Homestay

As part of the program, each student has an option to stay with a host family for one weekend. I of course wanted to partake in the home-stay program. When I was first given my family assignment (An older couple in their 50's and a grandmother in her 70's) I was a little nervous that I wouldn't be able to relate with them or share any interests. It turns out that my host parents have a daughter (age 27) who is married. They are acting as my friend Aaron's host parents. So, it worked out that our two families would be spending a lot of time together.

My host mom and Aaron's host mom picked us up from school on Friday. After making a short stop at Aaron's family's house, we picked up Aaron's host dad and went to dinner at a fish restaurant. My host Mom and Aaron's host dad spoke almost no english besides very basic greetings. Aaron's host mom had a little bit of understanding of English, but had a very difficult time speaking it. Therefore, I was able to practice my Japanese a lot this weekend. However, I was extremely nervous. I was on my best behavior, scared to death of offending my house family or making a culture mistake. Well, at dinner, I made plenty of them.

In a nutshell, I was spoiled all weekend. At dinner, they ordered so many plates of food. First was cut tomatoes and some sushi nigiri. I made the mistake of dipping my eel in soy sauce, which you aren't supposed to do since it already comes with a sauce. When I did it, the three host parents stopped eating and made an "Eeeeee" sound. It was embarrassing. Then came a potato plate, then a salmon plate, and at that point (after two beers) I was full. Then, the waiter brings over a giant boat full of sashimi (literally a boat covered in sashimi). I managed to find a place in my stomach for that delicious fish.

After dinner, my host dad picked up my host mom and I from Aaron's host-parents apartment. My host dad was a skinny little Japanese guy. He spoke the most english out of anyone, but I still tried to speak to him mainly in Japanese since I wasn't sure exactly how much English he understood. We talked about his profession on the ride home, and he turns out to work for a telegraph company. Yes, telegraphs, like the ones they used in the 1920's. Apparently, telegraphs are the preferred way of communication when you are rsvp-ing for parties and when you want to tell your loan shark that you can't make the payment. It took them a very long time to explain this to me in Japanese...

The apartment I stayed at was tiny, but humble. It consisted of 3 bedrooms, a kitchen / dining room, a toilet room, and a shower room. It was very narrow. Also, they had little "chyatchskis" (for lack of a better word) everywhere. Regardless of my protests, my host parents gave me their bed to sleep on while they slept on futons on the floor in the other room. Not that I'm complaining, but I found it interesting that the bed was just an elevated piece of wood with a tiny bit of padding over it. Here are some pictures of the place:





The next day, I woke up at 7:30, and my host dad had already left for work. The grandma had woken up early to make me a delicious breakfast. I had an amazing salad and some mini-sandwiches. Check out this salad:



I haven't eaten vegetables like that in forever.

Aaron and his host parents picked my host mom and I up and we drove to Hakone. Its at least a 2 hour drive to the mountain town we were visiting, so we stopped at a rest stop on the way. A Japanese rest stop is a little bit different than what we're used to in America. The place was ginormous! Not only was there a bathroom and vending machines, but they had a huge food court and a giant convenient store. Look at these pictures to believe it:





Hakone is a beautiful mountain town at the edge of a lake. We took a scenic drive and had an overview of the area. Here is a picture of the area and one of me with my host mom:





At the top of highest mountain in Hakone is a Sulfur hot springs. Of course, it smelled horrible (and not because there were Chinese tourists everywhere). One of the main attractions of the hot springs is that they make hard-boiled eggs in the actual sulfur hot springs. The eggs are blackened on the outside. Supposedly, if you eat an egg, it increases your life by 7 years; I ate two. It sounds really gross but it just tastes like a normal egg. Here are some pictures of the area:




Following the theme of steaming-hot water, we went to an Onsen (the Japanese public bath) after leaving the sulfur hot springs. It was a super nice onsen in the hills of Hakone. We also ate a very traditional Japanese lunch there that consisted of cold soba noodles, rice (of course), some sashimi, tempura vegetables, and miso soup. Once again delicious. I felt bad because my host Mom would not let me pay for anything.

That night we went to an uncle's house (I don't know who's uncle he was). It was the largest Japanese house I have seen (which means it's small by American standards). In the family was 3 daughters, in highschool and middle school, a husband (the uncle), his Philipino wife, and the grandpa. The adults made fun of me the entire night; it was terrible. First, they served just my friend aaron and I bowls of rice. Then, I put some soy sauce on the rice - Big No No. Apparently, it is disrespectful to rice to put soy sauce on it, even though every Japanese person I have asked agrees that it tastes delicious. So, especially when you at someone else's dinner table, you don't do that. I didn't know this at the time. So, when I did that, everyone stopped eating and stared at me. The wife even gave a little scream. I was so embarassed. Then the grandpa started making fun of me, and I had no idea what he was saying, except that everyone was laughing a lot. He then gave me a spoon and told me to eat the rice with that. No one explained why, but thinking back on it, I think that he was trying to say that I have disrespected rice so much that I do not deserve to eat it with chopsticks. Anyway, dinner got a lot better when they brought out the sake. I drank quite a bit, and ended up falling asleep immediately after getting back to my homestay parents' apartment.

The next day we went to Asakusa, in Tokyo. It's a famous temple in Tokyo and the prime location of souvenir shops. After that we ate at this delicious teppan place. I have noticed that in many restaurants throughout Japan, you have to cook your own food on the hot table infront of you. While this is usually a lot of fun, it gets annoying when you're really hungry, tired, and just want to eat. Here are pictures of lunch and Asakusa.





Later that day, my host mom had to go to work and do end-of-the-month accounting, so I hung out with Aaron and his host parents. For dinner they took us to a local ramen shop that specializes in spicy food. They have a spicy scale of 1-5, and, feeling adventurous, I chose 3. My mouth will never be the same. Aaron, who grew up on spicy food, picked a 5 and didn't even think it was spicy. Aaron's host mom picked 0 spiciness. Look at the pictures comparing a 0, a 3, and a 5 (in that order):





Since it was a local restaurant, Aaron's host parents knew the owner, who happened to be quite drunk at the time. He, of course, was intensely interested in foreigners. We told him about some of the souvenirs we bought in Asakusa, and then he wanted to show us how to make "samurai pants." Samurai pants are not pants, but actually just a loincloth. The samurai used to wear them in the Summer when it was very hot and humid. This guy was pretty funny. The pictures sum it up perfectly:





After I said thank you a million times, They took us back home that night, where I caught up on some much needed rest.