Homestay

8/1

In what has become our usual manner of group transport, we head down to the lobby at around 9am and board the charter buses in a heap of grogginess and mismatched luggage.

Its Homestay Day.

Truth be told, most people are ho-hum about the whole affair. A good deal of people in this program have done homestay before, and the rest of us just wanna spend our free time in Tokyo rather than being shuttle back out to the sticks.

We are such whiners.

Anyway, the trip is a good 3 hours or so, and we end up being late, so its almost 2pm when we finally stop for our scheduled lunch, which ends up being in a neat little restaurant call the Tomoato Tree. The food was awesome and very ecclectic - plus, it was all pre-paid, which was great, because I'm already down to my last 2000 yen or so.

Its an all-you-can-eat buffet style, and because we only have about 20 minutes, people are running around trying to get as much as they can just in case this ends up being their last "real" meal for a couple days. *pfff* What do they think, their host family's going to make them eat lawn clippings?

Once we're back on the bus again, its just a short drive to the city hall, where we meet out host families and the city officials give a little presentation.

The hall is all decked out with various welcome banners and there are people waiting to hand out pamphlets and direct us into the auditorium. There are a number of long banquet tables set up, and we are given a seating chart so we know which Japanese people we've been paired up with.

My 'host grandmother' is an older lady, and, due to a combination of her having a slight accent and the room being extremely noisy, I can't understand a damn word she's saying. Perfect...

There's a lot of smiling and nodding and "Eh?" so finally we just give up trying to talk until the cermony is over.

Once we've been dismissed, she escorts me out into the hall where her husband, daughter, and two grandkids are waiting. She introduces me, and of course the few I promptly forget the few names/relations I was able to catch as we're walking to the car. I also can't understand her husband, who talks in mumby, short bursts. Thankfully, the daughter realizes I need to be spoken to slowly and as clearly as possible, so I am able to talk to her fairly well.

They have a pretty nice car, and once my stuff is thrown in the trunk, we all pile in and head out.

They ask me the usual questions, drawing from the info sheet and the letter I'd sent them from Kamogawa. The grandfather, who is driving as seated directly in front of me, is pointing out this or that, and I understand nothing until the daughter either repeats it or rephrases *sigh*

We drive for a bit, and then arrive at their house.

The house is freakin HUGE. It has two wings, one of which is two stories and very much a Western style structure. The house branches off into another multi-room wing that is all lain out with tatami mats and decorative wall scrolls and shogi screens.

This is my room...I pretty much was alone in the Japanese-style wing, though.

Pretty afluent family, it seems. 'Course, there are 8 people there.

I won't post pictures of the family members because this blog is open, but I will say that their little girl, Ai-chan, is the most adorable child I have ever seen in my life. Ever.

Anyway, they show me my room and where necessary things like the bathroom are, and then start giving me all these little snacks like pickled plums and jello and cucumbers and chocolates...jeez

I also gave them the omiyage I bought at Fred Meyers before I left...as well as a bag of Skittles someone gave me on the bus ride over. None of which was wrapped because I completely forgot about it until the morning of.

I am lame.

But they thanked me up and down anyway, and after we hung out for a while, the younger son came home from some kind of school thing. He was really friendly and insisted on showing me his mukashi-banashi story book, which I can actually almost read better than he can, even though the lack of kanji frustrates me (am I weird, or am I weird...)

We all sit around and they ask me questions about my letter...apparently I marked somewhere along the line on the questionairre that I didn't like pork, which I told them is not really the case. I vaguely recall answering that particular question, but I think I just couldn't think of anything else at the time.

The grandfather takes me out to their garden and we pick some eggplant, cucumber, and tomoato. He also shows me their rice paddy, which is pretty neat, and I get introduced to a couple of the neighbors.

So far so good...

When dinner finally rolls around, they haul out the low table and set up pillows, though I get the feeling its mostly for show and, like my family, they generally eat in the kitchen so they can watch TV =)

...and, lucky for me, they picked up on the fact that I am a sushi addict, so for dinner they prepared a whole feast of sushi, sashimi, and various little side dishes including some karaage.

DUDE.

Once I'm good and stuffed, the little boy asks me if I want to go out to the cemetary and see the "obake".

Huh?

I spend a little time having them explain it to me to make sure I heard them right, and it occurs to me that its probably just like a haunted forest set-up. Cool.

The mother and the little boy lead me out into the night and down the road a ways. As we approach the hillside graveyard, I can hear little kids squealing and some flashlights bobbing about through the trees. Kenny, a guy from the program, is there with his host family, too, and we're both like, "Yeah...Obake. Awesome"

The little boy is taking the whole affair very seriously, and clutches my hand as he leads me around the gravestones to where a group of kids are talking is frightened voices and pointing at something in one corner of the graveyard.

What they're pointing at is apparently to older girls dressed up in these elaborate while kimono-things and wearing some kind of masks, crouched around a candle and speaking in these soft, creepy voices.

I assume this is just the opening, so I stroll past, half-expecting some ghoul to jump out of the shadows, and so I get a few feet and wait....and wait...

And the kids are still yelling and pointing, until finally they come swooping past in one big shrieking group.

...huh. Apparently that was the "obake".

I felt kind of dumb, but nobody seemed to notice that I had effectively walked right past the main act and not even realized it.

Oh. Well.

Back to the house, and off to bed...