Incense

Couple tidbits.

Okaasan has said on several occasions that she's happy that I will eat anything.  Makes me wonder how many students come over for homestays and expect to be able to openly refuse food that is made for them.  One of the girls I've met is a vegetarian and seems to blame the Japanese for her not being able to do a homestay.

Many of the Japanese (restaurant owners and chefs included) don't consider fish to be meat; as such, many things are cooked in a fish stock and are considered to be vegetarian.  Beyond that, some don't consider chicken to be meat.  I can understand how being a vegetarian in Japan is difficult, but it wasn't their choice for vegetarian students to study abroad.

Tomorrow morning I board the shinkansen to Hiroshima.  I've booked a hostel with Daniel and B, as we've decided to stay the night to have more time in Hiroshima.  It was more expensive than I thought it was going to be, but it'll be fun in the end.  In doing this, I discovered that Takeshi is a computer engineer and that even in Japan, when Internet Explorer is being stupid, FireFox is the save-all.  I did the booking at home and IE wouldn't run Java.  After trying a bunch of technical things, he finally just downloaded FireFox!

There were a couple things amiss when I got home last night.

The first thing I noticed was that there was a tray of incense burning by the front door.  There was another in the house at the foot of the stairs.  The door to Otousan and Okaasan's room was open (which never happens).  In the living room, the couch was moved away from the wall, there was a white garbage bag on the floor and the wall paper was hanging off the wall in strips.

Strips of wallpaper have the easiest explanation.  Okaasan decided she wants to DIY new wall paper.  She couldn't reach the higher parts of the wall, though, so I helped finish taking it off after dinner.  Armed with nothing more than a box knife and my nails, I was able to pull the remaining wallpaper down, including from around outlet plate covers, doorbells and cords nailed into the wall.  Okaasan said I worked like a craftsman.

The rest...  Maki had a miscarriage and was in the hospital.  I assume the incense was burning for this reason.  The door was open because Konta was sleeping in the room; I assume he had been dropped off on the way to the hospital.  Okaasan was a bit distracted during the evening, but eventually Takeshi and Maki came by after she was released.  She was walking a bit weird, which is understandable, but she seemed okay otherwise.

I'm still not sure how to react to it, or to express condolences.