6/24 Homestay Part 2

So today was pretty interesting :) It started off with a nice breakfast of eggs, ham, and toast. All of my meals have been presented so nicely so I've been taking a lot of pictures of food. We ate in Sachiko's (the wife) front yard garden, which is beautiful!

After breakfast we killed some time by showing each other pictures. I pulled up my parents' Facebook and Sachiko pulled up some of her framed photographs. We then started on the mochi. 

The mochi was absolutely delicious! I ate four in total - two were served with soy sauce and two were served with kinako (soy bean powder). Basically two were sweet and two were savory. The mochi with soy sauce were also wrapped in seaweed, which added a lot to the flavor. 

Last night, the husband and wife asked me if I've ever tried natto before. Natto is a traditional Japanese dish of fermented soy beans. A lot of Westerners are afraid to try it because of the look and smell. I told the two that I've never ate it before, but I wouldn't mind trying it. So today, they gave me some natto as a challenge. Sachiko even used my phone to film and photograph me eating it. It actually wasn't too bad. 

A beautiful photo of me eating natto.

After lunch, the husband went out to play tennis. Sachiko then had me ride bikes with her through the neighborhood. We first visited her husband and friends playing tennis. He's part of a group where retired people come together to play tennis to keep their health up. She introduced me to all of her friends, explained how she was my home stay mother, which university I go to, and complimenting me on my Japanese. Apparently I've been doing fairly well so far with speaking Japanese. 

A ride around the neighborhood :) The neighborhood is very pretty and calming.

After watching Sachiko's husband play tennis and having short conversations with her friends, we then rode off to an old estate. The estate belonged to the Yoshida family, who were the village heads. For transparency's sake, I am reading this off of a pamphlet I received as I'm writing this blog post. They took part in agriculture and had a pasture for military horses. Owning a pasture for military horses put you on the same level as samurai. 

Basically, the Yoshida family was a big deal. 

Sachiko was able to get a tour guide who spoke good English to show us around the estate. He explained where the cooking took place, where the samurai stayed versus regular guests, where the samurai enter the house versus normal guests, the importance of art inside the house, and many other things. The estate had a beautiful Japanese garden in the back, where many of the trees has it's own meaning. From what I remember, there were three trees and a bush that each represented a different animal and character trait. One tree was a dragon, which represented intellectual superiority. The second tree was a giraffe, which represented faith. The third tree was a phoenix...but I seem to have forgotten what the phoenix represented. I also completely forgot what the bush was. I should have brought my notebook with me. 

This is the tree that represents the dragon.

After our tour we ate some おいしいイスクリーム (yummy ice cream). The ice cream we had was vanilla topped with sweet soy sauce and more kinako. 

After our tour we biked to Sachiko's "kitchen garden". Here she grew peppers, cucumbers, soy beans, leeks, and a bunch of other vegetables. I told her that my mom would be impressed. We harvested some vegetables, watered them, and rode back to the Kimura house. 

Once we got back Sachiko and her husband let me take a bath and relax in my room for a bit. We then began a lesson on Japanese-style curry. I'm happy to report that curry (assuming the curry mix is available to you) is also fairly easy to make! You just cut potatoes, carrots, and onions, cook some pork, then put everything in a pressure cooker (or a regular pot) with water and curry powder until the vegetables are soft. Then add the curry powder, stir it a bit and voila! It's served with rice, and Sachiko added some tofu and cucumbers as side dishes. 

After dinner we all just started talking. We talked a bit about Hiroshima and American politics, good food in Japan, and the two started teaching me a bit of Japanese. I learned that the planets have the same kanji as the weekdays. Tuesday is pronounced as "ka-yoo-bi" and spelled 火曜日, while Mars is pronounced "ka-sei" but also uses 火. So basically Mars is the fire (火) planet, Mercury uses the kanji for "water" (水), Jupiter uses "tree" (木), Venus uses "gold" (金), and Saturn uses "base" (土). 

We also taught each other tongue twisters. The Japanese tongue twister Sachiko and her husband taught me goes like "niwa niwa, niwa tori ga, niwa imasu," which means "there are two chickens in the garden". I taught them "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" and "Peter Piper picked a pair of pickled peppers." We had a good time.

Tomorrow I will be waking up pretty early, so I'll be turning in now. おやすみなさい！