Third Family

Heyyy soo it's been even longer than usual... apologies.

A lot has happened, mainly moving to my third host family a month ago. Again, everything is totally different, and lots of fun! I love this family, but sadly I'm with them for an even shorter time than the last one! I only have a week and a half left :( I have two brothers, seven and eleven, although the seven-year-old looks like he's nine. They both take karate and are generally typical boys, so it gets rowdy. But it's an improvement, I found my patience wearing thin living with the little ones... My parents are fun and lively people, and my dad works only 3 minutes away so he's home in the evenings. It's great just sitting and having conversations with them. My host mom grew up around here so whenever we go out, all the shopkeepers know her. Also, her mom and older brother run a sushi shop across the street and the mom lives next door to that, so it's very convenient. We've only had sushi from there once though, but it was good. I'm a 15-minute bike ride from school again, which makes me very happy :) I think it's the nicest way to go to school. The rest of the family usually wakes up before 6, I'm not sure why, I think they just like it, so everyone goes to bed by 9:30 or 10pm. I, however, wake up at seven, so I've been averaging about nine hours of sleep a night, which also makes me very happy. Sleep just makes everything better. The house is more typical than my last one, small and cozy, which I think I like better. Other than the bedrooms, there's only one room with kitchen, eating area, and couch/kotatsu/TV, so everyone is always together. Since I get home long before dark now and the days are getting longer, I can also finally run regularly again, which was needed.

With my family, I finally got to an onsen, a public bathhouse. It is of course separated by genders, and everyone is naked. It's slightly awkward, but doesn't really bother me. In fact I think it's kind of nice, having no barriers and no judgement. First there are washing stations, then a variety of pools, inside and outside with normal, moisturizing, or herbal water, places for lying down in shallow water, mini wooden tubs, jet seats, and these terrifying seats that sent electrical pulses through the water from the sides. This was extremely uncomfortable and kind of paralyzing. There were also saunas, including an interesting "salt sauna" where you rub salt all over yourself. Overall the onsen was a very pleasant experience, and I felt very clean afterward. Then last weekend we went to a big place in the middle of Osaka, Spa World. As well as baths there was a small indoor amusement park with several slides for both genders, in swimsuits. People were more modest than in the US, with fewer bikinis and more over-clothes. The bath part was interesting, there were different rooms with European themes like Greece, Rome, Atlantis, Finland, and Spain. Spain had tables with foot baths where you could order food and drinks, and it actually looked really appealing. Baths are so nice.

Last weekend with my family I also finally went to Nara Koen, a park in Nara that's full of people-friendly deer. We fed them bread-like stuff and special deer crackers, and they were really cute but expectedly pushy from everyone feeding them. Nearby is Tōdai-ji, a Buddhist temple and possibly the largest wooden structure in the world. Inside is the largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana, so it was a generally impressive place. My favorite part was a small square hole at the bottom of a pillar that is supposedly the size of the Buddha's nostril, and those who crawl through will be blessed with enlightenment in their next life. Unfortunately, the line was too long, and I don't think I would have fit anyway.

Another interesting place I went to with some school friends was a huge sports complex called Spo-cha that seemed to have all sports. We paid about $16 each for 3 hours, then were free to play anything we wanted. There were a number of floors, full of small courts and ranges and lots of things. The courts had timers on them for 10-20 minutes if other people wanted to use them. We played badminton, basketball, golf range, baseball range, archery (fun!), roller skating, bucking bronco, shooting range, air hockey, and ping pong. We were all pretty tired by the end. There were also soccer and other baseball games, mini golf, fishing (!?), pool, darts, karaoke, a kids area with slides and ball pits and stuff, and a room with really comfy-looking reclining chairs and manga. So awesome! I had no idea places like this existed.

