(I was going to write a blog post about my host family, but then remembered I’d already written one ages ago at the start of October. Although some of the details are outdated – Rui is now five for example – the sentiment still rings true.)
Today wasn’t particularly special, but like most days in Japan, it’s ending with me feeling ridiculously giddy and happy. Really, there are lots of aspects of my life in Japan I enjoy, but what causes me to grin like an idiot before I drift off to sleep is, in most cases, my host family.
I’ve heard a lot of reasons for not having a host family and most of them I agree with. I don’t get internet at my host family’s house. I have to drag my laptop to school or use the computer lab. No streaming television shows from the US for me. Heck, just posting photos to Facebook has proven to be difficult. I don’t get to cook anything for myself and I use cook here in the loosest sense of the term. The only thing I’ve prepared for myself since moving into my home stay is making toast once in awhile. That’s it. I don’t really get to choose the menu or raid the refrigerator either. It’s not my house: 95% of the time I feel like a guest. I’m not walking on eggshells constantly, but I’m not flopping down on the couch and zoning out to TV whenever I feel like it either. My host brother and sister are four and seven respectively. I repeat, my host brother and sister are four and seven. They fight, they cry, they pester and bug. They’re loud and sticky and don’t give a crap about personal space. Being in a home stay means you follow the host family’s rules. I don’t have a curfew per say, but if I’m coming home later than usual, I have to let them know. Although I can, theoretically, spend more time in my room than I do, I feel obligated to be with the family even when I feel like some quiet, alone time.
Those are just some of the downsides of having a host family. There are horror stories – real ones – about other host families. I know people who have an eight o’clock or nine o’clock curfew – even on the weekends. I have a few friends and acquaintances for whom it takes two hours to get to school each day. I know one guy who chose to move out of his home stay and back into the dorms because his host mom never fed him and was a heavy drinker.
That all being said, if I could go back in time to when I was typing away at my study abroad application for Kansai Gaidai, I wouldn’t change my decision to apply to live with a host family. For some reason or other, the home stay gods smiled down upon me and I landed with a home stay family that’s pretty much a perfect fit for me. It’s fairly safe to say that one of the big factors in my having such a pleasant time in Japan is my host family.
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, today wasn’t particularly special. I came home from school and read a couple chapters of A People’s History of the United States (which I’ve been working on for the past month now), had dinner with the family (squid, eggplant and bread in a meat sauce, rice, and avocado slices), read three pictures book in English to Rui and Mao (my host siblings for those of you who haven’t been following along), played a game with them, studied for a Japanese vocabulary quiz with my host mom, had a bath, and got ready for bed. This is my general after school schedule.
What’s so great about that, I hear you asking. For me, it’s the small, detailed little moments. I taught Mao and Rui a clapping game I learned from one of my roommates last year and slowly, but surely Mao really started getting the hang of it. (Rui not so much, but he’s four.) This memory of my roommate and I playing this silly game and then it spilling over to create a new memory, a Japan memory, was kind of cool. After dinner, my host mom surprised me and the host sibs with a small package of Oreos to share and she immediately pulled out the Skippy peanut butter she’d bought me earlier so that I could have a favorite treat of mine just the way I like it. (Best of all is that my host mom has learned she likes Oreos with peanut butter too!)
When my host dad came home (he worked late and unfortunately missed dinner) and was sitting down to eat the plate my host mom had set aside for him, Rui immediately had him doubled over in laughter with his wacky antics. My host mom, too, loves to laugh. At dinner, which is usually Rui and my host dad’s mini-comedy hour, she picks up the comedic slack when my host dad isn’t there. I like so, so much that my host family is light-hearted and quick to laughter. It’s reassuring and comforting and makes me feel as though a fragment of my own family is here with me in Japan.
So yes, sure, there are downsides to having a host family, but the positive aspects more than make up for it. Although I’m sure my experience in Japan would still be good if I lived in a dorm instead, having experienced what living with a host family is like, I can’t imagine living in a dorm would give me such a connected feeling to home, family or Japanese life.
