Japanese Overload!!!

Today I went to my first Japanese Mass (called ミサ or "misa" in Japanese). It was crazy! The church is at Sophia and is called 聖イグナチオ教会 ("sei igunachio kyoukai") or St. Ignatius Church. The building is very..... different.... Not as "different" as the Chapel of St. Ignatius at Seattle U, but still "different" if you know what I mean. I got there early and took my seat. The first thing I noticed was the absence of holy water when I walked in. The second thing was the lack of traditional fold-out kneelers. Instead, there were individual sized soft kneeling blocks that you would take out of the back of the pew in front of you and put down to kneel on. The Mass started like usual (when I got there, it was pretty empty, but by the time Mass started, it was completely full!). What was really cool, IMHO, was that they had a sign-language interpreter with a deaf section. It was really neat watching them sign all the songs. It was beautiful! The priest was a foreigner like me, but from what I could tell he had no accent and spoke perfect Japanese (which I unfortunately couldn't understand @_@). The next different thing I noticed was that there were 4 children altar servers (all girls) and 4 older people altar servers (at least that's what I thought they did...). So in total, there was about 10 people on the altar including the priest and the announcer (he would say to stand or sit and say which songs we were singing). I think he was a deacon, but I couldn't tell. 2 of the child servers would come up and escort the readers to the pulpit and stand on either side of the reader until it was over. It was pretty cool. When it came time for the sign of peace, it was really Japanesey because no one shook hands, they just bowed to the people around them ^o^. The Eucharist was a little different, too. There wasn't any wine and the host was made out of corn or something. It tasted like Corn Pops cereal.

After Mass, I went to the library to work on homework, which was just a little short reading. It was translated from old Japanese manuscripts about different Japanese gods. The translation was pretty bad and the stories were half just introducing the names of the characters (who were mainly royalty and they would talk about where they ruled and how their name changed when they ascended the throne. It was completely unnecessary...).

In case I haven't mentioned it, in oder from me to get to and from the station that takes me to school, I have to take a bus. But the bus is 200 yen both ways (and they don't even give you a transfer when you get off!), so I decided to take a bike to the station. Today, my host mom set up the bike and went with me (via bike) to show me the route to take to get to my station. It's a pretty nice bike, but there are a couple differences between biking in America and biking in Japan. I'll list them.

1.) Most bikes don't have kick stands.
This is REALLY annoying!!! My "kick stand" (if you can even call it that, it's so huge) is a removable stand thing. I can't ride with it on, otherwise it will fall down and stop my bike!!! I don't know why they could just put a simple kick stand on it!!!
2.) In Japan (or at least my city), it's nearly impossible for bikes to ride on the main roads.
You have to ride on the sidewalk most of the time. And let me tell you, those things are narrow as hell! I know, for a fact, that I'm gonna wipe-out on one of those things (in fact, I almost did today!).
3.) Nobody locks there bikes up.
Japan is a bike thief's paradise! Nobody locks up their bikes! Or if they don't, they don't lock it to anything. They just lock the wheels (which is pretty much ineffective, IMHO). My host mom took me to the place where I'm going to park my bike, a bike parking lot if you will. It's 100 yen a day, but starting May 1st, I can get a 3 month unlimited pass for about $30, which is pretty good. The only problem is, on that day, we have to get there at about 6 in the morning just to buy the thing!!! Another discomforting thing is that I believe there is only somebody watching them until 9 p.m., yet you can leave your bike there till 12 a.m. Scary @_@.
4.) Japanese bike seats hurt my ass.
I really have to buy a new seat. It's like sitting on a metal rod. I didn't tell my host mom because she'd just buy it for me, and she already bought a new bell (which SUCKS) and a light for the bike (both of those were about $30. WHAT A GYP!!!).

But yeah, everything today has been in Japanese. It's been really overwhelming. I hope and pray that I'll get better. Things are just too difficult now. Wish me luck -_-;;