The Homestay

So its already* been 12 days in the homestay and now I'm back to living out of hostels for the next while. I must say, while I love traveling- I love seeing new things, eating new foods meeting new people getting lost etc.- there is something to be said to not worrying where you are going to sleep at night, to not need to have any security over your belongings etc. In hindsight, instead of a RTW ticket, having just picked 3 places to live for 2-4 months each might've been slightly superior. I think it might just be part of my personality and everyone is probably different on this.

Anyways, living here was great. For the first time in a good 3 months I had home cooked meals. I got to hang out with 2 adorable little girls. I think the experience, when weighed versus living in hostels gave me a very different look at the country/ culture etc. For example, during these 2 weeks I had one drink was at lunch yesterday. I woke up every morning at 7 (at the latest) and went to bed well before midnight each night. Besides putting me in a more natural rhythm then I was in during high school (and something I hope to revert back to when I settle down) this prevented me from seeing much of the youth culture in Japan except for the people I saw on the subway. And I haven't seen the city lights at night.

On the other hand, I know a lot about how Japanese people live in small houses (its not bad at all), what they eat, where they sleep, what they do in their free time. Relationships between kids and the mother (and the father).

I think given that I have the opportunity to experience both the family life and youth culture in Japan I am really glad I went for it.

For those curious about both go and cooking, I have some unfortunate news.

re: go. When I got here I did some internet research for go clubs and came up empty handed. All that i found was someone who wrote an article about a go club here 20 years ago. I emailed a few people and made a craigslist post also asking for a partner and asked the next day when the host family had a gathering of about 8 friends. No one knew anyone who played go. So I gave up.

re: cooking. Every meal (except for noodle dishes at lunch) included a bowl of rice. Breakfast was usually leftovers from dinner the night before - exceptions being
pancakes, eggs or a pan fried fish.

So a typical dinner would be

Miso soup (includes onions, mushrooms, some seaweed)
A stew. includes ground beef, skinned/boiled potatoes, steamed carrots, green onions, radish (i think)
bowl of rice

things to add to the rice. one was small fish called "jacko" (as in wacko jacko)
another was a mixture of ground beef and i think ginger? Although it wasn't very strong tasting so it might've been something else.

In general - for cooking japanese foods i was a little dismayed by the fact that most of their cooking supplies were particular to japan. I will hopefully visit (and document) a trip to a japanese supermarket with kristin but they have a lot of things readily available (fish in particular, but also things like sticky rice and some food on sicks) that I have never seen in north america. I remember kenta complaining about it in uni, but i thought he was just making it up.

anyways, from here a friend of mine is visiting tokyo in transit from la to china for a few days so i look forward to seeing him for the first time in a pretty long time. Our plan for tomorrow morning is to visit the tokyo fish market - which i still haven't gone to, but I think I may end up visiting 3x before leaving this country.

After that I am off to visit Hiroshima, Kobe and Osaka. I'm not going to see Sapporo because its too cold and I am going to hold off seeing Kyoto until Kristin gets here because that was high up on her list.

I want to make another post about some observations about the social culture here and hopefully I get around to it.

To everyone reading- Happy Holidays- enjoy your christmas, hanukkah or solstice and best wishes for the new year!