Monday, November 30, 2009
INFES and Fushimi Inari Shrine
November 21st and 22nd was the International Festival weekend (or INFES). It was also the Gaidai festival so the entire school was celebrating over the weekend. Every school club and circle seemed to have a booth where they’d sell food for cheap. A small sampling of some of the food I ate: yakisoba, tempura ice cream, waffles, pancakes, doughnut holes, hot chocolate and honey toast. Clearly I have a bit of a sweet tooth. The students running the booths had very aggressive tactics to get people to buy their food. Walking across the campus, I was literally shouted at, physically stopped and followed by booth people trying to get me to buy their food. Sometimes I just went ahead and bought whatever they were selling so they’d leave me alone!
As far as INFES went, which was hosted in the CIE (of course), it went pretty well though I wished I would have gotten to do a different booth than food booth. In total, INFES hosted two food booths (Hawaiian chicken and Japanese parfaits), a dance booth, a fashion booth, a singing booth and world booth (which was basically international students sitting at tables and talking about their respective countries with Japanese visitors). The food booths were the only ones stuck out in the cold all day and in hindsight, I wish I would have done dance booth (as it was offered to me as an option when I was first signing up). Oh well. It was still fun getting to know the people working my booth (especially getting to hang out with my speaking partner so much, who was in the same booth as me) and I was able to sneak away far more often than I would if I worked a different booth. At my food booth there were more people than there were jobs, so I often was able to escape without anyone noticing I’d gone, eat some tempura ice cream, and sneak back again.
One of the best parts of INFES was when my host family stopped by to say hello. It was nice seeing them out and about and I’ll admit, I felt kind of cool having my host sibs run up super excited to see me. Though my host brother’s interest was short-lived when some Gaidai students walked by dressed up as power rangers. I didn’t mind though – the power rangers are way cooler than I am!
Yesterday (November 28) I spent the day with my speaking partner, Rina. At the start of the semester, everyone who asked was assigned a speaking partner: a Japanese student to practice Japanese with (and someone they can practice English with). Study abroad programs, you’ll find, are all about the cultural exchange stuff. But Rina and I often have trouble hanging out because she’s incredibly busy. I really don't know how she does it! She goes to a different campus that's half an hour away from the main one so I was really happy to get to have a little speaking partner bonding time on Saturday.
We went to Fushimi Inari shrine which, if you’ve seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, you’d recognize. (The scene where Chiyo/Sayuri is running through the torii gates to pray at the temple – kind of funny seeing as Fushimi Inari shrine is… well, a shrine.) Anyway, so Fushimi Inari has thousands of torii lined up next to each other and you get to walk through them all. It’s like being in a really beautiful, orange corridor out in the woods. (Probably not the best description!) With the colors changing on the trees and the weather being perfect for autumn, being at Fushimi Inari really felt magical. Rina and I only walked up part of the way – there was a break in the torii and then it continued on up the mountainside and to reach the top would take two hours. We decided we weren’t so up for it and were getting hungry for lunch, so we stopped at a nearby restaurant outside Fushimi Inari and shared some yakisoba and okonomiyaki (my two food loves in Japan).
We went browsing about a bunch of stores (later going to a sort of indoor strip mall thing in Kyoto) and I finally got the bulk of my Christmas shopping done which was good. I’m really excited to see everyone unwrap their gifts from Japan when I come home!
After Christmas shopping, we stopped at a little café and rested a bit with some hot drinks before we headed back to Hirakata city. Before Rina and I parted ways at the station, we did some purikura which is basically like really advanced mall photo booths. They’re super fun to do and some people have entire purikura photo albums! (You can print them out as stickers or have them sent to your cell phone.)
I think my luck continued when I got assigned Rina as my speaking partner because she's truly fantastic. I feel like I can ask her pretty much anything about Japanese language or culture and she doesn't mind when I try to bumble along in Japanese. Haha. She's also damn good at English, so there's never really any communication problems which is nice. We've had a lot of good coffee dates where we just hang out and chat about what we've been up to and laugh about this or that (there's also some good gossip thrown in for good measure!). I'm really glad I've finally gotten to know her better and I hope we'll remain friends for a good long time.
