Its taken me a bit of time, but I’m finally getting to write about the homestay I did this weekend (Sept. 23-25) in Shiga-cho. On Friday, we left JCMU at 10am and took off for a 2 hour trip via bus to Shiga-cho (Shiga Town). Once we got to Shiga-cho, we stopped the bus and walked a few minutes until we got to a really beautiful shrine that was sitting at the top of a hill all alone. When we got there, we were greeted by traditionally-dressed bamboo-flute playing monks and laymen. One was wearing a basket on his head, and he later explained to us that since he wasn’t a real monk and hadn’t shaved his head, he had to wear it while on the shrine’s grounds in order to be respectful. After they played some music for us and allowed us to take pictures with them, they gave us a “light” lunch that included a cute little lunch box with ham and egg sandwiches (with all the crust cut off, as is the Japanese thing to do), as well as all you can eat croissants (!!) and drinks. They also gave us some sort of fruit that looked like a cross between a strawberry and a pomegranate. After lunch, we were led into another room where they gave us tea in the traditional tea ceremony. All this time we had been sitting in the tradition style (seiza), which started to become fairly uncomfortable. After the tea ceremony (where they continued to stuff us with food, this time mochi), we were taken outside to participate in the real tea ceremony (the former had only been practice). We got to sit outside in the hot sun and drink (really really) hot tea, all while kneeling on top of a mat that was sitting on top of a rock. They even let us try to make the tea ourselves, which was pretty fun. It was great because all the while, the head monk of the place (this really cute tiny bald old Japanese man, the stereotypical looking monk in every way), was standing there giving us tips and positive remarks.

After the tea ceremony, we went back into the room we had practiced the tea ceremony since it was the only air conditioned room in the whole place. After cooling down a bit, I wandered around the place with Cassidy and we took some pictures of the different statues and tori gates around the shrine. It was a pretty small shrine, but the surrounding mountains and scenery were very beautiful. After everyone had finished doing the semi-individual tea ceremony, they called us into the main hall again (where we had lunch), and we participated in some authentic Buddhist meditation. Authentic in the way that the head monk actually came through twice and whacked us all on the back with the official “Don’t fall asleep!” stick. We then had to sit in the zazen position for about 10 minutes to meditate….something I wasn’t able to do at all. Sitting on my knees is ok but sitting cross-legged with my feet on top of each other and my back straight up and down was…impossible. Guess my future as a Buddhist is out. The head monk was so awesome that after we all failed at meditation, he let us sit on his cushion, with our backs to the image of Buddha (a sacrilegious act) just so we could get pictures of ourselves.

After meditation, we did ikebana (Japanese flower arranging). At this point the fact that they are giving us so much cool stuff (for free!) is boggling my mind. But wait, there’s more! After we finished our arrangements, they gave us good luck bracelets based on our birthday! We were also able to take our arrangements with us, to use as presents for our host families. Everyone at the shrine had been so nice to us, that I almost felt bad as we left that I couldn’t give anything back as a token of thanks. Around 4:30 we walked back down the hill and got on the bus to ride to city hall, where our host families were waiting for us. Originally I was set to be in the same host family as my roommate Janet, but when we got there they told me that I had been switched and was now going to be in a family with my other neighbor, Jolene. Unfortunately for both of us, our host family (the Nishimae’s) wouldn’t be able to come pick us up until about 8pm. So, instead of being stuck in limbo for 3 hours, we got to ride to the home of another host family. Their house was AMAZING. It was bigger than my house in Michigan….IT HAD A TENNIS COURT. If you can even imagine how small most Japanese houses are (heck, the Japanese word for condo is mansion), this one was just astounding. I’ve actually never seen a Japanese house with a tennis court before, or even a front yard for that matter. The mom was a doctor, and for about an hour we played a pathetic game of basketball with the family’s three kids, as well as two other JCMU students.

