#12 Go Go Go

So, my host mom has my whole stay here planned out. No joke, my schedule is loaded! You should see her calendar, it is entirely filled with Kanji (Japanese Writing Style #1), and it’s even color coded. Yeah, that’s how busy she is. I couldn’t even imagine how she would get stuff done if she went to work every day. I’ll see if she’ll let me take a picture of it later.

So, today my host mom, Tomoko, and I went to the Nankichi Museum. Nankichi Niimi is a famous writer that was born in Handa City in 1913. My host mom had one of his stories, in English, for me to read. :) You know me and books. I was excited, even if it was just a children’s book…

I love museums. I could spend all day in a museum if I was allowed. I like reading all of the information that is posted at all the little stations. Most of the time though, there are other people with me and they don’t want to do that. (Except for Dad, he likes to read them too.) In the Nankichi Museum however, everything was in Japanese, so I couldn’t read all the information even if I wanted to. My host mom picked out most of the interesting things though. Sigh, I wish I could find a translator button in my head somewhere. That would make everything so much easier…

After the museum, Tomoko took us out to Chya Chya. It is an Italian restaurant that serves pizza and pasta. It was a very Japanese “pizza and pasta” let me tell you that right now. First of all the pizza is super thin and tiny, not thick and deliciously saucy and the toppings were… interesting… It was the same with the ingredients in the pasta. They were interesting… I chose pasta with cream sauce, shrimp, basil, spinach, and eggplant. That was probably the most normal one. I am pretty sure there was one with squid. Haha. I ate it all of mine though. (Except for eggplant.) They were playing Ice Age in English at the restaurant, just thought I would add that in.

When we got home Tomoko gave me a Hiragana (Japanese Writing Style #2) practice book. I learned how to write my name basically. Haha.

Tomoko left eventually, having to go home to her own two kids, one is actually my age, but I haven’t met her yet.

Hiroko Sensei came after that. I got to learn some calligraphy (or shodō). Mostly all I learned was that calligraphy is hard. Lol.

This is some of my best work. It says Kazoku. It means Home Group, or Family, in Kanji. My name is on the side in Hiragana.

They kept telling me I was a quick learner, so I think I did it right. Lol.

The Japanese are very giving people. Whenever you go to someone’s house or if you just feel like it, you give gifts. Hiroko gave me a gift so I gave her some of my precious chocolates. I also gave my host mom her chocolates as well. The first comment they made when they had some was, “It’s so soft.” They are so deprived when it comes to chocolate. :(

After calligraphy, my Obāsan (or grandmother) took my host mom, Iri, and me out to eat. We went to a Japanese Tempura restaurant. It is basically fried food over rice. I had shrimp with some veggies. It was very yummy or as they say in Japan, oishii (delicious). Once again, I ate it all, except for the eggplant. Lol.

I have found out, since my stay in Japan, that I do not like Green or Straw Tea, hot or cold. I love coffee hot, not cold, and they have Coca Cola here! In like every vending machine. And vending machines are everywhere in Japan!

They have a lot of other drinks in there that I have not been brave enough to try yet though.

After Tempura, we went home.

I met my host dad today. He comes home very late and he only speaks a little English but he seems to be okay with that. He gave me a present. It is a picture of a Dashi, which is a float that they make during the Handa Dashi Matsuri or Handa Float Festival. Unfortunately, it is a spring festival and I could not see it. But anyway, in Handa there are 31 of these Dashi, each belonging to a certain group. What is really impressive is that they manage to get these through Japanese streets!

My host dad also presented his wife the gift he was given from the Emperor. He handed her a small white box, I thought it help jewelry at first, but when she opened it, I saw that there were six little squares of candy, all imprinted with the emperor’s seal. We all split one. It was basically powdered sugar that melted in your mouth on impact. So cool!

My Okāsan (Host Mom) took all the pictures today, so I don’t have any of them on my camera. :( So, sorry ‘bout that. I will try to take them in the future.

