Home Stay

Yesterday (Saturday), everyone spent a day with Japanese families in Kanazawa. Some people were alone and others went in pairs. (Randomly assigned?) I was in a pair with Ricky. The couple that picked us up from the dorm was pretty much the cutest old couple that exists. They picked us up at 2pm and we went for a drive. The first place we went to was a Zen Buddhist cemetary near their house. That sounds a bit creepy, but it's a really cool place. It's spread out throughout a hilly wooded area with a temple in the back. We rang a giant bell with a big log. Yeah, pretty awesome. Out front of the cemetary was a pretty great overview of Kanazawa.


After that, we went to a fresh foods market called Omicho Market. It was amazing. It had what I can only assume is almost every kind of sea creature. There was buckets of octopus tentacles of bowls of weird black goop. They bought us some ice cream while we walked around. Tip: eating ice cream while constantly smelling fish is not a good idea.

Finally, we went to their house for a barbecue. Once we got to their house, we met their two daughters and his mother, who was 90 years old. Both of their daughters were married, the oldest to a chinese man she met while studying mandarin in China. They had a son, who was 7. We went to their backyard to chill out and talk. Another exchange student was there for the day too, but she was Chinese. She had also been studying Japanese for one year, and surprisingly she was at about our level. The problem was, of course, that she didn't speak English. The good news was, that Mr. Chinese Yoshi could speak Mandarin, Japanese, and English. He gave us his business card. He told us if we ever wanted to go to China we could e-mail him and he could set us up. >_<

We spent abour four hours there just hanging out, talking, and eating. Once it got dark they brought out some sparkler-like fireworks for us to play with. The little kid plead with his mom for a lot of the time to be able to light two of them at once. She finally gave it at the very end after jo-chan had lit two.

They actually got watermelon for us, which supposedly is pretty expensive in Japan.

Picture with me and Ricky, Jo-chan, the head of the house, his daughter and her husband and their kid Hand-held fireworks

The homestay was one of the most fun experiences I've had so far in Japan. =)

A note on Japanese money, also, creatures!

I knew going in beforehand that Japan is a mainly cash society. It is common to have as much as 2 to 3 hundred dollars on your person at a time. What I didn't know was that the smallest bill was 1000yen, or 10 dollars. Lower than 10 dollars is all in coins. Yup. There are 500, 100, 50, 10, 5, and 1 yen coins. They look like this:

I'm still getting used to treating coins and actual valuable money. Also, it doesn't help that the 1 yen coin feels like monopoly money. Sometimes I run out of bills and go 'crap, i'm out of money...' only to discover I still have over 10-20 dollars in coins. As far as bills go, I've only seen 1000, 5000, and 10000 yen bills. (10,50,100 dollars, roughly)

Now for creatures! I've had the pleasure of running into a few animals that were not concerned at all that we were there. Here's a compilation of some of these doubutsu (animals).

Things you may not know about Japanese culture!

(This is what I have learned in culture class, if anyone thinks am I wrong, and by extension my professor, please say so, I am only repeating roughly what he told us)


There are many aspects of everyday Japanese life and culture that Americans, even those going to work in Japan, are never told. Some of these things are very important to know when forming friendships and relationships, both personal and business, with Japanese people.

Firstly, the Japanese are very harsh when it comes to drunk driving. Because of this, Japan has an extremely low drunk driving rate. Many times, if you are arrested for drunk driving it may make it to national news. Getting arrested means you will almost certainly be fired from your job. Beyond the legal blood alcohol level, in normal Japanese situations consumption of any alcohol (even one beer) means you shouldn't drive home. In downtown areas there are many taxis with two drives, one will drive you home in his taxi, and the other will follow you in your car. The Japanese are very concerned with responsibilty and respecting other people, so putting yourself and others in danger when it can be easily avoided is social suicide.

For relationships with other people, making friends carries with it much more responsibility and obligation than in American culture. If you are friends with someone, it commonly brings with it a level of obligation to the other person that in America you may only give to your family and very close friends, if that. Because of this, on average most Japanese have a smaller group of friends than Americans, but their networks can reach much further. Ignoring these aspects of the friendship can cost you a lot some of the time, as that lost friend may spread the word that you are not honorable to other people. Many businessman are hesitant to make many new friends, as it usually means that they will have obligations to use company resources to help the other person if they are in need, when they may not always be able to afford it. In this way, many men depend on their wives to make connections to other wives and thus their husbands for business interests that do not have that long term obligation. (As long as their wife doesn't have a career of her own)

This relationship culture also affects dating strongly. In America, you could meet a person in a bar, or in some public place, go out to dinner and a movie together and then decide if you are interested enough in that person to continue going out. In Japan, you can't just approach some person in public you find attractive and start chatting them up. There are very intricate social circles that exist; it isn't easy to cross the boundaries at will. Usually you may meet a person through someone else, and hang out with them in groups for a long time before even considering going somewhere alone. An 'American style' date would be fairly serious for a Japanese couple. If a couple is frequently going out alone then their families will soon expect that they will become engaged. For Americans, this seems sort of silly since it's precisly those kind of dates where you really get to know a person to tell if you can live the rest of your life with them.

That's all for now, maybe I'll write a little more later. I'm always open for a discussion too if anyone has any comments or questions.

Oh Japan...

You should probably read your product names in english before manufacturing them: (and you should know better, Glico)


In English, that says 'Pinesu,' which is pronounced (if you drop the u at the end as is commonly done) 'peenehs.'
Nobody was brave enough to buy it.