Eventually, our host family came to pick us up, and since their house was only a few blocks away, we walked over to it. The family had two children: Jun, an 8-year old boy, and Akari, a 2-year old girl. Their house ended up being on the end of a row of brand new houses, out in the middle of no where. Fields on all sides, another very unusual sight in Japan. The house was fairly small inside, just a living room and kitchen, as well as a bathroom and small tatami room on the first floor, and with two bedrooms and a small bathroom on the second floor. The first night there we spent just eating dinner and introducing ourselves, as well as looking over scrapbooks that we had brought with us, and giving gifts to the host family. The rest of the night was spent sitting around and watching television, the first time that I have been able to do so since coming to Japan (usually the one TV at JCMU is being hogged by people playing video games). The next morning when we got up, we were given a Japanese breakfast (complete with cold tofu that I forced myself to finish so that I didn’t seem impolite), and while the host parents had talked to us the night before about going to a museum or maybe visiting Kyoto (only 20 minutes away), we ended up doing…nothing. The whole day all we did besides eat and sit was watch the son practice soccer and go to the store to buy umiboshi (a very sour pickled plum) so that Jolene could try it. I’m not really sure what happened to cause this, but the dad had to work and that left the mom to baby-sit her two children and two college students, so we didn’t have any way to get out. It wasn’t until the host mother’s friend came over that I was given an opportunity to do something interesting. After spending about an hour going over my 5 page scrapbook, and telling us some great stories about her trip to Yakushima (an island in southern Japan, where supposedly Hayao Miyazaki got all his locations for Princess Mononoke), as well as about some neat places to go in Kyoto, she asked if Jolene and I would like to go do karaoke for about an hour. Jolene was pretty tired, but I pretty much jumped at the opportunity to get out of house and do anything! So yeah, I’m pretty horrible at karaoke, but I ended up having a really great time at it. Could only single English songs, and tried to pick some that the host mom’s friend and her daughter would recognize…so I went with some Beatles tunes and Blondie. Seems like they recognized them, or at least could read the text on the screen as it was coming up. Whatever the case, leaving after an hour and a half was sad, but it was about 11:30pm when I got back to the host family’s house, and I had told the host mom that I would take a traditional Japanese bath after dinner, and she still expected me to do so. So whether she forgot to turn on the hot water or that’s just how it was, I had to first ’shower’ (sitting down) with freezing cold water, before I could get into the bath. Not a very fun experience at all. About midnight I got to go to sleep on a futon sitting on a wood floor, without a pillow. JCMU was starting to look like gold…

The next morning we got up and were treated to some nato for breakfast. Nato is fermented soybeans, and most Japanese people do not like them because of their strong smell. The smell didn’t bother me at all, but the fact that the beans were stuck in some sort of gooey stringy mess was an issue. At first it wasn’t so bad, but eventually the texture of them kind of got to me. Both Jolene and I politely declined to eating the rest of it. Since we had to meet back with the rest of the JCMU students at 10am, the family gave us a few gifts and then drove us to Shiga Valley, which….is actually on a mountain. We were set to go up said mountain via gondola, but because of a typhoon that was currently passing by Japan, the winds were much too strong, and instead we got to sit inside the basement of some building to have a discussion about our experiences. My host family couldn’t stay, so I sat around with the other students and their host families as they talked about how they went to festivals, visited Kyoto, and generally did lots of fun cultural stuff. I felt pretty disappointed at that point that I couldn’t also get to do some of those things. After the discussion was over, I wandered around the top of the mountain and got blown around a bit as I tried to take some pictures of the view of Lake Biwa from the middle of the mountain. I had been really looking forward to the gondola ride too…

Leaving the mountain, they drove us to a hotel in Shiga-cho where they were going to hold a party for us. We had to wait a bit for them to set everything up for us, but the wait was worth it. They gave us a smorgasbord of food (including pizza, french fries, and hot dogs!), and we were treated to some taiko drum playing (which was awesome!) as well as some nice music from a band headed by the father of the host family I was originally assigned to. I got to try out playing some of the taiko drums, and during some of the songs by the band they forced us all to come up to the front and dance a bit. They also gave everyone free wine and beer, so as the party started to get going a few of the students got a little tipsy (myself excluded). The only negative of the whole thing was they gave us tables to eat at but no chairs to sit in…..so we got to stand in place about 3.5 hours straight. Eventually I was starting to get somewhat tired of it all, so I was glad when we were able to get back on the bus and go home. A lot of the students and host families got a little teary eyed when saying goodbye, but my host family wasn’t there…. The 1.5 hour ride home wasn’t so bad, and you could tell we were nearing Hikone as the waters of Lake Biwa started to go from sparkling blue to murky black. Got back around 7pm where I proceeded to laze around my room and appreciate my foam mattress.

I’m not sure what this holds for next semester’s opportunity of doing a homestay. I don’t think that I would be able to do it with a family with small children, since while I like children fine, I’m not really open to living with a toddler that isn’t mine for 4 months. I do think that living 24/7 with Japanese helped me to feel a bit more motivated when I came back this week, at least for the first few days. Being at JCMU and living with people who only speak English when not in class makes it somewhat hard to be motivated to study further than finishing homework. Guess I’ll have to ponder it, over the next three months…..

At the shrine:

With my host family:

On top of the mountain:

At the party:

A rainbow!