Today was pretty laid back and I spent most of it at home by myself because my host family went to the hospital to visit their grandfather who’s recovering from pretty serious surgery. It sounds like he isn’t doing so well and I’m really worried for him (and for my host family because it’s been really hard on them too).
I worked on a Japanese essay today (about my memories of Japan) and though I could have said a lot more, tried to just stick with one memory (Fushimi Inari with my speaking partner). When I was writing it, I noticed how much easier it was to do, how much quicker. I can remember when writing a couple sentences in Japanese took me forever and they were always incredibly simple sentences too such as “I like Japanese.” Now I’m writing more complex things like “Although I’m not the best at Japanese and it’s always been a challenge for me, I still love studying it and would like to be fluent one day.” And it isn’t taking me an hour and a half to do either. I don’t have to look up every single kanji I want to use and I don’t second guess myself so often on the grammar. (I actually recently competed with my host sister, who’s in the first grade, to see who could write the most first grade kanji. I’m fairly sure she won because there were two or three that I’d forgotten, but it was still nice knowing I could at least keep up with a Japanese first grader!)
I think with language learning, it’s so easy to become frustrated because it’s almost always slow going, but when you get some distance between where you were and where you are now, it’s very rewarding and gratifying. Keep in mind I’m still dreadful at Japanese, particularly speaking. I’ve just gotten a bit less dreadful it seems. I really hope I can stay motivated and keep studying Japanese because it’s a truly fascinating language and culture.
It’s so weird to think that there are only three weeks left for me in Japan. I’ve been really homesick lately, but when I looked at the calendar a couple days ago, I decided to stop feeling so mopey and *enjoy* Japan again while I’m here. I think somewhere between the middle of October and now I just started to fall deeper and deeper into homesickness and all I could think about was home all the time. I’m still super excited for Christmas, but I’m trying to keep up a renewed outlook on things and feel the way I did in September and the first half of October when everything was wonderful and exciting. Coming to Japan has really been a once in a lifetime opportunity and while I hope to return one day, I’ll never have this particular set of circumstances again (going to school at Kansai Gaidai, living with the best host family in Japan, etc.) so I’m going to enjoy every bit of it as much as I can!
P.S. If you're interested in seeing a great video about the INFES experience (and seeing a tiny glimpse of me holding tempura ice cream) check out the youtube video below. (It was made by a fellow food-boother!)
"Click here for video"
As far as INFES went, which was hosted in the CIE (of course), it went pretty well though I wished I would have gotten to do a different booth than food booth. In total, INFES hosted two food booths (Hawaiian chicken and Japanese parfaits), a dance booth, a fashion booth, a singing booth and world booth (which was basically international students sitting at tables and talking about their respective countries with Japanese visitors). The food booths were the only ones stuck out in the cold all day and in hindsight, I wish I would have done dance booth (as it was offered to me as an option when I was first signing up). Oh well. It was still fun getting to know the people working my booth (especially getting to hang out with my speaking partner so much, who was in the same booth as me) and I was able to sneak away far more often than I would if I worked a different booth. At my food booth there were more people than there were jobs, so I often was able to escape without anyone noticing I’d gone, eat some tempura ice cream, and sneak back again.
One of the best parts of INFES was when my host family stopped by to say hello. It was nice seeing them out and about and I’ll admit, I felt kind of cool having my host sibs run up super excited to see me. Though my host brother’s interest was short-lived when some Gaidai students walked by dressed up as power rangers. I didn’t mind though – the power rangers are way cooler than I am!
Yesterday (November 28) I spent the day with my speaking partner, Rina. At the start of the semester, everyone who asked was assigned a speaking partner: a Japanese student to practice Japanese with (and someone they can practice English with). Study abroad programs, you’ll find, are all about the cultural exchange stuff. But Rina and I often have trouble hanging out because she’s incredibly busy. I really don't know how she does it! She goes to a different campus that's half an hour away from the main one so I was really happy to get to have a little speaking partner bonding time on Saturday.