EDIT: Max did some research, supposedly it's a sour milk drink. Eww.

Fieldtrip to Kenrokuen Garden, 21st Century Museum, and Kanazawa Castle!

Last Saturday (土曜日) we took a trip to see the three of the major attractions Kanazawa has to offer. We took the city bus from KIT to downtown Kanazawa. From there it was a 5-10 minute walk between the locations.

On our walk to Kenrokuen, a company advertising for red bean popsicles handed passersby free popsicles and paper fans.

(Roughly says: July 1st is red bean bar day!)

When we arrived in Kenrokuen, we lazily walked through the garden. Kenrokuen is one of the 'The Great Gardens of Japan.' Kenrokuen means 'Six Attributes Garden.' The garden spans over 25 acres and was originally formed as an outer garden for Kanazawa Castle. There's not much to say in words about the garden, so I'll just show you some pictures:

After Kenrokuen, we walked over to the 21st Century Museum. It was pretty much like a 'modern japanese art' museum. One of the cool things in there was a maze-like pattern made completely of salt:

Probably the best display was an pool illusion which made people in the floor below look like they were underwater.

Finally, we walked over to Kanazawa castle. There are giant stone walls built into the side of the hill that surround the castle. We crossed a bridge to get to the front gate of the castle. Much to our dismay, there really was no phyiscal castle structure (though it might have been under renovation), but nonetheless, it was quite a sight to see.

These large white towers dotted the walls all around the grounds. In the middle was a large courtyard with small gardens spread around and a big grass field.

And here's us (well, the half of us in this group[and the japanese with us]): (and yes, I look like a dork)

Yay castles!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for my next installment: 'Is Japan really as weird as the internet tells me it is??'

Fire! 火！

Suddenly, a siren sounded, much like an air raid siren!! Followed soon after by the sound of fire engines. A couple minutes later the stench of fire enveloped the area....

Okay so that's a little dramatic, but this totally happened a few blocks away:

Japan! Adventures in Osaka

Everything you've ever heard about Japan from anime is 100% true. Okay, so maybe that's a slight exageration, but Japan is pretty different.

So we arrived in Kansai International Airport and went through quarantine. They gave us a face mask and a pamphlet pretty much saying to report people who get flu-like symptoms. After we got through customs, we had to find our way to the hostel in the Fukushima district of Osaka. Since we arrived so late, we missed the last train to downtown, so we had to take the bus. The good news was that it was a 'リモシーンバス,' or 'limousine bus,' which is what they call the big tour buses. The ride was about an hour to Osaka Station. From there, it was supposed to take 15 minutes to walk to the hostel. The problem is that most Japanese streets aren't named. So after about half an hour we finally found the hostel, after almost walking past it. Once we got settled in our rooms, I took a picture out the window:

In the morning we walked down the street to Fukushima station to find something to eat for breakfast. We found a little shop run by this adorable old man who was only capable of communicating via shouting and repeating what we said. He ran the entire place, took orders and cooked. We ordered 'Ham egg toast' which turned out to be a plate of big party sandwiches. They were decepitvely filling and also the best breakfast food I have ever eaten. Holy crap. And it only cost about 4 bucks. This was the beginning of what I'll call 'Bad food doesn't exist in Japan.' After eating, we decided to make our way back to Osaka station to take the train to Shin(new)-Osaka for the train to Kanazawa. On our way I took a picture of a passing commuter train:

Once we got back to the station, we took about 15 minutes to decide which train we had to take to Shin-Osaka and then decipher the ticket machine in order to buy the correct tickets. The train itself was fairly empty, only a few people had to stand. In Shin-Osaka station, we had to kill about 3 hours before we could take the train to Kanazawa, so we looked around for a drink machine, and we found this:

It's important to note that there were at least 4 more machines on each side of these. One thing you quickly learn in Japan is that they're obsessed with seeing an example of what you're getting. Every single drink machine has empty bottles or cans of each drink, instead of pictures like in America. Also many resturaunts have a display case out front with fairly realistic looking plastic plates of food. There's big business in making realistic-looking fake food. Even in the お土産 (souvenir) shop had a display box of the food on the top with the real food boxes below it.

We boarded a mostly vacant train around 4:15 (i guess no one goes to Kanazawa on a wednesday?) for the 3 and a half hour ride to Kanazawa. I'm pretty sure at some point we passed Obama, or at least a station that had a train going to Obama. When we arrived in Kanazawa close to 8pm we saw a lot of high school kids in uniforms scurrying about. They probably just got off of cram school and were on their way home. After killing some more time and trying the teriyaki burger at McDonalds in the station, we walked outside to wait for the shuttle and saw this:

At this point we realized that when they said that Kanazawa was a small city, what they meant was that it's a big city. There were tall buildings all around and lots of people out and about. While waiting and wandering we ran into some other non-Japanese which we immediately figured was other people on our program. And, of course, they were. At about 10pm the shuttle finally arrived and took us on the 30 minute ride down to the school. We were awkwardly introduced to some of the japanese students from SGE (students for global exchange) who helped us to our rooms and taught us how to make our futons. (in Japan, futon is not a couch that folds into a bed, it's just a mat that you store in your closet during the day and take out at night to sleep on) Once they left, I passed out.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more ADVENTURES IN KANAZAWA！　いいですね！