Meeting my Host Family

We met out host families on June 26th. Eveyone was extremely nervous; some people were even shaking. While we were waiting, my friend Sophia and I met out laison. She told us what to expect and taught us how to introduce ourselves to our host families. "Konnichiwa. Watashii no namae wa Nicole McNevin desu. Hajimemashite."

It wasn't long before my host familiy arrived. I have a mother, Tomomi-san, a father, Toshi-kun (he likes to be called that so he doesn't feel old), a little sister, Yumi-chan, and a little brother, Yuto-kun. I blanked on how to introduce myself; I got really nervous and just said, "H-hi...". Thankfully, Tomomi-san is an English teacher, so she knows my language very well, lol.

The car ride to their house was a bit awkward. We were all a bit nervous about talking to each other. However, we finally got engaged in a conversation about High School Musical. I don't really like that movie, but it was better than just sitting in silence.

On the way there, we stopped at a steakhouse for lunch. Surprise! No traditional japanese food here! In fact, it was mostly meat and potatoes, and the menu was half in English. While we were waiting, my family taught me how to write my name in Katakana (one of the three ways to transcribe Japanese).

Once we got home, the children gave me a tour of the house and showed me my room. There was no air conditioning in my room, so it was often very hot. They put a fan in there to keep me cool. The house was small, but nice. It was just the right size for us.

Later that day, Tomomi-san took me to Yumi and Yuto's musical practice. They asked me to sit through it and help them with pronunciation in their songs. Well, I didn't think that I'd be much help, since I didn't know very much Japanese, but it turned out that they were singing Disney songs, such as "I Just Can't Wait to be King" and "Be our Guest". It turns out that I was actually of some use to them.

The next day, my family took me to a rice cracker factory. These are no ordinary rice crackers; they acually put FISH in these! And you can get a whole variety - salmon, shrimp, and even squid ink, amongst about fifty more that I didn't even know the names of! We also made our own giant rice crackers. They'd pour the batter on to some sort of grill, and then they'd cook it like a beligian waffle. After it was done, you'd take it over and color it with soy sauce flavored paints. I drew a dog; I'm not good at art. You'd then take it over to this huge machine where it would basically dry it, and it would come out ready to eat. It didn't have much flavor, but it was good, nonetheless.

Afterwards, we went to this huge media store. There were a lot of cool things there. For example, they had box sets of anime, several Japan-exclusive DVD's like Arashi no Yoru Ni, and a bunch of video games that hadn't been released to the U.S yet! I saw the latest Harvest Moon and Pokemon games, so that was sweet.

Those were basically my first days with my host family. The next entry: first day of school!