host family

 Today was an awesome day! Although I spent the most of it speaking Japanese, so you'll have to excuse the many grammatical errors that I'm sure I will make. Meiji Gakuin set up the international students with a host family, some of the students spent the night with their family and other just spent the day. I just spent the day with my family, but it was so much fun! The family I got paired up with is the Kojima Family. They are a super nice family of three, they live in a mansion (Japanese style apartment, they live on the 17th floor!), and the little girl (who is 10) spent this summer at a camp in Pennsylvania.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way to their house and picked up some ingredients to make 手巻き寿司 (てまきずし、hand rolled sushi). I am not the most adventurous when it comes to eating certain foods, but while in  Japan I have been following the rule of trying everything at least once.  Oh, I tried so many new things... various kinds of sashimi (raw fish), salmon eggs, 海ぶどうumibudou (literally translates as 'sea grapes' - imagine if tiny grapes and seaweed had a baby. a very, very, very, very salt water tasting baby), and a Japanese vegetable dish that I can't remember the name of. 

The little girl, Yui, broke this little musical instrument out after lunch. It's called a Sanshin, it's an Okinawan instrument. I think this little beauty is about as close to a banjo as I'm going to get in Japan. It has three strings (san means three, shin means strings) and it's supposed to be covered in snakeskin but I don't think this one was. 

Later in the day my host family took me to Asakusa which is probably the most quintessential city in Tokyo. It was my first time going there and it was really nice but very touristy.  The little girl had always wanted to ride a rickshaw but never could because they only hold two seats, so today was a big day for her!



This is the whole family and the dude who dragged us through the streets of Asakusa. You could tell he was definitely worried at first when my host parents left us in his care, he wasn't sure what language to speak to us in and his English was very broken. But he managed to give us a nice tour of Asakusa and I actually learned a bundle of fun facts that I'll happily repeat to anyone who comes for a visit!



After we walked around Asakusa we went to an Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) restaurant because Okonomiyaki is Yui's favorite meal. It was a neat restaurant, traditional and tiny, I had to keep changing positions to keep my feet from going numb though.