To begin with an apology

It's been terrible of me to not keep this updated. I have to fight urges to just curl up and do nothing to get anything done lately, and this is one of the many responsibilities of mine that have been suffering.

I do want to keep this updated, though. Things are happening that I want to share, and I want to express what I'm thinking and feeling. It's a matter of getting myself to type it. (as a note, this was actually written in a spare notebook during my Biology class at school, with the intention of typing and editing later)

So to catch up:

The first two weeks here were during spring break, so there wasn't any school. I posted some about that previously. Sakura had club activities and my host parents had work, so after the first couple of days I spent much of those two weeks alone at the house. It was kind of disappointing to arrive in Japan and still not really go out and see any of it. I was doing pretty much exactly what I would be doing in the US-- hanging around at the house and taking naps-- with minimal changes to accommodate a new family and house. Still, though, I treasured that time alone. I always wanted my host family to get out of the house quickly and to return late so that I could have that time to breathe.

Throughout those two weeks, I looked forward to going to school with the hope that I would be able to see other people and make my own friends, and where I'd be forced to speak Japanese. I was getting pretty downtrodden about how little I was speaking and interacting, and hoped the new environment would shake me into a new groove.

Things I had previously thought would excite me came and passed with relatively little reaction. Being dragged along to karaoke and purikura (standard Japanese teen entertainment, and a supposed must-do in Japan) with Sakura and her friends was pretty much just that: me being dragged. I tagged along willingly and openly, but it was very "meh", just glorified and overpriced selfies and singing, to my unastonished mind.

I really thought that getting my school uniform would be the excitement to cheer me up until the start of school. But it kind of passed like any other of the mundane errands we'd been doing, and only after when I sat down in my room with my uniform hanging in my wardrobe did I think, "Hey. I own a real-life Japanese school uniform. That's pretty cool, right?"

But, wow, this seems incredibly depressing. I am doing relatively well and I'm really glad to be here. Right now, though, I'm having to work through a lot of problems that exist within myself. I feel extremely restricted, for some reason, around my host family and talking is still a problem. When I'm away from them and from Sakura at school, though, I relax a little.

I still don't do a ton of talking, though, with me not knowing how to interact normally with teenagers and with them being shy and not knowing how to talk to a strange American person. There's a lot I feel like I should be doing, questions I should be asking, mistakes I should be making... I recognize the problem, though, and I know I need to work to find a solution, but for now I get by one little interaction at a time...