Kawaii!

My weekend homestay was awesome. I liked the family a lot better than my long term homestay, which makes coming back a bit of a bummer. It was a mother and father, their son and his wife and daughter. The girl was only 2, which was adorable, but a bit of a brat. They pretty much did anything she wanted and their lives revolved around her. She couldn’t speak very well, probably because she never had to, but she spoke English just as well as Japanese if not better, which was kinda cool. She almost never used more than one word at a time and it was usually either Kawaii (cute), doozo (here you are, as in giving something) or good, goodbye, hello, or thank you. It was actually really good for me to have a youngster in the house though because the family was used to speaking very simple Japanese all the time and it was a lot easier to pick up words. The wife was amazing. She was 29 but she seemed younger and she was a lot of fun. I met her friend abby, too, who was from the Philippines but spoke Japanese and English a little. She was super fun. They both really want me to come back and homestay with them again. I’m hoping against hope that if I come back they will ask me to long term instead of short term.
My teachers were so concerned about me and my failing ability to speak and hear any Japanese that they went to the homestay director and she asked my Okaasan to give me a bed instead of a futon. I feel really awful and lame about it. I wasn’t complaining, and I intended to just get used to it and now I feel very much like a lame American. That being said, best sleep I’ve gotten since I came here (of course I wasn’t feeling well again so I went to bed at 7 and slept until 6 so that might have something to do with it). I was fully attentive in class today and am back up to my normal ability to hear and think in Japanese, which is good, but I can’t tell if it’s because my amateur diagnosis was correct and my home remedies worked or because I got a bed, as the two coincided. Oh well.