#11 Introducing My New World

Today started out at 5:50 am. Yeah, that was not very fun. I almost freaked out on my roommate because I thought it was 6:50 and we had to be in the lobby at 7:10. I didn’t though.

We all had to go our separate ways today. :/ Some had to fly to other locations, some had to bus, and others had to ride a train. I was on the train. :) The bullet train in fact. It was pretty fast. It’s very famous in Japan. There were about 20 of us going on Shinkansen? (Japanese for bullet train, I think?), so it wasn’t goodbye yet.

The 20 of us got to Tokyo Train Station pretty early so we got free reign to explore the gigantic place. Jared, Jacob, Andrew, Eric, Mary(?), Claudia, Zach, and I explored together. I found a Starbucks.

Haha. The only thing was, I didn’t remember until after I had bought the coffee that, in Japan, you’re not supposed to eat/drink and walk at the same time. We had to sit down to drink, unfortunately cutting our exploring time down a little.

When we got back to the group we all set out for the train that ran along the Nagoya/Hiroshima line.

It was an hour ride. Not long at all. I did have a bad experience with my bento box. It had a freaking hair in the potato salad. Not going to lie, the freaking thing was disgusting in the first place, and now this! Omg, I almost wanted to puke. We had the same bento box yesterday and it was nasty too. Luckily, Eric, the guy sitting next to me, had bought a much better bento box for himself earlier at Tokyo Station and offered to share with me. It was eel (unagi) and rice (gohan). It was pretty good too.

About half of us got off the train at Nagoya. We had to say goodbye to those who were continuing on to Hiroshima. After the goodbyes, we walked to greet our host families.

Horoko (my Okasan or mother) and her sister Tomoko were waiting for me. They were so excited! I couldn’t help but be excited too. It was a little awkward with the greetings. I gave my Okasan a hug even though she probably wasn’t used to it. Haha. Then I had to bow even though I wasn’t used to it. They both shook my hand too. Which I was surprised that they did. Shaking hands is very western you know.

When the excitement died down we left the bullet train area and went to a different area for a smaller train to Handa City. It turns out that Claudia, another exchange student, was taking the train too. Her host family and she sat right next to us. Claudia’s host family didn’t speak any English and she only has 2 years of Japanese under her belt. I wish her the best of luck! My Okasan speaks English very well, Tomoko does pretty good too. Thank goodness!

We talked a lot on the train. My Okasan has been to a lot of different countries and she also said she met the Emperor not too long ago! Crazy!

I had some kawaii (Japanese for cute, yes I am trying to learn!) signs in my room when I arrived at the house.


Yes, you do have to take off your shoes every time you walk in.

I get my own room by the way! It’s got a toilet and a sink as well as a real bed and space to move around. This is all really rare. Space is very tight for the Japanese, so I am grateful. :)


This is my new house. :)

The blue door is my room. Its seperated from the house. It makes it more private. Privacy is definitely far and few between in Japan.

They have a dog (or i-nu) called Tane (tah-nay). He is a toy poodle and very adorable. He makes me miss my Jack Russell Terrier so much!

He even loves the ball like Pep.

This is the inside.




We took a walk around the neighborhood. I got to meet my Okasan’s cousin too. She has a basketball hoop and she offered to let me use it anytime. (How sweet!)

They have 7-11’s in Japan! The outside looks pretty much the same but the inside is very different. All the food is in Japanese of course!

I met Iri (my host sister) briefly. Japanese kids in Junior High and in High School have a lot to do all the time. She gets home around 6 because she has brass band after school. After she gets home she goes to extra classes! Didn’t get to see her much…

I haven’t given them my gifts yet so I might do that tomorrow? Tomorrow I get to learn calligraphy. I am super excited about that. :)

#10 To Tokyo!

Wake up call was at 4 A.M.! OH MEH GOODNESS! Yeah, I did it though. Be proud Mom and Dad.

All of us exchangers had to turn in our keys and get our breakfasts. When that was finished, we were split up. :( There were two different flights. One group flew out of San Francisco at 8:50, to a layover in Seattle, and then on to Tokyo. The other group’s flight was out of San Francisco at 1:00, nonstop to Tokyo. I was the first one.

