My Homestay Experience

It's me again (Running out of ways to introduce my posts other than 'hey it's Sean'.)

The holiday's in full swing! With all the trials and tribulations of last term now behind me, I am really looking forward to what this two-month holiday I have just embarked on will behold. This week, I am staying with a Japanese family, who's sitting room I am currently writing from. At the end of this week I will fly back to the UK for just under 2 weeks to do all sorts of catching up. The following week will be spent in Kobe since I need to show up to orchestra a bit (rehearsals continue through the holidays which has caused me all sorts of problems trying to negotiate when I can come because, obviously, I am not spending the entire two months here in Kobe in my panic-room-esque dorm). The next two weeks I am travelling with my parents around Japan, and finally I have 10 days in April with my friend from Uni, Steph who has a place on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Plenty to write about!

Ok so seeing as I'm on a homestay right now I will talk about that this post. I am going to try to update more this week too so I don't get to the end and forget everything I did like with my Tokyo post.

A 'homestay' is exactly what it says on the tin, staying in a Japanese household with a 'host' family. This is my first 'proper' homestay, but technically my second because I did a one-night homestay in Korea last summer. However it was kind of rubbish since instead of treating me like a normal family member they didn't speak to me at all and cooked me separate meals which was really weird.

A Japanese house differs to a western household in the following ways:

1) They aren't made of bricks they are made of...in fact I don't know but they look like they are made of plastic, like a massive porta-cabin.

The Morimoto household

Japanese houses always have the family name written by the entrance (The David bit is just the foreign student they had to stay with them before)

2) Japanese houses do not have central heating. Make no mistake though it gets just as cold here as the UK. Instead rooms are heated individually with an electric heater. This sounds like a hassle but I think it saves a lot of electricity since you only heat a room when you are using it.

3) This may not be 100% correct but from the houses I've been to in Japan everything is laminate floored. Since gets quite cold people always wear special slippers in the house, and there are separate slippers for going to the toilet.

4) Japanese houses all have a special hallway called a genkan, which is where people keep their outdoor shoes. The genkan is always at a lower level than the actual floor of the house, and when you enter the house you rise from the genkan, to translate directly.

5) For the bathroom, you always have to take a shower first before you enter the bath water.  I heard that it is also not customary to drain the bath water after use but in this house we use new water each time. 

This week I am living with the Morimoto family. This is my third day with them and we have been getting along really well. My 'mum', Mayumi, is from Kansai and you can tell, as she is really bubbly, has a strong sense of humor, full of energy, and kind of crude compared to most Japanese. My 'dad', Toru, is a civil servant. Most of the time he is at work so I haven't had a chance to get to know him incredibly well.

The first day isn't particularly interesting since we mainly just chilled at home and visited Toru's parents. Mayumi is a great cook and made us Bibimbap (this is a korean thing) for dinner. On Sunday we visited Osaka to have a look round some museums. Firstly we went to a history museum with a street of Osaka recreated in the Edo period (1600-1867), and after that a museum of retro Japanese electronic appliances such as old TVs, toasters and washing machines etc.

Recreation of an Edo period street

Even though it was a museum the realism was surprising as there were lots of people in kimono, and the 'weather' would suddenly change from sunny to stormy and dark, with storm clouds projected onto the ceiling. There were many traditional one-room houses, a bath house (with no water though), a pharmacy and market street so it was quite easy to get lost amongst it all!

Mum playing with a traditional catch the ball in the cup toy called a kendama

I also had a go

Outside the 'book store'

Photo outside the pharmacy with Dad. Behind the pharmacy there was a large (by Japan's standards) house, presumably belonging to the wealthy owner. If you look closely at the sign to the right of the photo there are some roman letters. They spell a Dutch name (Vloym Van Mittr or something). I'm not 100% sure but I assume this to be the name of the trading company. During the Edo period Japan operated a policy of national isolation; only the Chinese and the Dutch were permitted to trade with Japan at specially designated ports. In the Edo, trading with the Dutch was an important source of western technology (such as medicines) and was known as rangaku 'Dutch learning'. This represents some of the earliest western influences in Japan. 

Seeing as there are cars here, this scale model street must be from the Meiji period when trade with the west was opened up fully

Then we went to eat some takoyaki. This is octopus cut into small pieces fried in batter into a ball shape topped with a sweet sort of sauce, herbs, mayonnaise, and katsuo (fish flakes). This is a really popular food in Japan and even though it sounds like it could taste quite weird it's honestly delicious.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called 'The Old England', which marketed itself as an English restaurant, but, like all Western-style restaurants in Asia didn't serve anything even closely resembling English food (apart from the fish and chips). We ordered something called 'the English combo' which was a bowl of French fries, two bits of fried chicken, and a piece of battered fish. Dad had a 'medium' Guinness (an IRISH beer), what they call 1/2 pint, and Mum freaked out when I told her people normally drink twice of what Dad had ordered. The decor, looked like the houses of parliament, dark wood and those same kind of green leather chairs- so I guess that was authentic of England in a way.

Afterwards we went to a 'British pub', where we ordered 'roast beef', some slices of beef sitting on a tiny blob of mash floating in a pool of gravy. I thought it was really adorable of my host family going through the effort of taking me to all these 'British' places. Mum kept on asking me questions like "Is this like the real England?" Does this remind you of home?", and of course I lied because I couldn't bare to disappoint them after they'd gone through so much effort to track these places down.

Today we went for a walk round the beach. It was really cold so I obviously didn't go paddling but you could see Awaji Island and it the bridge connecting it to Honshu Island. I've also done a lot of TV watching here, not because I'm anti-social but because we don't have a TV in our horrible cramped dorm so I haven't had a chance to watch Japanese news before. Most of it seems to be centered on the Senkaku/Diaoyu (depending on whose side you're on) Islands dispute with China, and North Korea's plans to blow up Tokyo; stuff that makes me feel lucky to be from the UK.

That brings me up until this moment in time I am writing in terms of updates on my life. I'll try to update this week whilst I'm still in Japan, if not I'll probably write something on the plane journey home. See you soon, whoever you are reading this.

Sean