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！

6/23 Homestay!

Hi guys!

Yesterday was more of a travel day. We traveled back to our home base of Kashiwa from Tokyo, and goofed around in Kashiwa until check-in. The group then relaxed before getting dinner at a place where there was not one word of English. 

It makes ordering kind of stressful.

Today was the start of our homestay! We first traveled to Abiko for an Ikebana class. Ikebana is the art of flower arrangement. The teachers had us use cattail leaves to symbolize the buddha's head and hands. The stems were cut so that the cattails were at three different heights. The tallest sticks upright and signifies the buddha's head. The second tallest is angled towards the right and signifies the Buddha's right hand. The shortest is angled towards the left to signify the Buddha's left hand that's laying down and palm up.

This is off Google Images. The Buddha's head and two hands are represented in Ikebana.

This isn't the best picture of my attempt in ikebana. The brown parts of the cattails are what symbolizes the head and two hands. 

Me with my ikebana arrangement. Our teacher's assessed our personality through our ikebana. Apparently I'm balanced and have a very "it's my way or the highway" attitude. 

A group shot :)

After our class some of us ate a quick meal and went back up to meet with our homestay families. So far, my gift-presenting has not been the best. I was a tad bit late because of being so hungry, so I ran over and they had me sit next to them. Riley gave me my ikebana from my original chair, and our ikebana arrangements were supposed to be gifts to the family. I didn't know where else to put it, so I just said "douzo" and gave it to them right there. They were super nice and accepted it, though. I will be living with only the husband and wife, as the kids have already grown up and moved away. 

We later hopped in the host family's car and drove to their house. After some conversation in the car, we finally arrived at the house and they helped me with my luggage. My omiyage (presents) from home were just laying there in the backseat because I had no where else to put them, and the husband grabbed them to help me carry things in. 

My original plan was to hide it until I was all settled in, then present it. But nope, I couldn't hide it. So I just told him right there that it was their present. He said thank you and we walked inside, where the wife began opening it. 

They both seemed like they really like the gifts! Apparently, they've lived in California for 5 years and visited Arizona in the past, so they actually knew a lot about Arizona. They even had this huge grey agate decorating their wall, so my small purple agate-sandstone candle holder actually complimented it a bit. We talked a bit about the Grand Canyon and Arizona in general. They already had a map of Arizona so I was able to point to where Round Valley is. 

I was then served some green tea and red bean pudding, which was great! We talked a little more about Japan and the U.S. Afterwards the wife -who's name is Sachiko Kimura - wanted to go out on a walk. We strolled through the neighborhood and into this really quiet, peaceful park. I told Kimura-san that my dad really liked flower pictures, and so she proceeded to stop at every new flower bed to tell me what the names were and let me take pictures of them. Because I wasn't expecting the walk, I only had my phone on me. Here's some of the pictures from our walk - 

Kimura-san :)

After our walk, we went back and I was taught how to make okonomiyaki! It's surprisingly easy. Basically, it's just flour, milk, cabbage, pork, fish, and ginger that you mix all together and fry it like a pancake. You then smother it in mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce, add some seaweed flakes and these fish flakes that curl when exposed to heat, and eat up! I had about 3 servings and was absolutely stuffed. 

My second serving.

After dinner, I was treated to a nice Japanese-style bath. You basically wash yourself thoroughly before relaxing in a nice, warm bath. The bathtub even had temperature control! I was wondering why the heat wasn't fading after a while. After my bath we watched some T.V. and now I'm laying in my nice Japanese-style room.  

You want to know what the best part is? I got presents too! It's all food that I can bring home. I can now force my parents to try Japanese curry.

That's all for today! Tomorrow we will be visiting Kimura-san's garden and make some homemade mochi!

6/20 - 6/21 Exploring Tokyo

Yesterday was another busy day! We three girls decided to go off on our own to explore. We decided on Akihabara, Meiji Shrine, and Harajuku before meeting up with the group at Tokyo Skytree

While in Akihabara, we spent most of our time in a 8 floored hobby shop. By "hobby shop" I mean a big anime store. I just bought myself a small tree spirit from Princess Mononoke and called it a day. I came to the conclusion that Akihabara is 50% arcades and 20% adult stuff. The rest are restaurants and more family friendly anime merch. 

After Akihabara we hopped on the train to Meiji Shrine. Meiji shrine is in Shibuya, and was built for Emperor Meiji and his wife. Going to see it was really interesting. First you're walking through urban Tokyo - with the huge buildings and narrow roads. When you finally find the park that holds Meiji shrine, all of a sudden you're in this completely different world with a huge dirt road, then the shrine, with trees surrounding it, blocking out the sky. It was gorgeous.

The shrine itself was impressive. Unfortunately part of it had some construction going on, so we couldn't really see those areas. They did have some good luck charm shops and this huge open area for people to roam around. They also had ema, which are small plaques of wood with designs on them. You can buy one and write your wish on it, then hang it out on a wall that surrounds this huge tree that's wrapped with a shimenawa (rope used for purification). I got my parents a good fortune charm as an apology for all the money I have spent on this trip. Grace got herself an ema and hung her own wish near the tree.

Grace's wish

Trees next to the wishes wall that's also wrapped in a shimenawa

After this we headed back to Harajuku! Once there, we treated ourselves to some crepes and went souvenir shopping. Here's where I say: mom, dad, I am sorry. I had a lot of people to shop for and it gets expensive. I got all my souvenir shopping done (except for one birthday present), so I promise the rest of my money will be spent towards food.

The street in Harajuku that we fell in love with. 

So after our shopping excursion, we headed off to the Tokyo Skytree to meet up with the rest of our group! 