I slept the whole way to Seattle. I just totally passed out. I think I said about 5 words to the girl next to me. So, bad.

The layover in Seattle was great! Mainly because it is the capital for Starbucks! I got one as soon as I got there. :) Yummm.. I also enjoyed it because it allowed me to finally have Wifi! Poor internet deprived Alicia… I know, tragic.

At 12:50 we boarded our plane to Narita Airport! I am currently sitting next to Kaitlyn Talbot the founder of our Facebook Group. :)

I’m in Japan!


We made it to the hotel. It was like 10 minutes away from the airport. So, it was a very short bus ride.

No scenic routes for our first look at Japan though. :( The hotel was called the Excel something.. It’s on the picture.

It’s not the same hotel that the Partial Scholarship Japan Exchangers went to last week. Apparently they got to stay in Tokyo and explore it a little bit. We were restricted to the hotel. Which was not a good thing… Instead of walking around Tokyo we were bugging all the hotel staff and residents with our crazy American ways.

Yeah, first of all, all of our American guys were wearing shorts around the lobby, which apparently is kind of disrespectful? Then, people were wearing the slippers from their rooms around the hotel, they are only meant for the room… After that, people wanted to swim. So, those people went to the pool and splashed around a lot and were really noisy eventually making these poor Chinese men leave. Since some of us don’t want to swim we went looking for the garden that we saw on the way in. Apparently we weren’t supposed to go in there either.

So, we epically failed on our first experience with communication. We all decided that it would be best if we went back to our rooms. We all ended up in my tiny hotel room. We mostly tried to translate Japanese television and we talked, loudly.


So, altogether, it was… interesting…

#9 Day 3- Berkeley PDO

Our last full day at JPDO! Ah, how bittersweet. I made a lot of friends. :) It’s sad to think that we won’t be able to hang out when we get back but then we all get to experience this great adventure..

Well, for our schedule we basically had our language classes and our cultural workshops.

The “Not with me” session was a memorable one. We talked about what to do in sexual harassment situations. Important? Yes. Awkward? Definitely. Haha. Our Kumi was like family by that time anyway. It made it better.

At lunch though the Blue Kumi tried to steal our flag! They already had Red Kumi`s flag. Jerome got ours back though..

We also played a game where there were 8 separate tables set up, with 5 students at a table. There were cards on the table and we were given the rules to go over and then play a couple practice games. Cool enough… So, if you have ever played Bunko you know that if you lose the hand you go down a table and if you win the hand you go up a table. It was the same with this game. I eventually won a game and moved on to the next table. I started playing at the table, but then I was confused. I’d clearly won the hand but some of the others were saying that the other girl had won. I was like “Did they read the rules wrong?”, “Did I?” So, I just kept going around, randomly winning, sometimes losing. I was still very confused because everyone was playing differently. The whole thing was, everyone was confused, we weren’t allowed to talk, at all. The staff ended it and they were like, “Why are you guys so flustered? What happened?” I guessed it at the end. It was because they had given each table different rules! Yeah, I was a little proud that I got it. Haha. But, still it was a good game. It kind of showed us what our exchange could be like.

We also had a session with the YFU alumni panel, which consisted of our Staff members like Paige who had been on a more recent exchange. We got to ask them questions about their experiences. It was pretty inspirational at times. The best advice was basically, “If your host family or friends offer to take you somewhere new or try something new, you should always go for it rather than back out.” That’s what I’m aiming to do on my trip.

There was also a “Gender Specific” question & answer thing too. We talked about girly stuff. No need to go into that…

Our last activity as a group was to dance! We learned two different Japanese dances and our staff dressed up for the part!

After we learned the dances, each Kumi had to come up with their own. Yeah, kind of different wasn’t so sure about how good we were going to be. But, what really motivated us to do better was that the Kumi with the best dance got to get their O-Bento dinners first!

This is the staff showing there stuff.

This was Blue Kumi’s dance.

