East and Further East: Japan

Sorry to everyone who's been expecting a post. I have been sick as well as busy with exams and essays. I actually wrote this post right after leaving Japan and haven't been able to post it because I haven't had internet. So a lot of the following might be outdated.

November 23, 24
Japan Day 3, 4

So I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’m sorry to all the people who have been checking the blog for a new post. I know I am missing all of Vietnam (where I had an amazing time with my parents and brother), all of China, and the first 2 days of Japan but hopefully I can start on them soon. After we leave Japan later tonight, we will have 10 days of straight sailing to Hawaii. This means that Japan was our last foreign country visit and now it’s on to the US. It’s sad because Japan went by so fast that I feel I barely experienced it though the experience I did have with it was amazing. After I finish this post on Kobe, hopefully I will find time to start on Yokohama and then Shanghai, Hong Kong, and if time allows and Allah is willing, I can get to Vietnam.

Before I left on Semester at Sea, I had signed up for a Japanese homestay in Kobe. I had been looking forward to this trip through Semester at Sea and now that it had finally come, I was really excited. We had just arrived in Kobe on the ship from a one day sailing from Yokohama. Japan consisted of these 2 ports (Yokohama and Kobe) where we spent 2 days in each. We did a similar thing in China where we spent 2 days in Hong Kong, sailed for 2 days, and then arrived in Shanghai (in each of these places including Japan we arrived one day and left the next). At 11:00am, I went out into the terminal to find my host family. I looked around for a minute before spotting a woman and her son holding a sign with my name on it. My host mom’s name was Hiromi Kawasaki and her son’s name was Hiro. Hiromi told me she also has a daughter named Satoka. I later found out her husband was on a golf trip and would be back later that night. Hiromi also told me that my original host family was unable to have me because there was a swine flu threat with one of their daughters (it turned out she was healthy). While we waited she frequently asked for clarification on English words, including aurora (as in aurora borealis). We then received a very awkward welcome from one of the Japanese organizers. She was very nervous and would laugh and then bow and then laugh and then bow. Finally, another lady welcomed us and then we played a game. There was a song we sang and then someone would say a number and we had to get into a group with that number of people. After we finished the game I left with my family in Hiromi’s black Mercedes. She lived in a town outside of Kobe and near Osaka (it was about a 30 min. drive).
We stopped at a small Japanese park/garden/museum/teahouse. I got to see the process of how they pickled foods. I also got to see a small Japanese garden with a lantern and small pond (it looked a lot like someone’s backyard). We left the garden and went out front to where there was a small food store (it looked like the equivalent of a Trader Joe’s). I got to try some pickled vegetable and some sort of ‘snail’. We then left for Hiromi’s home. The entire ride to their house was interesting: we started out listening to Abba and half way through started listening to Ricky Martin (who wasn’t as bad as I once had thought). There house is situated on a hillside outside of Osaka in what they said was the richest part of Japan. We drove uphill through a very nice neighborhood and eventually came to the Kawasakis’s house which was 2 stories and high up on the hill. Upon entering the house, we had to take our shoes off (wearing slipper’s was optional). I thought it was interesting comparing this ritual in a Japanese house to other houses in countries such as Ghana where shoes were the last concern. I set my backpack in the guest room (which had no bed in it- I slept on a large cushion bed (more later) and then went upstairs and talked with the family. I met Satoka who had been studying for school the next they (neither of the kids had school as it was the Japanese labor day). I explored the house for a little while Hiromi prepared lunch. We ate Udon noodles and curry for lunch which tasted great. Randomly, they had a Rubix cube sitting in their family room and I solved it for them after lunch which impressed them very much (it took me forever to solve). I then sat down with Hiromi in front of a world map and we talked about the places I had been in the previous months and the places she had been. She then asked me about many English phrases and what certain words meant. I relaxed for a little bit after that and then we went to a nearby park and met with one of the other homestay families, the Tanakas who were housing a friend of mine, Marcus, who is in my film class and coincidentally, also plays Rugby. We played soccer with Marcus’ homestay father and his 3 sons (he also had a little daughter who played off to the side). The 3 sons were 12, 9, and 6 (I think) and their friend Seya was there. We started off by playing keep away with the ball, then soccer (football) and then soccer tennis which was kicking the ball back and forth in between in a square. The boys were very good at football but also very rowdy and energetic. After we played at the park we left for their house to hang out. We were greeted by the mom of the family who was getting ready to prepare dinner for us (minus Satoka and Hiromi who were back at home). We washed our hands in a sink in their entry room and then entered their family room/kitchen. We played with the Japanese toy called kendama (Wikipedia it). We sat at the table and using raw meat “squeezed” (the mom asked me what motion it was) by the middle son together. We then were given circles of flat dough, put the meet in it and made gyoza (dumplings) by putting water on the edges and folding them up. We all folded the dumplings for a while and then Hiro started preparing a noodles dish by cooking some sort of meat and then adding lettuce, sauce, noodles and fish into a cooker. After removing the noodle dish, the mom started steaming the dumplings.
