Homestay Weekend in Tsukuba
I’ve been so lazy with the blogging D: this happened last weekend. The CIE had a weekend homestay program and I went to stay with a family in Tsukuba!
I got to their house on Saturday and we just sat and ate wagashi and talked! Then I went out with the two daughters to walk their dog while the parents went to buy ingredients for dinner. We had a dinner of delicious temaki zushi and other really yummy food :D and after that, we watched this Japanese quiz show on TV together. I learnt a lot and got to speak a lot of Japanese. My Japanese has approved since my last homestay experience but it was still difficult to communicate and understand what they were saying D: On Sunday, they took me to see Lake Kasumigaura - the second largest lake in Japan. Then we were going to go hiking at Mt. Tsukuba but there was a big traffic jam and we couldn’t get there. The parents told me that it might be because people were still making late hatsumode trips to the shrine at Mt. Tsukuba. So instead, we ate at this soba-ya which is an old farmer’s house and saw the Ushiku Daibutsu! Then I headed back to Tokyo!
I guess you could say that I didn’t really do much - as in visit a lot of places. But I got to learn more about Japanese family dynamics. I don’t get to see this normally so it was quite interesting. The family was really nice to me and they tried really hard to make it a good learning experience for me. They really tried to explain things related to Japan or Japanese culture to me and I really appreciate it. Homestay is still a little awkward for me because it takes me a while to open up to people but it was all in all a good weekend!
My Wagashi :D
The family’s dog - she was really friendly : )
One side of Lake Kasumigaura (you can sort of see Mt. Tsukuba at the back!)
Cats!
Really yellow eyes o_o
The soba-ya we ate at!
Ushiku Daibutsu
And then this is completely unrelated to the homestay but I didn’t want to make a new post on it- the Monday after the weekend was Seijin no Hi. I had originally planned to go to seijinshiki since I got an invitation from Shinjku ward but decided not to since I didn’t have a kimono and I heard it was mostly for people to meet up with their old friends and classmates and my old friends and classmates aren’t in Japan so I didn’t go. I went to the Alice in Wonderland exhibition instead. We waited for 3 hours before we could get in but the exhibition was pretty cool and now I want to see the movie when it comes out!
