having them poked out... By this stage I was screaming "PLEASE don't eat it! PLEEEEEASE!" Only to have my mother reply 'Daijobuyo ooishiine!" which roughly translates to 'Don't be silly its delicious' which may have been believable if it wasnt for the 'sucking lemons out of an elephants butt' expression on her face at the time... But they survived. And I am sure the next time I am allowed in the kitchen will be a LONG long time a way. Pity, personally I'm quite partial to cake that tastes like a sugared grey bouncy ball.
On to other things I perform my Sclub dance on saturday and we are practising til seven every night including saturday and sunday of the weekend just passed so if I am antzy at you on msn I apologise I am just very very tired.
My host aunt sewed my red, yellow, pink, navy, black, and moroon costume for me today. I look like a very attractive multicoloured potato. Its highly embarassing. Why oh why was born with breasts? none of these girls were, and I swear it makes the costume far far worse...!
And before you ask I will scan a photo, i promise.... oh the humanity....
I love you all. take care. particularly you katherine! kiss x
posted by Claire English @ 8:23 PM

Wednesday, May 16, 2001

Oohhhh Guys I have done it again.
Yesterday it was my host dads birthday and we all forgot. Including him. So today when we remembered at breakfast time I decided that i would do something nice for my host dad tonight (yes it was a nice IDEA). I thought I would bake him a cake (my first mistake) but we didnt have an oven so I thought ' I know! how about a microwave cake! what a great idea!' (my second and very obvious mistake). My third mistake was on my way home from school with the recipe assuming that I could buy the ingredients. I am such an idiot. I think it went completely out of my head that I actually wasnt in an english speaking country. So I wondered around the supa marketo for about 20 minutes looking at white packets trying to figure out what was flour and sugar until a small old lady offered obviously felt so sorry for me she asked if she could help. After shopping I went home and attempted to cook a cake in the microwave. I failed miserably the mixture was like water and was a pallid brown beige colour. I couldnt find cocoa so I used the jap version of chocolate quick instead. (Mistake number 402) It came out about two cm high and had the consistency of pale fudge with little lumps of flour and water in it. MMMm Yummmm.
I couldnt find a cooling tray so I just put it on a plate and periodically flipped it from side to side when the bottom got too sweaty. But that took too long so I put it in the fridge. Buy this time it was heavy, battered and the top and bottom had desintigrated. It was looking Yummo. So I whipped up some dodgy chocky icing and chucked that all over the top and chopped up my final tim tam and put that on top too. It looked so quality! I wish I had had time to chuck it, but mistake number 546 was allowing my host mum to arrive home while I was finishing the sprinkling of tim tam and now she is about to serve it for dessert. Which means my host family has approximately 15 minutes to live. If anyone wants to say goodbye I suggest you ring now as I am going to have to eat the monstrosity as well. This may well have been the stupidest thing I have ever done. And I kind of liked this family too. I hope the dogs get a serving though. Hehehe. That would be the only plus to suffering food poisoning, knowing i have rid the world of Happy and Yancha. Even their names are annoying! AAAAAAGH my mother just announced 'gohan' that means its meal time....
Goodbye cruel world.
posted by Claire English @ 7:57 PM

Monday, May 14, 2001

Helloi...
I have just returned from one of the most insightful three days of my life. I just had follow up orientation with the other exchange students to check up on how we all were. It was so awesome. I am not alone! I AM NOT ALONE! Aaagh! I was so happy I cried. I am not handling this the worst! My japanese hasnt improved any less than anyone else. I am not the only one who feels like jumping off the nearest bridge one minute and burning my passport so I could never leave the next. It is NORMAL. I feel so empowered! I finally know I can do this. Finally I am letting go of a lot of stupid stresses. I love everyone in Brisbane but I dont need them nearly half so much as I did now. I can do it on my own... Well sort of.
We went to the great Buddha in Kamakura. The enormous one that is hollow that you can go inside of. It was bloody hot inside. But we were all running around like stupid tourists and talking and screaming and laughing and I think it was one of the most important things I have done sinbce I got here. We talked all about the horrible dreams we have been having and the how the smallest thing makes you go on the greatest high you have ever felt. We saw lots of tourist things too, but we werent paying a whole lot of attention we were too busy talking. I hated them so much when I met them 7 weeks ago. I hated them because I wanted to feel something new and I thought they represented the stagnating mess of a life I was convinced I was living in Australia. But it turns out they wanted to leave as much as I did. For the same reasons. And this time I turned off my discman and actually listened to them. Funny how these things happen.
Anyway we went to China town too which was great. The exchange people just let us do and go wherever we wanted the whole weekend so we did exactly as we liked. I bought a really cute handbag...Okay I am getting to the babbling stage again so I better go.
Mum and Dad, I love you. Thank you so much for letting me do this. You're fantastic.
Hi to everyone else.... write soon.
posted by Claire English @ 10:04 AM

Saturday, May 05, 2001

Hello Everyone
It appears you all have lives on a Saturday night (for shame) as noone is on my msn list. Well.
I had an interesting week. My host parents told me yesterday that I was going to go with them to visit my host grandmother so I packed the little Australian tacky souvenier dishcloth, and got in the car trying to remember all the things I ought to say. So we drove for an hour or so in to the countryside (believe it or not there actually is a japanese countryside) and turned in to this little park with all these marble stone heads. It turns out boys and girls that my host grandmother in fact died about nine years ago. Yes it turns out, for a change, that I didnt quite understand what my host father was talking about! Hahahah. On the upside I have a beautiful new dish cloth all for myself. On the down side I certainly wasnt prepared for a family trip to the Shigeno Family grave.
It was actually one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
When you arrive you park the car and walk down a path where there is very loud traditional japanese music playing that is so sad and spiritual you are instantly calmed.
And then you pick up an old wooden bucket with a wooden cup on a long handle inside it. You pick up a few rags and move silently towards the family grave.
Now Japan is a very crowded place (dont you love painfully obvious and unnecessary commentaries?) so there isnt enough room for each person to have their own grave and EVERYONE is cremated. Thus each family has a large grey or black marble stone grave. My family, The Shigenos, Have only two family members ashes in this particular grave, but I saw about as many as twelve wooden slats standing behind various grave stones, indicating the number of people buried there. So I am guessing there isnt really a limit. Our family grave has one vase on either side, you place a bunch of flowers in each vase, and a small hollow for incense sticks. It is about 5 and half foot high and is made of grey marble. It has the family symbol in white marble on the front, and the family name in kanji on the top. It looks like two large boxes piled one on top of the other and has rather a few nooks and crannies to be scrubbed. It was the most awesome thing seeing my host parents scrub this grave. Its funny how the least religious people are often the most spirtual. They were really happy and it was obviously something you did with joy because they enjoyed cleaning this grave, it was kind of cool.
And I really wanted to take a whole roll of film of these two gorgeous little people scrubbing the family grave, but I cant think of a single thing more disrespectful than breaking the serenity with my idea of the perfect kodak moment, so i just sneaked one from behind when noone was looking. It will more than likely come out completely black as punishment for my crassness, but it was just something the inner tourist wanted me to do.
And then we ate traditional japanese sweets, which I actually dont mind now, they were wrapped in leaves and it was very authentic japanese so I felt a little out of place, but I am getting less awkward, I think. And drank green tea and ate strawberries and it was a really nice day.
So, there you go, I didnt meet my host grandmother and lets hope I wont for a while huh?! Hope you are all fighting the good fight, or whatever it is they say...
Take care my beautiful friends.
posted by Claire English @ 10:57 PM