Three Tuesdays ago was Mardi Gras, and I felt compelled to educate everyone about the fun traditions. That day Hannah and I were told to write about our time in Japan so far (in Japanese), buut that's hard enough to talk about in English so instead I made a colorful Mardi Gras report, much better. Then I made a king cake with my host mom and hid a button, having no babies, and everyone had fun. My host dad got the button. And thenn the next day, just a day too late, I got a king cake in the mail from home, oops. But it happened to be my host dad's birthday, so it worked as a birthday cake too.

Something else that happened this month was the blooming of the ume (plum) blossoms. These look similar to the more famous sakura (cherry blossoms), but bloom a month earlier and have completely rounded petals, while sakura petals have a small v-shaped indent. My host mom and I went to a park known for its ume trees and sat in a grove amongst all the other couples and shared our embarrassing stories. The weather is getting warmer so it was a beautiful day, very pleasant :)

As of Monday, the third and last school term is now over, so I'm on a two-week break before the new school year starts in the beginning of April. Normal classes actually ended some weeks ago, and then there was the final test week, which seemed so awful. I understand now why everyone has such relatively bad scores. There are no other tests, only all at once in these finals weeks, and because they take so many different subjects, they have two or three finals every day for all five days. So they just study as much as they can then give up on a lot of the material. For Hannah and I however, it meant an easy week of half days in the English Lounge. We wrote those reports one day, watched Howl's Moving Castle, had a calligraphy lesson, then had a cooking day! Ohh the life of exchange students, I'm going to die next year. The home ec sensei was going to teach us how to make okonomiyaki, but sadly Hannah doesn't like it or literally any other Japanese food we could thing of other than fried rice, so we decided to turn it around and show the sensei how to make macaroni and cheese. One of the American teachers was thankfully there when we were planning and joined the party, and was able to say useful things like "you know, the cheese here is mostly really processed and doesn't melt properly," so we had to go to a foreign foods store to get actual meltable cheese. It turned out really well, despite all the senseis being horrified by the half a cup of butter (which really isn't that bad for two big pans...). Then after test week there was a week and a half of seminars, extra classes until noon. Last time I was with my class, which I like better, but this time Hannah and I were consigned to more boring English Lounge time. We were given practice problems for the JLPT (Japanese Level Proficiency Test), and it was cool because I was able to do it, so I might look into taking it later.

Monday, the last day of school, was really sad because it was my last day with my class. I don't know which one I'll be with after break, but it will be yet another grade lower :P I was surprised during the closing ceremony when twelve teachers who are leaving gave speeches. Twelve! I don't think it was related, they all had various reasons like trying something else or moving away, since most were young. All of them had only been at Kenmei 1-3 years, so maybe a high turnover is more normal here. Several of them were teachers I really liked, one of them being the only one who seems to care about what Hannah and I do during test/seminar weeks and is the one that plans any activities for us, so that's sad.

Other random things: Elementary school students mostly go to school by themselves, by train/bus/walking, so there is a system that messages parents when their students arrive and leave.

I don't know why I haven't mentioned this before, but almost everyone hangs their laundry outside. No one I have been with has used a dryer, which apparently tend not to work well here.

Because Japan is such a hotspot for natural disasters, everyone has disaster supplies. Kenmei had tins of crackers and water bottles that lasted for five years, and those five years were up, so all the students were sent home with bottles and tins.

Soap doesn't seem to be stressed as much as a necessity for washing hands, which is a little worrying.

Dodgeball here is completely different. One day after school we had a big tournament between all the second grade classes, which was really fun. They only use one ball, two at most. In the beginning two people from each team start behind the opposite team, and they can hit people from the back. If they do, they can go home. When people get out they go behind the opposite team, and the goal is to have less people there than the other team at the end. Because there is only one ball, the game has much more of a rhythm, with everyone backing away from the front when the other team has the ball, then away from the back when it's thrown to the back people.

So recently I've been doing really well, with a great family and friends, but I have some changes coming up, switching both families and class in a week and a half. My whole exchange experience is different with each family, so hopefully this next and last one will be good!