We went to Fushimi Inari shrine which, if you’ve seen the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, you’d recognize. (The scene where Chiyo/Sayuri is running through the torii gates to pray at the temple – kind of funny seeing as Fushimi Inari shrine is… well, a shrine.) Anyway, so Fushimi Inari has thousands of torii lined up next to each other and you get to walk through them all. It’s like being in a really beautiful, orange corridor out in the woods. (Probably not the best description!) With the colors changing on the trees and the weather being perfect for autumn, being at Fushimi Inari really felt magical. Rina and I only walked up part of the way – there was a break in the torii and then it continued on up the mountainside and to reach the top would take two hours. We decided we weren’t so up for it and were getting hungry for lunch, so we stopped at a nearby restaurant outside Fushimi Inari and shared some yakisoba and okonomiyaki (my two food loves in Japan).
We went browsing about a bunch of stores (later going to a sort of indoor strip mall thing in Kyoto) and I finally got the bulk of my Christmas shopping done which was good. I’m really excited to see everyone unwrap their gifts from Japan when I come home!
After Christmas shopping, we stopped at a little café and rested a bit with some hot drinks before we headed back to Hirakata city. Before Rina and I parted ways at the station, we did some purikura which is basically like really advanced mall photo booths. They’re super fun to do and some people have entire purikura photo albums! (You can print them out as stickers or have them sent to your cell phone.)
I think my luck continued when I got assigned Rina as my speaking partner because she's truly fantastic. I feel like I can ask her pretty much anything about Japanese language or culture and she doesn't mind when I try to bumble along in Japanese. Haha. She's also damn good at English, so there's never really any communication problems which is nice. We've had a lot of good coffee dates where we just hang out and chat about what we've been up to and laugh about this or that (there's also some good gossip thrown in for good measure!). I'm really glad I've finally gotten to know her better and I hope we'll remain friends for a good long time.
Today was pretty laid back and I spent most of it at home by myself because my host family went to the hospital to visit their grandfather who’s recovering from pretty serious surgery. It sounds like he isn’t doing so well and I’m really worried for him (and for my host family because it’s been really hard on them too).
I worked on a Japanese essay today (about my memories of Japan) and though I could have said a lot more, tried to just stick with one memory (Fushimi Inari with my speaking partner). When I was writing it, I noticed how much easier it was to do, how much quicker. I can remember when writing a couple sentences in Japanese took me forever and they were always incredibly simple sentences too such as “I like Japanese.” Now I’m writing more complex things like “Although I’m not the best at Japanese and it’s always been a challenge for me, I still love studying it and would like to be fluent one day.” And it isn’t taking me an hour and a half to do either. I don’t have to look up every single kanji I want to use and I don’t second guess myself so often on the grammar. (I actually recently competed with my host sister, who’s in the first grade, to see who could write the most first grade kanji. I’m fairly sure she won because there were two or three that I’d forgotten, but it was still nice knowing I could at least keep up with a Japanese first grader!)
I think with language learning, it’s so easy to become frustrated because it’s almost always slow going, but when you get some distance between where you were and where you are now, it’s very rewarding and gratifying. Keep in mind I’m still dreadful at Japanese, particularly speaking. I’ve just gotten a bit less dreadful it seems. I really hope I can stay motivated and keep studying Japanese because it’s a truly fascinating language and culture.
It’s so weird to think that there are only three weeks left for me in Japan. I’ve been really homesick lately, but when I looked at the calendar a couple days ago, I decided to stop feeling so mopey and *enjoy* Japan again while I’m here. I think somewhere between the middle of October and now I just started to fall deeper and deeper into homesickness and all I could think about was home all the time. I’m still super excited for Christmas, but I’m trying to keep up a renewed outlook on things and feel the way I did in September and the first half of October when everything was wonderful and exciting. Coming to Japan has really been a once in a lifetime opportunity and while I hope to return one day, I’ll never have this particular set of circumstances again (going to school at Kansai Gaidai, living with the best host family in Japan, etc.) so I’m going to enjoy every bit of it as much as I can!
P.S. If you're interested in seeing a great video about the INFES experience (and seeing a tiny glimpse of me holding tempura ice cream) check out the youtube video below. (It was made by a fellow food-boother!)
