Today we had an interesting culture class in which we started to discuss how Japanese families operate. Some of the operating guidelines include Soto vs. Uchi and Tatame vs. Honne. Soto and Uchi are inside and outside, relating to the house. This separation between the inside and outside worlds is pretty evident in everyday life. For example, to enter a Japanese house, you remove your outside shoes and put on house slippers. Then, to enter bedrooms or eating areas with tatami floors, you remove your slippers too. Tatame vs. Honne is the face that people show to the outside world versus how they really feel. There's a lot of niceties in Japanese culture, and people usually hide their own feelings to be nice to others. It's important to keep these things in mind when I go to stay with my host family for a night this weekend.

Also interesting is that every Japanese household is registered in a family registry, and the entire family must all share the same last name. If someone marries into another family and want to be considered part of that family to the government, they need to change their last name. They can also only belong to one family at a time.

After classes, the SGE students threw a birthday party for everyone who had birthday parties in June or July. There are apparently grills in each of the outdoor lunch tables at the school cafeteria, and you just plug in gas tanks and start it up. So there was a BBQ and cake, and the cake was crepe cake, which was pretty interesting. I don't think I've ever had cake like that before. Following the barbeque, the SGE students came back to Nishikawa Heights and had a party with us, and they drank until they made too much noise and I think the senseis had to come and yell at them. I don't know, I wasn't there I had too much homework to do.