Life's B-Side: Surviving Homestay

Only 3 and she's already a pro at the peace sign!

Woohooo!

This last weekend was my first experience staying with a Japanese family.

I wish I would've known about the option to do homestays much earlier in the year.

Either way, it was a pretty good experience..

When i turned in my application a few weeks ago, of the ladies at the ryugakusei center asked me if I liked kids.. I just kinda shrugged my shoulders and said "yeah" with more of an I guess tone. At first I was a bit nervous cuz i usually cant understand kids in the first place, specially Japanese speaking kids. In actuality, they kept me pretty entertained.. It was a nice weekend eating and taking some trips with the family. I also got some good insight into how to raise Japanese 3 and 4 year olds.. or at least a little bit of what to expect. Eta-kun, the 4 year old boy is pretty hyper... well behaved when he wants something... likes to make funny faces when his picture is taken. The 3 year old girl was cute too. She seemed to cry alot though and for reasons i don't know why. Enna-chan would draw something with crayon, all of a sudden she would be crying at the dissatisfaction of what she just drew. It was cute... like a true troubled adolescent artist. I had to keep making silly faces in order to keep her smiling. There were a few times i thought she was about to cry but luckily i did something silly enough to make her laugh instead.

Thanks to them I got to see some cool limestone caves in some remote part of Oita-ken. I got to see some stone carved buddhas in Usuki too. They must have been almost 800 years old.

If I have time in the future I would like to spend more time with them... I barely spoke any English! Even in Japan, when you have a whole community of English speakers, its pretty hard to resist... I still feel like i need to improve my Japanese though. As of the last few weeks ive been brainstorming ideas on how to come back or at least not lose my Japanese when I go back home.

I don't remember the name of this god but he looked pretty bad-ass. See the dragon?

Limestone caves. The last time I saw one was in a video game called Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven...yup... ninjas.

Feeding fish and watching them fight over little food pellets is entertainment for all ages.

If I remember correctly, this is the god you pray to so you don't get schizophrenia. Notice the happy human statues?

The god of luck?

The coolest looking buddha ive ever seen...

My Japanese family took me out to try some Japanese "Chinese" food. Not bad at all... pretty good actually. Im just not sure what the difference between public and regular food is. If you look closely it says "public chinese food" !!!