Meanwhile, we all started playing with the kendamas and spinning tops. This was all very reminiscent of spending the night at a friend’s house (play, play, eat dinner, play some more). They had a Christmas tree in their living room as well (I talked to Hiromi who said the Japanese celebrate commercial Christmas). We then sat down for dinner and had the dumplings, noodles, a rice cake (literally a cake made of rice) because it was Marcus’ birthday in 2 weeks, rice balls with tuna, and more noodles and pizza that a family friend had brought over (the pizza was absolutely amazing). After dinner, we cleared the table and started to make origami. We made paper cranes, hats, boxes, and the middle brother gave me a lesson on how to make paper shiruken (ninja stars). After making origami we arranged our creations and took a picture with them. As a gift, Marcus and me were given all the origami. We then got ready for desert which was interesting. They brought out a bowl of cut-up fruit such as tangerines and pineapple (the fruits you would find in a fruit cocktail) and in the middle of the bowl was a carbonated lemon drink. The middle brother had a piece of paper which was rolled into a funnel shape and had candy inside. He then let the candy drop into the bottle and the drink started to fizz over into the bowl of fruit (like adding Mentos to coke). We then ladled the fruit and the lemon soda into cups and ate it. After desert we played Jenga (or Tumbling Towers) which caused a huge amount of excitement from the kids (they were going crazy when people pulled blocks out). Just when I thought the night was over, the parents pulled out a pinata for Marcus’ birthday and we all were blindfolded and swung at the piñata (I completely missed). After breaking the piñata we brought all the candy over and shared. I’m sure there’s more to the night that I’m forgetting, but it was incredibly fun and I felt like I was a little kid again with my friends. I remember saying to myself ‘some things never change’ all night, mainly considering brother rivalry and other things.
After that, Hiromi picked me and Hiro up and took us home. Hiromi left to pick up her husband and I watched a little Japanese TV with the kids. When she returned, I got to meet Mr. Kawasaki who was a surgeon. Later, I took a bath and Hiromi made a bed for me on the floor of the guest room. The bed was a large pillow/blanket as a mattress, a sheet to cover that, a main blanket, and a pillow. The whole house (especially the bottom floor) was very cold, however the bed she made was very warm. I talked briefly about comics (manga) with Hiro earlier and he brought me 2 comics with a popular Japanese character named Doraemon. I read one of the comics for a while and found it unintentionally hilarious. The premise is a robot cat from the future who visits his friend’s grandfather as a kid and him and the grandfather (as a child) have lots of weird adventures. The book starts out with Doraemon and the grandson hiding in the kid’s desk and surprising him and telling him he’s going to hang himself in 30 minutes and be burned alive (later he gets his shirt caught on a tree and is burned by a hot bath). After reading a couple chapters of this, I went to bed.
The next morning I got up around 9:30. Hiromi helped me make a small Japanese breakfast which consisted of an egg cooked in a square pan and rolled up. I ate it with lettuce and rice. After this we cleaned the house for the 2 other nearby homestay students and their families to come over. I vacuumed the top and bottom floor of the house. Then the other 2 students came over: Marcus with his host mom and a girl who was also from Long Beach named Monica who came with her host mom. The women got out their calligraphy sets and we painted some Japanese characters including the character for mountain, trees, heart, and river. We used coal based paint and learned how to write our names in the character language Kanji. While we were painting, my original host mom and her 2 daughters arrived and I got to meet them. Her last name was Takahashi. While we continued painting the host moms started preparing lunch which consisted of rice with shredded seaweed, hot dog buns with a small hotdog and fried chicken in them, and a vegetable stew. When we finished most of the stew they added the rice into it and called it a risotto.
After lunch, I grabbed my stuff and we all got into separate cars and drove a little bit down and along the hill till we came to a hillside temple. Marcus had gone to his family’s school or something so it was just mine and Monica’s families at the temple. The temple had a central, large staircase that started toward the parking lot and went straight up to the actual temple. All the trees on the hillside (and throughout Japan for that matter) had autumn colors and the cherry blossom trees had red leaves. At the base of the stairs, below the parking lot was a small shrine. On the walls of the small structure hung the one thousand paper cranes as well as traditional Japanese sandals. We started to climb up the stairs to get to the top where the main temple was. On the way up we saw some grave stones of “ancestors”, some of which had bibs (as in baby bibs) on them. At the top, there was a well with water coming out of a dragon statue’s mouth. There were ladles for dishing water and washing your hands with it. We also were supposed to rinse our mouths with water but I accidentally drank it. We walked up to the temple where a family was chanting a prayer. There was a statue of Buddha made of wood with many bibs on it. The tradition was to rub the statue wherever you might have pain. So if you had stomach pain, you would rub his stomach, etc. Much of the coating of the statue had been worn away by excessive rubbing. The host moms I was with all rubbed his eyes. We then went to the large bell and all of us pulled the rope attached to the hammer which rung the bell. It was very loud and they later told me they could sometimes here it from their houses. We went back down to the parking lot where there was a pond with a bridge to a small island in the middle (it was blocked to the public). Monica commented on how similar it was to the Japanese Gardens back in Long Beach and how our moms used to take us there when we were little.
Hiromi forgot her phone at the house so went back and then we left to meet the others at the train station. We parked the car and then went into a small store where we bought a few things. I spotted a Pokemon toothbrush cap that I thought my friend Keith would like so I bought him that. We then walked from the store to the train station nearby. The host families gave us directions to get back to the ship by train. The three of us reluctantly then said goodbye to all of our host families and waved goodbye. We got on the train and left. We got off that train and transferred to a different train where we met up with other homestay students. In total it took us about 15 minutes to get back by train. We got back to the ship around 5 and I looked around for anyone who wanted to go back off the ship one last time but couldn’t find anybody willing so I stayed on board.
In my opinion, this was a great way to end my last foreign country on SAS. The Japanese family I stayed with and the other families I met were all amazing people who I realized were not very much different at all than US families. It was a lot of fun interacting with the kids and seeing how they entertained themselves. It kinda sucks knowing that my next stop is the U.S. but every moment in Japan was totally worthwhile, even the strangeness that was downtown Tokyo. Hopefully I will have a chance in the near future to talk about Yokohama and my day trip to Tokyo. Yokohama was extremely beautiful and it looked like it was morning (no joke) all day until late in the afternoon when it got dark really sudden. Anyway, I have a lot of work the next few days so we’ll see how it all goes.