Host Family Stay

Here I am in Japan. I've been here for 5 weeks already.

I stayed with a host family last weekend. They were named the Nakamura Family. It consisted of a mother, 7 year old daughter and a father. They were all really chill and funny people. My host mother picked me up on Saturday and we went to her house. The house was amazing. Considering Japanese standards, it was huge! There were 4 rooms, with 2 of them being guest/empty rooms. All of the lights were automated and motion censored, the bathroom toilet was a budet (the ones that clean your butt and are heated seats), there were 2 floors and the shower room had a huge hot tub and shower. It was just so comfortable and clean.
After dropping off my luggage, we were greeted by my host mother's younger sister and the three of us went out to eat lunch. We went to a resturant that allowed us to make our own okonomiyakis and it was delicious! Afterwards, we went to pick up my host sister at her elementary school. Today was Parent's visiting Day. It is completely different from America. You know how we all have parent-teacher conferences? Well, here its you go to the classroom and you peer through the windows and you watch your children from a distance. Its a itty bit weird, but hey, I am in Japan right?
My host father is the proud owner of the only Onigiri-drive-thru in Japan. Its a pretty famous shop, and has commercials and things like that. I watched one of the promos and then we went to go check out the place. The drive-thru had like a 30 minute wait since it was so popular. It was pretty cool. My host father was really busy because of his shop, but took the time to take us out to dinner. He said he really wanted to drink sake with me. So being the いい学校生 (good student) that I am, i said okay- even though i absolutely hate the taste of Sake.

I was so exausted by the end of the day. It is SO tiring to speak Japanese all the time. My brain is constantly trying to fit together sentences and trying to understand things. It takes a lot out of me.

The next day, we went to the Ninja Temple in Kanazawa. It was pretty cool, it basically was a temple that had a lot of tricks hidden in it. For instance, during that era, buildings were not allowed to be taller than 3 stories high, but this temple had 5 stories, 2 which were half-floors that were hidden. It was pretty cool to take the tour through it. Afterwards, my host family took me to the Gold-Museum. Kanazawa, the town i live in, is translated literally as 'Gold Swamp'. So gold is very popular here. At this museum, we made jewlery boxes that we were able to decorate with gold and then had ice cream that was sprinkled with REAL gold. It was pretty amazing.

Overall, it was a great time. Aside from being tired all the time, it was well worth it.