"Click here for video"
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dance Performance
For just about all of October, I’ve been practicing a traditional Japanese dance with some other 留学生 (international students) and today we finally performed it on stage. I originally got involved with this particular extracurricular activity when a group of Japanese women came to KG and gave us all yukata (which are basically summer kimono) to try on and wear. They then taught us a bunch of traditional Japanese dances and offered us all the chance to learn and perform a Japanese dance when they held their annual autumn dance concert.
Before I came to Japan I promised myself that I’d try to step outside my box, so (with a little peer pressure) I signed up. The dance I learned was called 新・梅は咲いたか (The Plum and Cherry Blossoms). It took me most of October to truly figure out what in the heck I was doing, but during one practice session in late October it all clicked (better late than never!). I spent most of the today with my dance group waiting around to go on. We all arrived at the dance hall around 9am or so, but weren’t going on until a little after 1pm, so we had a fair amount of time to kill. Most of which was spent being dressed and having our hair and makeup done. I don’t think I could ever handle wearing a corset – yukata/kimono are tight enough! Not to mention the wooden zori (sandals, basically) that we had to wear on our way to and from the stage. No one’s zori fit their feet and the zori were so narrow and short that everyone’s heels were free hanging. I don’t think I need to tell you that wearing zori *hurt*! Even though the zori and yukata/kimono were a bit of a struggle, I definitely felt transformed especially after my hair was pinned up and my makeup was put on. I can’t say I’ve ever sported a white face/small red lips/dark eyebrows look before. It sort of felt like we were in Memoirs of a Geisha.
I’ve only ever been on stage for music concerts and I can’t say I’ve ever been much of a dancer, so it was definitely nerve wracking walking up on stage! Even though we had a lot of time between our arrival at the hall and our dance performance, the time felt like it flew by. Before I knew it, we were all nervously goofing around in a hallway that leads into the backstage area and getting ready to go on. I was especially nervous because I wasn’t able to wear my glasses on stage and had decided to just do the dance blind instead of bothering with contacts. It definitely felt like the only thing keeping the butterflies in my stomach contained was the obi that had been wrapped around me so tightly!
As soon as we stepped out onto the stage, organized ourselves into our ‘stand by’ poses, and the music started playing, my nerves just went away. Dancing blind was surprisingly easy and in fact, I’m glad I did it because although I could see and make out my fellow dancers, I couldn’t see anyone in the audience! It was literally like performing for an empty auditorium. Everything went by without a hitch and before I knew it, we were done. When the curtain fell, we all broke out into grins. I imagine we would have cheered if we weren’t in Japan – we got the impression that we were supposed to be quiet even though we were exuberant!
After our performance, we freed ourselves of our yukata/kimono and zori and booked it out of there. Some friends had come to watch us, so we wandered around outside with them for a bit. There was a benefit festival for the nearby hospital so we stopped by and I bought myself some cotton candy. I was under the impression there wasn’t cotton candy in Japan because I’d had to explain what it was to my host siblings who were baffled by my description. After wandering around the festival for a bit, we all went to Mos Burger (which has *phenomenal* burgers) and then we all headed our separate ways. Two friends and I stopped at Kiddy Land and a few other stores outside Hirakata Station. Kiddy Land is pretty much a store filled with cute, adorable things and I have the feeling I’m going to be spending whatever money I have left at the end of the semester in that store. My cheap headphones are falling apart and they have some vintage-style, bright purple ones I think I’d like to buy myself.
Shopping done (or more specific, window shopping), I spent a few hours at one of the KG dorms and then biked home to my home stay just in time for dinner. We had a speed tournament after, which my host mom was champion of. I came in fourth out of five, but I like to think I wasn’t properly warmed up!
And now here I am writing this blog post. The semester is starting to wind down, but my classes sure haven’t and I have more homework than ever. Best get to it.
Catching Up
It seems I’ve been a bad blogger lately as I haven’t written an update in roughly a month or so. I’m afraid the only excuse I can offer is that I’m in college and therefore am usually being pulled in five different directions as it is. What I’ve been up to hasn’t been terribly exciting, but I’ll try to sum up what I can.