This is Maya our administrator of JPDO.
“And the winner is...“

“Purple Kumi!“
This is Jerome, Me, and Raj eating our O-Bentos, first. :)

We took a gazillion pictures afterwards.

Purple Kumi!

Rio and me. He was on my relay team.

The staff.

Raj and me. Purple Kumi!

#8 Day 2- Berkeley PDO

We did a ton of stuff today. Our day is planned by the minute. We were always doing something…

We (and I mean “we” as in “Japan exchangers”) are all given three square meals a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all located in the UC Berkeley Cafeteria. It’s pretty good food too. I think I would get a little “heavy” if I ate there every day, if you know what I mean…

In between breakfast and dinner we have “sessions”. We have sessions with our Kumi (Go Purple!), language classes, and then cultural workshops.

In our Kumi sessions we basically played a couple games, worked in groups, and talked about things that all pertained to getting us prepared to go to Japan. In our language classes we were divided by our current relationship with the Japanese language. Those were the kind of boring but really informational and interesting type of sessions.

The cultural workshops on the other hand were a blast. We got to be outside of our Kumi (not that I don’t love Purple Kumi) which allowed us to hang with other people.
I got to hang out with all the Californians! Haha.

My first cultural workshop was cooking Takoyaki. It literally translates into Octopus Ball. It’s a small ball made out of flour on the outside with the Octopus in the inside. We got to make it, it was really cool. It didn’t taste that bad either. Octopus is kinda chewy.

This is us making it. :)

Here’s me eating my Takoyaki with my special Takoyaki sauce.


The second cultural workshop was a Japanese sports tournament type thing. I can’t remember the name at the moment! I think its Undokai. But, it was started after World War 2 to boost the moral and community spirit. The Japanese people would form teams and face off against different communities.

What we did during our workshop was different relay races. We were split into the Red Team and the Blue Team. I was Red :). The Warm-Up game was the old pass-the-apple-to-the-end-of-the-line-without-using-your-hands type relay. We lost. :( Our real challenge, however, was this big long complicated relay with all sorts of different stations. There was one station where someone had to pop the balloons, one where someone had to say a Japanese tongue twister without messing up, and another one where someone had to eat a doughnut hanging off a string without using your hands… Oh yeah, I was at station ten, designated doughnut eater. There was a bunch of them though. Unfortunately, Blue Team kicked our butts! We got hung up at the chopsticks station where the poor girl had to use the chopsticks to transfer skittles from a plate to a cup.

Here’s my team. We were good sports though. There wasn’t that much name calling…

It was a busy day.

#7 Day 1-Berkeley PDO

Today was the very first day of the Japan Pre-Departure Orientation located on the UC Berkeley campus in California! Have to say, altogether, it wasn’t bad.

I started off in my bed, at home. 10:30 a.m. my brother comes into my room to wake me up for my first day of my whole new adventure. Of course, I am clinging to my wonderful sheets, trying my absolute best to soak in my last official sleep in my own bed. Let’s just say we didn’t actually get on the road until 12.

So, by 12:05, my brother, Julio (my should-really-have-been-my-brother-because-he-lives-at-my-house), Meagan (my friend), and I, are all rocking out in the car on our way to Berkeley’s finest: Zachary’s Pizza. The Best Pizza Evar!! It was delicious. I am extremely thankful that we chose to go there for my last official food in the United States.

When we got out of there we made our way to UC Berkeley’s campus. Where we continued to get lost! Luckily with Julio’s amazing spidey sense of direction we finally made it to where I was supposed to go. (I have to admit, I got a little teary eyed with the goodbye. Don’t tell!)

I was in my little dorm room, settled at 3:30. Dinner didn’t start until 6. Twiddling my thumbs is fun and all, but around 4 I just gave in and started exploring. (I was shamelessly, listening at doors to see if anyone else was home. You would too.) I found Lulu first. She was doing the same exact thing that I was. Hehe. So, we made our way back to my room, where we found Jordan across the hall from me. We all hung out until dinner. Unfortunately, we all got separated into a different Kumi (which is Japanese for group).

