Okay okay, LAST HOMESTAY I SWEAR. Haha. I had the opportunity to do a third homestay with yet another family just before leaving to return home, this time accompanied by a girl from Turkey.
Like the other families, this family was also incredibly nice. Yakage is a rural town and while visiting we experienced a teeny tiny local festival. It was awesome. Tons of yakitori and happy people. Sometimes a little too happy, in the case of an awkward drunk older man who kept trying to hit on us foreign girls. I think my favorite memory was the kiddie sumo wrestling, which they let the foreign students "compete" in as well. You lined up against another person and tried to push them out of a ring. When finished, everybody ran to the back of the lines to go again. Super cute. The following day, we went "river rafting," which involved a very homemade raft. We sat on some flat sheets of wood and were slowly propelled down the river by use of stick. It was actually really cool. Later, we had soba. But like, we had soba using the best method ever. They set up half of a long piece of bamboo and ran water through it and let the soba run through the water; you had to pick out clumps using your chopsticks as they flowed past! The bits people missed collected in a strainer at the bottom. And this was accompanied by delicious barbecued vegetables. Though I love American BBQ, this was actually way more fun for every participant I think. I hope I can do it again someday. It was bittersweet to return to my dorm room and finish packing. I was able to get in one last visit with my original host family just before I left, too. We had yakiniku and went swimming. I'm very glad I was able to say goodbye to them so soon before leaving. Each of my homestays has been a highlight of my time in Japan, but my first host family holds a special place, as I've been able to return and visit them several times; they really came to feel like my Japanese family. I hope I can return someday.
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Wow, this was totally a spur of the moment trip. I took the shinkansen with a friend going to Tokyo for job interviews; he invited me only a week or so beforehand when I happened to mention I wanted to go to Tokyo sometime before I went home. We stayed in different hotels because there was no more room in the one he had booked, haha.
That was fine though. I actually snagged a sort of semi-capsule hotel for women only that was actually quite nice. I experienced sleeping in a small space without a lot of the downsides that come with ordinary capsule hotels. Also, while my friend did his interviews on Saturday, I got to wander around Tokyo alone, which was amazing. I walked through Roppongi, briefly met up with friends in Harajuku, visited a pokemon center, and happened upon the Nippon Budokan (which is this huge building for martial arts tournaments). There was actually a tournament going on when I wandered up, for Judo. Though I know next to nothing about Judo, I got in with a student rate and enjoyed the sweet sweet air conditioning for about half a glorious hour before wandering back out into the sweltering humid heat that is Tokyo in summer. My friend and I went in both the Tokyo Tower and the Skytree and I got to see the Kaminarimon up close. Really amazing experience; I'm happy I jumped at the opportunity. |
AuthorHatty is a CSUMB student. Archives
October 2015
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