The weekend after spring break I finally met
my home visit family! Now, a home visit family is different from a homestay
family. The home visit program is only available for those living in a seminar
house/dorm. This way, those living in a dorm can experience having a family in
Japan and see how family life works in Japan. Due to spring and winter break, I
wasn't able to meet my home visit family until two weeks ago. It was great to
finally meet them!
Before officially meeting everyone, I met my
home visit sisters in Umeda station in Osaka. Riko is a fellow Kansai Gaidai
student. In fact, all the home visit families have one student from Kansai
Gaidai. Riko is a sophomore here. She has a little sister, Rui, who is nine and
a younger brother, Sho, who is fifteen. Riko and Rui were there at Umeda
station to meet up with me.
After about 15 minutes in trying to find each
other in the train station, we finally meet up with each other and head towards
Hep5, the shopping mall with the ferris wheel on top that I talked about in the
beginning of my blog posts. Here, we ate a little dessert at the Gutatama Cafe,
or Lazy Egg as it's known in the States. Riko and I both had this delicious
cake, while Rui had a hot chocolate with a design on it.
After our little sweet break, we moved on to
the Sky Bridge Buildings across the street. The two buildings are connected via
two escalators. It's pretty thrilling! On the roof, there's a magnificent view
of Osaka.
It's now time for dinner! We take the train
for about an hour to the local train station. Riko's mom met us there and drove
us to their house. It's a lot smaller than my house back home, but it's perfect
for Japan. Out of necessity, most houses are small. After taking off my shoes,
they showed me their living room. Instead of a couch, they have a heated, plush
carpet type mat. The dad and brother were sitting there waiting to met me when
the mom was just a couple of feet away in the kitchen. I sat down and tried my
best to talk to the rest of the family. Sho and Riko are the only ones who
really know English, with the mom and dad knowing only a few words here and
there. Rui is still too young to learn English in school.
In Japan, the culture revolves around gift
giving. If you go on vacation, you are expected to return with a gift for
friends, family, and even coworkers. That's why a lot of the stores in
Disneyland had boxes of food and souvenirs, or omiyagai. So to follow this gift
giving culture, I gave my home visit family two gifts. One was a tin of
chocolates from Disney Sea. I knew that if nothing else, Rui would love it. The
second gift was much more special. I give them a little carved bear from
Dollywood. It's a link both to my family, since my Papa To (grandpa) was a
carpenter, and to my home, since it was from Dollywood and a black bear. I
tried my best to explain this in Japanese, though Riko jumped in a couple of
times to explain better.
After giving my gifts, we had dinner. Mom,
you're going to be so proud. I had a salad and ate it all. I really don't like
salad. In Japan, it's extremely rude to not eat everything on your plate. This
led a wonderful conversation about salad dressing. They use Japanese mayo for
dressing. It's a little different than our mayo. The family was shocked when I
said we use honey mustard for salad dressing. I mentioned McDonald's to
describe what honey mustard was. This then led to a everyone trying to mimic
how I say McDonald's for about five minutes. In Japanese, McDonald's is
pronounced almost like it's MacDonald's. So everyone around the table just kept
on trying to say Mc instead. We also talked about my family. While talking, the
food was so good. It was really nice to have a homemade meal that I didn't
make. There was even a dish with potatoes! The mom asked what I liked and was
very impressed when I said I liked basically all Japanese food, including raw
fish.
Following dinner, I was invited upstairs to
Riko's room. I was very surprised, because traditionally, you don't invite
people up to their rooms. I was very honored. The four of us, the kids and I,
entered the room and played card games. They wanted me to teach them some
American card games. Me, being the big gamer I am, was thrilled!! So I taught
them the number one card game in America, Go Fish. It's a simple game. Since my
Japanese is not good enough to explain, I ended up explaining in English with
Sho and Riko understanding, and then translating for Rui. We all had fun with
the classic card game! I found out that they call Jack, Queen, King, and Ace,
by numbers such as 11, 12, 13, and 14. They then teach me so Japanese card
games and also perform a magic trick for me. It was fun sharing games from each
other's cultures.
I had such a fun time meeting my home visit
family. They were so opening and welcoming for me, which I very much
appreciated. I can't wait to meet them again this coming month!!