I was now in the Purple Kumi, or as my instructors, Andy Sensai and Paige, like to call it, Purple Thunder!

Hers they are :)

There are quite a few people that I met from my Regional PDO that are here (Jared,Elli,Justine, Jordan). I’m actually rooming with one of them, Elli. :) Some of them are in my Kumi too.

We all went to dinner. UC Berkeley has a ginormous cafeteria. You get a Meal Card (that you don’t lose otherwise there is a $50 fee) and you just get to eat whatever you want. It was cool. I trekked across the expanse of counters with Jared. Sadly, he’s not in my Kumi. I did get hit on by a tall UCB guy. Not going to lie, he was pretty cute. Haha.

After dinner, we participated in “Getting to Know Each Other” with our Kumi. We played the Fruit Basket Game? I don’t know if you guys have heard of it, but I definitely didn’t. Everyone sits around in this big circle and there is one person in the middle that says, “I share common ground with someone who does –insert activity-“, than all the people who have done that “activity” has to stand up and then run to someone else’s chair who was standing up and sit in there chair. The person that is standing has to do the next, “I have in common with…” thing. I wasn’t too good at it. I ended up in the middle several times.

After that, all of the Kumi’s gathered and we all got to listen to the different YFU staff members talk about how this whole orientation was going to go down. The YFU president was even present. He lived in Japan for two years when he was little and has worked in Japan off and on since. We also watched this slideshow about Japan.

We got free time. I took the time to take a shower. I dashed there. Lol. I was the first one! Mom, you would have been proud, I only took like 5 minutes. :)
Lights are out at 10:30.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to learn how to cook Octopus I think. We’ll see how that goes…

#6 The Kato Family

So, I’m dropping the “Hey, Guys” greetings. We’re far enough into the blog where I feel I don’t need to greet you. We should have a closer relationship than that :)

A ton of things have happened since I have last blogged. Unfortunately, I have been really busy. It’s been a combination of saying goodbye to friends, having a job, my brother graduating, and being a little lazy. Prepare yourself for an information onslaught.

I got a call informing me that I have a Host Family! I will be staying with the Kato Family. I have a Host Mom called Hiroko, a Host Dad called Yukihiro, and a Host Sister called Iri (She’s 12 years old.).

I will be staying in Handa City located in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan!


I will be attending Handa High School. I am pretty sure this is their website. Not a hundred percent however.
http://www.handa-h.aichi-c.ed.jp/index3.htm

I got a letter in the mail with the official information on it. It included the address and such.

My Host Mom, Hiroko, e-mailed me the other day.

She e-mailed me first telling me all about her family. She also told me they have a dog! I replied back saying:

Dear Hiroko,

It's great hear from you! I am looking forward to meeting you and your family!
I am very excited to see Japan for the first time and extremely grateful that you have agreed to let me stay in your home. :)
I have to admit that I am a little nervous about the fact that I don't speak Japanese.
I hope you don't mind me asking a question.
Does your family speak English?
Thank you for e-mailing me!

Sincerely,
Alicia

She replied:
Dear Alicia.

Thank you for an E-mail.
My husband and Iri speak English very little.
I understand it a little if you talk slowly.
But you don’t worry.
If an electronic dictionary helps us, and there is a
feeling that each other communicates.
Then I am studying English now.
Let me teach Japanese to Alicia, as for me, you please
teach me English.
I will raise each other.
I want to meet you early.

Love,
Hiroko

She seemed really nice. I’m extremely glad that she wants to help me with Japanese. I, of course, think it’s great that she wants to better her English skills as well. I’m going to try to help her as best as I can. :) I can’t wait to meet them!

I also got my flight information in the mail! They gave me all the info along with cute little YFU tags to put on my luggage.

The California Pre-Departure Orientation is in Berkeley this year. My mom or my brother will probably just drive me or I’ll have to take BART… Anyways, that will be for three days and then I fly to Tokyo!

For the trip my parents bought me a Netbook. I dubbed it, Mini-Me. Hehe. It’s really cute and I love it. I also bought a new camera for myself. I plan on taking a million pictures. :)