great food and funny toilets

I am having the best time of my life, I have already fallen in love with this culture and I know that this is not the last time I will live in Japan. My flight was absolutely delightful - despite the fact that I was so very excited that I didn`t sleep for all 12 hours from San Fran to Osaka. Amazingly, I am feeling no jet lag and don`t feel burn out until about dinner time.
After dinner however, I have discovered the amzingly luxuriouse habbit of bathing after dinner in the community bath room (not bathroom, no toilets, think spa!) I am finding this culture to be very community-based and I believe that one beautiful componant of the female comrodary are their daily community baths. These baths seem to have their root partially in this culture`s strong desires for perfect cleanliness at all times but also are meant simply to relax and ground the individual. I think this necessary, because outside the bath room doors the Japanese seem to run around so quickly they look a little bit like a video placed on fast-forward.
I am so happy! Even my moments of nervouseness and unease have have proven to be worthwile because each time I encounter a situation which might induce panic I have to force myself to panic and ride the discomfort or confusion out. The result is that I am dramatically increasing my cross-cultural coping abilities and learning about Japanese culture and my own personal strengths simeltaniously.
Each and every meal I eat is gormet, even the dormatory food! And no matter how much I eat, I am sure I am bound to lose weight because it is the healthiest and most delicoiose diet imaginable; all fresh vegtables, small and lean portions of meat, sticky rice and fish! I think that my body is American - but my stomach is Japanese! This evening in the dormatory I had the most delicouse octapus cucumber ginger salad! And that was only one of five courses! If your mouth is not already watering, I will tell you, it should be!
The dormatory girls are friendlier than I ever could have dreamed. So many speak english (albeit broken, but english just the same) that I have yet to feel lonley or isolated. I do, however, feel like the fifty foot woman. Everything from cars and buildings, to slippers and chairs, is about 3/4 size. The bathroom counter stops just above my knee and the toilet is about six inches lower, forcing me to often stoop oaflike and look quite comical.
Today I met my main Japanese language professor. Sensai Yamazaki is quite possibly one of the best college professors I have ever met, and I:m including my father in that statement.　　I can say with every confidance that studying with her will be nothing short of a learning pleasure! Allow me to illustrate - today was my language assement, a test which I was nervouse about given my extremely limited language skills. By the end of the session we had sung childrens songs (head, shoulder, knees and toes) to learn basic vocabulary, shared tea and cookies in her office, and played a traditional samurai card game. Because Great Britian and Australia did not send students this year, I am the only student she has for about five hours a week. Basically, I am getting private lessons, all for free thanks to this amazing scholarship. I am so glad I tempoarirly dismissed inhibition so many months ago and allowed myself to go for this scholarship; the lesson for the young woman I now am, is that taking great steps outside your comfort zone can take you to far off and wonderful places.
One last wonderful story. Today I was being interviewed for the school newspaper by a very polite young Japanese man from the international exchange office, when afterwords in conversation he asked me `have you had any difficulty using the bathroom lately?` I thought `Why on earth could he be asking me such an off beat and personal question? Have I unconsciuly urinated on myself or something else horribly embaressing that I am completely aware of?` Probably judging from the look on my face, he went on to elaborate that he wanted to know if I had learned to properly squat and lean in a traditional Japanese toilet. Relieved and laughing, I explained that since the airport, dormatory and university all used western toilets, I had not yet had the pleasure of mastering the squat and lean! Haha! However, I did not mention to him that I did attempt to use the douvee in the dormatory and that my experience was hillariously memporable. Let`s just say that the douvee is far too intense an experience for little American Mo.