Homestay (or in Japanese Hōmusutei)

Day One

My friend and I were very lucky to get the opportunity to stay with a host family though our course at Okayama university.

We were picked up at 10am by the host father who had his two adorable daughters (aged 4 and 7) with him to meet us too. They were incredibly shy at first, and the eldest handed us each a paper crane she had made with our names on. We were then taken back to their lovely house, and met our host mother. The children were pretty eager to get all their toys out and show them to us, and almost immediately I ended up making a puzzle with the 4 year old.

When the kids were eventually persuaded to put their toys away our host family offered to drive us to the mall in Kurashiki (Aeon Mall), one that we had not managed to go to ourselves in the past as we had not mastered the public transport yet. 

Once there we were left to our own devices, so decided to try our first Japanese 'Chinese' food, which was pretty delicious to be honest! And have since been back to this particular restaurant.

It turned out that this mall was a lot bigger than either of us had expected, and we both ended up spending far more money than we planned to, getting a little lost, and we never even found half the shops on this occasion! However, we did find a Studio Ghibli shop :D which we were very excited about, though it was incredibly expensive! 

For those who do not know, Studio Ghibli is the Japanese equivalent of Disney, and well worth checking out.

 

 Who thought this was a good name for a baby clothing store?!?

Well that is one way to make a mannequin wink... Just paint over her eye and add fake lashes, that won't be creepy at all! 

We bought some doughnuts for the kids :) 

After all that hard shopping we met up again with our host family, who took us on a few errands, which was weirdly nice because we really felt like part of the family just going food shopping, something you can really miss when studying abroad. 

We then went out to dinner at their favourite family restaurant, and I was curious to see that the 4 year old was given scissors to cut her noodles, something I had never considered before. Then it was back home for a game of Jenga, which I had bought earlier in the day, and the family had never played before! I was honestly very impressed with how tall the tower got, especially for beginners. 

Then came bath time...

Our host mother told us to gather our bath stuff (towels, soap etc), plus our pyjamas, and then we all bundled into the car. We were taken to the Onsen, public baths, that luckily her parents (our host grandparents?) owned and ran. Naturally my friend and I were a little nervous as public baths are pretty much like having a bath with strangers, without any swimming costumes... Eventually we built up our courage and went for it. Funnily enough the two little girls ended up have to try and explain or show me what to do, but ultimately the experience as a whole was surprisingly enjoyable. After bathing we dried off, got into our pyjamas and went out to the lobby when the owners were. Usually you buy a milkshake or something similar afterwards and just relax for a bit, but we got them for free, wooo! We had a lovely chat with the grandparents, in a mixture of English and Japanese, and promised to go back there at some point. Then it was home and bed time. 

Day Two

Started the day with a home cooked breakfast, and then we went to the local museum to look at a traditional Japanese pottery exhibition, whilst our host mother straightened the house. 

When we got back they offered to take us all to the beach, which I was super excited about. We drove up into the mountains and stopped for ice cream at a lovely little ice cream shop. It had some quirky flavours and of course I couldn't resist trying them, so I had kiwi ice cream and olive ice cream, which was actually pretty tasty! It was interesting to see that this place was clearly a hang out spot for Japanese bikers, and almost hilarious to see a huge group of hard looking people in leathers, sitting around eating ice cream.

Then the views:

Here we are with the girls before we drove back home and said our goodbyes.

(The little one didn't take that pikachu hat off for two days!) 

All in all it was an amazing experience, I am really glad we had the opportunity to do it, and I learnt a lot about Japanese life and families just from those two days. Plus the two little girls were excellent Japanese teachers for me, probably because we were on the same wave length.

Tatami factory and beautiful views

 As part of one of our modules, we get to go on trips on an almost biweekly basis, and on this week we were to go to a Tatami factory. 

Tatami is the traditional flooring that you often see in old style Japanese houses, and even today most Japanese houses have either a specific area or room with tatami mats still. 

The university provided us with a coach to the factory, and we provided the road trip snacks. 

  

 I keep seeing these ducks or their frog equivalents along the roadside holding barriers up, pretty cute though, and the giant octopus in the background really adds the Japanese to it. 

 After a tour of the factory and being shown the huge machines that wove the fabric, we got a chance to make our own tatami mat! We chose the patterns we wanted from a large selection, so everyone ended up with different mats.

 So I was too distracted creating my master piece to take any "the making of" photos, so here is the finished product, as if by magic :D 

And then home again, with the sun low in the sky I got some pretty decent shots considering they were with a phone and out of the window of a moving bus 

Festival and shopping

So last week we got an extra 3 days off from university for the campus festival. I didn't really know what to expect, but essentially there was a lot of food, and a lot of dancing. It was pretty interesting to see how people acted differently here. Under normal circumstances students do not come up to me and talk to me, but because they were trying to draw people to their stalls, we were constantly being hounded down to eat whatever food they had to offer. Students were more than willing to just shout random English words at me to get my attention. I had more than one person just say "I love you" for no apparent reason besides to get my attention so I would buy the food at their stall. I had to learn how to say "maybe later" in Japanese just to get people to leave us alone. And when I did return to one stall for food, the girl screamed at me (which is apparently a positive thing here), but startled me nonetheless! 

Stalls all tried different tactics to get our attention, one which was selling just chips had the below sign, the McDonald's clown is slightly terrifying, and the 'M' legs are just random!

After all the excitement and food of the festival we were off to the outlet mall in Kurashiki for a bit of shopping, which also meant I had to get my first train since I arrived in Japan, which was a lot less stressful than I envisaged.

Mitsui outlet park is actually built on the site of an old Dutch theme park, Tivoli Park. Pretty much all that is left of the theme park is the clock tower. The picture below is taken from the train station looking towards the outlet park.

I keep seeing these pants everywhere, because apparently it gets cold enough to need giant fluffy pants here...yay?

I also took a picture of 'something'

Apparently Christmas has arrive already, from what I could tell there was a little stand where kids could control the lights and sounds the tree made...

Bruce biscuits!! Found in a French shop? Where I also found the Queens face on biscuits...

Interesting earring packing 

My first Japanese McDonald's 

Mmmm teriyaki chicken burger. Actually a large here is so much bigger than a UK large meal.

The tower from the other side as we left. Upon the hour I am told that little characters come out of the clock, though I really don't know what they do.

The results of a hard day shopping, and yes I even managed to buy mince pies in Japan, in November!! Yayyyyyyyy!