NARA: Nara is perhaps best known for its deer park where deer roam around and people can take photos/feed them thin wafers and Todaji temple where there’s a gigantic Buddha inside. I got to experience both when I visited Nara in October with a group of 外大生 (KG students) and foreign exchange students. It was fun to pet the deer and be so close to them. Usually I only ever see deer darting away into the forest. They didn’t particularly seem to care one way or the other about being pet. They mostly just wanted people to give them these deer wafer things and if you didn’t have one in your hand, they were very disinterested. The giant Buddha (and when giant, I mean *giant*) was really awe-inspiring to see. It was very beautiful and I could have stood gaping up at it for some time. I was a little sad that I didn’t get to crawl through Buddha’s nostril – what I mean by that is that there’s a large wooden pillar nearby with a hole cut through the center that’s the same size as one of the giant Buddha’s nostrils. People line up and crawl through it for luck/for the fun of it/to marvel at just how big this Buddha statue really is. The line was too long and Todaji was closing, so there was no time. While at Todaji, I also had my fortune told and luckily I apparently have good luck coming my way. The day I went to Nara was also the day I finally tried takoyaki. Takoyaki is basically pieces of octopus in fried, doughy balls with takoyaki sauce and mayo slathered over them. Being in Japan, I’ve discovered I’m a bit of an octopus/squid fan, so I thought they were pretty tasty. (I still prefer okonomiyaki though.)
HALLOWEEN: Basically ended up falling apart and I spent most of the day working on homework instead. The party I was originally going to go to got cancelled, and there was a mountain of school work that was threatening to collapse upon me anyway. Next year I’m determined to be more in the Halloween spirit!
HIRAKATA PARK: I went to Hirakata Park with some friends for a Saturday. Walking through Hirakata park was like being transported into Roller Coaster Tycoon. Literally, some of the roller coasters and rides seemed to be taken straight out of the computer game. It wasn’t busy at all and was quite cute. We rode just about every ride there – we even walked (or rather ran because it was so cold!) through this ice house which we dubbed ‘Norway’ as one of the friends we were with was Norwegian. Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring my camera on our excursion, so I didn’t get very many pictures. It’s become a bit of a habit with me - not taking photos. I guess I don’t want to look like a tourist, though it’s not like I don’t stand out already. At Hirakata Park, I had my second strawberry/chocolate/whip cream crepe and have officially come to the decision that I need to learn how to make crepes!
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN: My host family and I were originally going to go to Universal Studios Japan weeks ago, but my host brother was sick that day, so we ended up cancelling. So, finally, when everybody was well, my host mom took me and the sibs to USJ. They were in the middle of transitioning from Halloween to Christmas so there were giant pumpkin decorations next to Christmas trees. My host mom had these ‘jump to the front of the line’ passes, so we were usually able to avoid waiting in line for 30-40 minutes. USJ had one rollercoaster which I rode with my host mom (the sibs being too little) and it was probably one of the best coasters I’ve ever been on. Incredibly smooth. I really felt weightless most of the time. At USJ we also rode the usual suspects like Back to the Future and Jaws. It was fun getting to hang out with the host sibs too. They’re pretty good kids, though they sometimes have trouble sharing: both of them usually wanted me to hold their hand or carry them! After USJ, we stopped at my host mom’s grandparents’ house and had a quick dinner. I tried raw fish for what was probably the eighth time and yet I still don’t know how I feel about it. Sushi is definitely one of those things I’m not sure if I like or don’t like. After our long day, we finally headed on home.
SCARIEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE: Sometime last week around midnight, I was working on a presentation for my Japanese class the next day and I heard this really heavy falling like someone falling down stairs and then my host mom started screaming my host dad’s name. I was frozen where I was until she started yelling *my* name and I bolted upstairs to help her drag my host dad over to the couch while she called for an ambulance. My host dad collapsed out of nowhere, even though just four or five hours earlier we were all having dinner together. I think he might have been dehydrated? In any case, I had to rush downstairs and wait outside the front door to flag down the ambulance (neighborhoods in Japan are really twisty turny, so I had to make sure the ambulance knew which house was the one they needed to get to). My host dad was taken to the hospital where they gave him fluids and where he stayed over night. It didn’t feel it was happening while it was actually going on, but once the ambulance drove off I just burst into tears. Why am I writing about this? Because I’m still jumping every time I hear a loud bump from upstairs or someone shouting and because I want to share all of my experiences, not just the good ones.
SHINTO SHRINE: Last weekend I went with my host family to a Shinto shrine for some kind of age ceremony for my host brother and sister who turned four and seven this year respectively. I’d been to a couple of Shinto shrines before, but I was still struck by just how pretty they are. I have to say, getting to sit and watch the ceremony was definitely something I wouldn’t have been able to experience had I chosen to live in the dorm! After the ceremony, we all ate dango (dumplings) which were super tasty. I’d had dango before at Beloit and hadn’t really liked it, but it was very good this time around. I wonder if my tastes are changing or if the dango I had at Beloit was just bad! :D
This past week my host family and I were having dinner and my host mom’s grandma observed that it’ll be no time at all before I leave Japan. November is my last full month here in Japan and I’ll be leaving the country on December 21st. I also just received my acceptance letter to Lancaster University in England, where I’ll be studying abroad next semester. It’s hard to imagine being home in the United States and even harder to imagine living in yet another country for an entire semester!
There are still some things I’d like to do and see yet in Japan like visit Hiroshima and Fushimi Inari Shrine. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit those in with my remaining time here! Even though it’s been a challenge and a struggle to live here sometimes, I’m really glad I decided to come to Japan. For one, I think I’ve gotten better at Japanese - particularly listening. I still mess up most if not all the time, but the language has become less foreign to me and I’m excited to continue learning it (though I question whether I’ll ever be fluent! The Japanese language is a beast!). For another, I’ve met some great people since being here and I plan on keeping in contact with them even after I leave. They’ve definitely helped make the experience worthwhile.
I hope the rest of my November and December are just as wonderful and life-changing as September and October.
NARA: Nara is perhaps best known for its deer park where deer roam around and people can take photos/feed them thin wafers and Todaji temple where there’s a gigantic Buddha inside. I got to experience both when I visited Nara in October with a group of 外大生 (KG students) and foreign exchange students. It was fun to pet the deer and be so close to them. Usually I only ever see deer darting away into the forest. They didn’t particularly seem to care one way or the other about being pet. They mostly just wanted people to give them these deer wafer things and if you didn’t have one in your hand, they were very disinterested. The giant Buddha (and when giant, I mean *giant*) was really awe-inspiring to see. It was very beautiful and I could have stood gaping up at it for some time. I was a little sad that I didn’t get to crawl through Buddha’s nostril – what I mean by that is that there’s a large wooden pillar nearby with a hole cut through the center that’s the same size as one of the giant Buddha’s nostrils. People line up and crawl through it for luck/for the fun of it/to marvel at just how big this Buddha statue really is. The line was too long and Todaji was closing, so there was no time. While at Todaji, I also had my fortune told and luckily I apparently have good luck coming my way. The day I went to Nara was also the day I finally tried takoyaki. Takoyaki is basically pieces of octopus in fried, doughy balls with takoyaki sauce and mayo slathered over them. Being in Japan, I’ve discovered I’m a bit of an octopus/squid fan, so I thought they were pretty tasty. (I still prefer okonomiyaki though.)
HALLOWEEN: Basically ended up falling apart and I spent most of the day working on homework instead. The party I was originally going to go to got cancelled, and there was a mountain of school work that was threatening to collapse upon me anyway. Next year I’m determined to be more in the Halloween spirit!
