A new family!

Minna-sama gokigenyou from Japan!

I've moved to my new family! From now on I'll live with the Sato family for the rest of my exchange. My host parents are called Yumiko and Tadao (1: names ending with ko are always female. 2: from now on they shall be called okaasan and otousan (mom and dad). To distinguish between my family here and my family in Belgium I shall always denominate the Japanese ones in Japanese.
I also have a brother and sister: Keisuke and Moeko. 21 and 18 (soon to be 19) years old respectively. Although I've already been here a full day I haven't seen any of them (though I've been told that Keisuke came and left while I was sleeping).

Besides that I have another quite important announcement to make: I bought a keitai!

Nihon no Kotoba intermezzo: Keitai: To distinguish between ordinary rest-of-the-world mobile phones and Japanese ones I shall use the word keitai. Japanese keitai can do a whole lot more than make phone calls! They send mails (real ones, no texts/sms, thus eliminating that concept from Japanese collective consciousness), browse the web, pay at the supermarket, exchange data with infrared, act as gps, can be used to watch television channels, ...
Now most of these functions cost money so you have to be careful while using them but still it's quite cool they have a nationwide 3G network that those phones use.

The whole discussion at the au store (a mobile phone provider, we went to softbank too but softbank suck) was done in really fast Japanese by okaasan with the really polite store clerk so I didn't get most of it... But in the end I think I got quite a good deal. I took the package where the phone itself was free and I only have to pay for my monthly fee. They calculated it at the store and it eventually amounts to just over 200 euros for the full year that I'm here (including 9000 yen cancellation fee because the shortest keitai contract over here is 2 years. bloodsuckers)
I think I made a good choice in which set to take, I have an "international" sony ericsson so I might be able to use it in Belgium as well...

Take care! I'll write more later.

Joren