Productive day

Hi Heather, mom and papa.  Sorry I haven't been updating much.  But anyhow I just thought I'd like to remember today since it was super productive.

1) woke up at 4 for morning baseball.
2) Talked to you three
3) Went to the dentist
4) Mailed a couple more packages.
5) Picked up a package
6) Went shopping
7) Finished Minna no Nihongo I
8) Played 5 games of starcraft.
9) Watched my 150th episode of One Piece and definitely can understand it a little bit.
10) Understood a story on the news about food poisoning at a yakiniku restaurant.
11) Posted some 恐山写真 (yasorezan pictures)
12) Took out the trash.

Also, I have given up my desire to translate 10,000 sentences.  Writing out sentences was taking way too long and I don't really care too much about my writing ability.  I am now focusing on listening and reading during my study time, then whenever I feel like a break, I'll try to strike up a conversation with a coworker to practice talking.  My top 3 goals are to be fluent at reading, listening and speaking Japanese, writing comes in a distant fourth.

And also, a story about the kindness of Japanese people.  About 20 stories like this have happened to me but I never get around to writing the stories and end up forgetting so I want to make sure I remember at least a few of them.

So the cherry blossoms have started blooming so I went for a walk in Atago Park, the place in Noheji with the most cherry trees.  As soon as I enter the park I see a group of about 10 people sitting down with a grill and having a little picnic and we make eye contact and I gave out a hearty "ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning!) and they return the greetings and then, in their adorable Japanese accents ask me to come over and join their picnic.  Of course I can't turn down this offer so I sit down and, although it's only about 11:30, it's Japan, so they are drinking.  The first question they ask me is "do you drink beer?" and I said "dijoubu" which I thought meant "no thanks" but I guess it meant something else because they instantly put a beer in my hand  and do a cheers and crack open the beer and everyone laughed and celebrated.  Now of course I couldn't just be like "no actually I don't want this" and of course it's one of the giant 500mL beers so I begin to do work struggling to finish the beer.

  Meanwhile, on the grill they have scallops cooking and they look absolutely delicious.  Turns out that the group were all fishermen and these scallops were their morning catch.  The scallops were probably the freshest I would ever eat and they just kept putting them on my plate.  After about 10 scallops and when I get about half done with my beer (an hour later) they pick it up and are like "ooooh, to-masu...more?" and I remember back that to when I said "no thanks" and that ended up in a beer, so this time I just flat out say "no no" and they are like "oh ok!  No beer? Sake then!" and they pour me this giant cup of sake.

After a good 2 hours or so, I stuffed full of amazing scallops and I thanked them and went on with my walk through the park and enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms.  I will surely miss the kindness and generosity of Japan.