HIRAKATA PARK: I went to Hirakata Park with some friends for a Saturday. Walking through Hirakata park was like being transported into Roller Coaster Tycoon. Literally, some of the roller coasters and rides seemed to be taken straight out of the computer game. It wasn’t busy at all and was quite cute. We rode just about every ride there – we even walked (or rather ran because it was so cold!) through this ice house which we dubbed ‘Norway’ as one of the friends we were with was Norwegian. Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring my camera on our excursion, so I didn’t get very many pictures. It’s become a bit of a habit with me - not taking photos. I guess I don’t want to look like a tourist, though it’s not like I don’t stand out already. At Hirakata Park, I had my second strawberry/chocolate/whip cream crepe and have officially come to the decision that I need to learn how to make crepes!
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN: My host family and I were originally going to go to Universal Studios Japan weeks ago, but my host brother was sick that day, so we ended up cancelling. So, finally, when everybody was well, my host mom took me and the sibs to USJ. They were in the middle of transitioning from Halloween to Christmas so there were giant pumpkin decorations next to Christmas trees. My host mom had these ‘jump to the front of the line’ passes, so we were usually able to avoid waiting in line for 30-40 minutes. USJ had one rollercoaster which I rode with my host mom (the sibs being too little) and it was probably one of the best coasters I’ve ever been on. Incredibly smooth. I really felt weightless most of the time. At USJ we also rode the usual suspects like Back to the Future and Jaws. It was fun getting to hang out with the host sibs too. They’re pretty good kids, though they sometimes have trouble sharing: both of them usually wanted me to hold their hand or carry them! After USJ, we stopped at my host mom’s grandparents’ house and had a quick dinner. I tried raw fish for what was probably the eighth time and yet I still don’t know how I feel about it. Sushi is definitely one of those things I’m not sure if I like or don’t like. After our long day, we finally headed on home.
SCARIEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE: Sometime last week around midnight, I was working on a presentation for my Japanese class the next day and I heard this really heavy falling like someone falling down stairs and then my host mom started screaming my host dad’s name. I was frozen where I was until she started yelling *my* name and I bolted upstairs to help her drag my host dad over to the couch while she called for an ambulance. My host dad collapsed out of nowhere, even though just four or five hours earlier we were all having dinner together. I think he might have been dehydrated? In any case, I had to rush downstairs and wait outside the front door to flag down the ambulance (neighborhoods in Japan are really twisty turny, so I had to make sure the ambulance knew which house was the one they needed to get to). My host dad was taken to the hospital where they gave him fluids and where he stayed over night. It didn’t feel it was happening while it was actually going on, but once the ambulance drove off I just burst into tears. Why am I writing about this? Because I’m still jumping every time I hear a loud bump from upstairs or someone shouting and because I want to share all of my experiences, not just the good ones.
SHINTO SHRINE: Last weekend I went with my host family to a Shinto shrine for some kind of age ceremony for my host brother and sister who turned four and seven this year respectively. I’d been to a couple of Shinto shrines before, but I was still struck by just how pretty they are. I have to say, getting to sit and watch the ceremony was definitely something I wouldn’t have been able to experience had I chosen to live in the dorm! After the ceremony, we all ate dango (dumplings) which were super tasty. I’d had dango before at Beloit and hadn’t really liked it, but it was very good this time around. I wonder if my tastes are changing or if the dango I had at Beloit was just bad! :D
This past week my host family and I were having dinner and my host mom’s grandma observed that it’ll be no time at all before I leave Japan. November is my last full month here in Japan and I’ll be leaving the country on December 21st. I also just received my acceptance letter to Lancaster University in England, where I’ll be studying abroad next semester. It’s hard to imagine being home in the United States and even harder to imagine living in yet another country for an entire semester!
There are still some things I’d like to do and see yet in Japan like visit Hiroshima and Fushimi Inari Shrine. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit those in with my remaining time here! Even though it’s been a challenge and a struggle to live here sometimes, I’m really glad I decided to come to Japan. For one, I think I’ve gotten better at Japanese - particularly listening. I still mess up most if not all the time, but the language has become less foreign to me and I’m excited to continue learning it (though I question whether I’ll ever be fluent! The Japanese language is a beast!). For another, I’ve met some great people since being here and I plan on keeping in contact with them even after I leave. They’ve definitely helped make the experience worthwhile.
I hope the rest of my November and December are just as wonderful and life-changing as September and October.
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