When arriving to the station, we almost didn't want to leave. There are so many things to do inside! When first arriving, we walked by this huge titan head from the anime Attack on Titan. The skytree station highly advertised Attack on Titan and I couldn't have loved it more. I proceeded to get a selfie with the titan --

After this, we stumbled on a Pokemon center. There were huge figurines of some pokemon and I basically had to drag Courtney and Grace away since we had already told our teacher that we were heading her way.

I didn't drag them away before I got more selfies with pokemon, though --

So we finally met with our teacher, but we got to kill more time while waiting for the guys. Our teacher's children showed us some cool augmented reality games that were available, which essentially equated to us jumping around while staring at our reflection on this huge monitor. Grace went back to the pokemon center.

Finally the guys arrived, but Courtney and I had to go back and find Grace. We found her quickly enough, but we also got some free eevee headbands from one of the workers. Here's a cute picture of us.

We couldn't go up to the very top, as that was an extra $10. We did go to the first observation deck, which is 350 above the ground. Going up on the elevator popped everyone's ears.

Once up, we got to see Tokyo. You know how I said Tokyo is big? I wasn't lying. Tokyo is very big.

To top it all off, the skytree had a short viewing of Attack on Titan. Unique this viewing, they actually edited the Skytree into the anime so that it looked like the titans were attacking Tokyo Skytree. I was fangirling all over the place. 

A picture of us before the anime showing.

Adachi-sensei was nice enough to send me this picture she got of the viewing :) I was too busy jumping around and filming it with my video camera to take pictures. 

After the show was done, we ate at Mos Burger. Why did we eat at Mos Burger? This is the place that is mentioned in our Japanese book back at NAU, that's why. I can now tell my Japanese teacher that I ate an avocado burger at Mos Burger. It was very oishii.

So that was yesterday! Today was a complete work and rest day. I basically just left the hotel to get food, and I've been sleeping for the majority of the day. I know, I'm doing the exact opposite of what I said I'd do and stay at the hotel, but it was raining all day today and I was just plain sleepy. Also, there's some assignments due tonight. 

Tomorrow will be the end of our excursion. We will be heading back to Kashiwa to drop off our things and then to Abiko for an oral exam. Wish me luck!

6/18 - 6/19 Tokyo is Great

So these past few days have been quite eventful. Yesterday our "official" class time was just traveling from Shinjuku to Iriya, so the rest of the day was free. 

The morning started off with Courtney and I getting some Mister Donut for breakfast. We decided to walk around a bit since Shinjuku is significantly less crowded at 9:00 a.m. We stumbled on this shrine and found a flea market!

This flea market had a ton of traditional Japanese goods. From Hindu and Buddhist figurines, shodou tools, hair accessories, tea sets, to yukatas and kimonos! Courtney and I spent a significant amount of time there. Courtney ended up buying a yukata for only 1,000 yen (a little less than $10). For a yukata, that's crazy cheap! I almost bought one myself but we began to be pressed for time so I didn't

We ran back to our hotel to try and convince our teacher to let us go back before traveling to Iriya (which is only about a 45 minute train ride away). Because we had to carry all our luggage around with us, she wanted to check into the hotel first before going back to the flea market. Courtney and I did successfully convince most of our group to go afterwards though - Justin really wanted a tea set. 

So we made our way to Iriya, and got lost trying to find our hotel. Our teacher ended up having to rent a taxi to transport all of our luggage and we had to walk an extra 20 minutes in the opposite direction. 

Finally we make it back to our hotel, and another surprise was waiting for us. A matsuri (festival)! It was a small one, but it did have several booths for food and games, and a small parade for the children. It was really cool to see! 

I had some delicious takoyaki and finally tried the infamous "Tokyo banana", which is basically just a banana dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. 

So after this 5 of us went back to Shinjuku for the flea market. Unfortunately, Tokyo decided to rain so by the time we got back to the shrine, everyone was already packed up and leaving. We were sad.

Courtney and I decided to hit up Harujuku while the guys stayed in Shibuya. Let me tell you, Harajuku is so much fun! We hit up a bunch of stores that sold both fashion and random merch. We all thought that Harajuku would be primarily focused on fashion, so that's why only Courtney and I were interested. There's actually a little bit of everything for everyone there! I got me some souvenirs for people back home and myself some sakura accessories. Courtney and I also did a photobooth and came back with these great pictures - 

 

This was the only picture I got to download for free

We finally got dinner at around 8:00 - our feet were ready to fall off. We found a small Mexican food place in a nearby mall. I was originally hesitant about it, since the pizza I had here wasn't that great. I decided on a quesadilla and it was actually pretty dang good! We're already planning on going back tomorrow, so onwards with today!

Today was a little more relaxing. We got to sleep in, and us three girls went to a local bakery for breakfast. We then went to Akihabara (anime central) to kill sometime before traveling to the Ghibli museum.

Yes, I said Ghibli museum. Our teacher actually managed to get us some tickets for it. 

The Ghibli museum was whimsical and magical. Yes, I'm aware of how corny that sounds but it's true. There's a huge Totoro waiting in the front and the building was painted with so many pretty colors. 

Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures of inside the museum. The main focal point of the museum was to show exactly how much work it takes to make a Studio Ghibli movie. They had all the storyboards and drawings hung up on walls and film reels to show how many photos go into a movie. We also got to watch this adorable 10 minute film on sumo mice. 

I did get some pictures of outside the museum, though. This was allowed. 

I had a great time! 

So now I'm chilling out in my little capsule. The wifi here isn't too great so it's a little bit harder to get these blog updates in. I'm going to head to bed now since it's 12:30 a.m. and I gotta be up and ready before 9. お休み！