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Published: November 7th 2010
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Yonaga Family plus 1
The whole of my Yamanashi family on the doorstep Hello!
I haven’t written anything in a week or two because nothing massively different from England occurred, BUT now ive just spent the last few days staying in Yamanashi (the prefecture where you find Mount Fuji) with my previous host family (from my high school exchange 5 years ago) so I thought I’d write all about that because if you came before you know how exciting it is, and also because I want to remember it all 😊
So the host family (yamanashi) situation: mum, dad, Ayaka (my exchange partner, now 21) and Ryouhei (brother, now 20). Also the grandparents who live next door are a key part in the family. Grandad's 95 and pretty incredible!
They came to pick me up alllll the way from Nagoya which is around 4 hours away by car (woaah) which was mega nice. There was that moment when they got to the house and met my current host family which was always gonna be awkward for me since meeting people in Japanese culture anyway is baffling to me and in this instance didn’t really know what my role in the introductions would be…
Anyway it was such a nice car journey
catching up with Ayaka (who I last saw in 2007 when she came to my house in England) and her parents. We stopped at a little traditional village called Magome on the way and while we were ambling around my host dad nipped off and bought me a hand-made sun umbrella which is huge and the most beautiful thing ive ever seen, so I was very happy. Also there was a warning sign for bears on the road which was amusing!
It was wonderful to see Yamanashi again, especially since Nagoya is so big and city-ish, the countryside of Yamanashi was refreshing. Its known for its fruit production so the land is covered in vineyards and various fruit trees with loads of small towns scattered around with low-roofed wooden houses. It is also just under the Japanese mountains so there’s a mountain backdrop everywhere you go.
As we neared their house we stopped off for dinner at a kaiten-zushi which is one of those sushi restaurants where the sushi goes past your table on a conveyor belt. It was particularly nice since it was the exact same restaurant they took me to before when I came here 5
years ago, we even had the same table and everything! 😊 The main difference being this time I could use chopsticks and I also didn’t refuse to eat the raw fish-so they were already impressed! 😊
Day one) Ayaka and I went to a Yamanashi meibutsu store where we bought various cakes and delicacies particular to the area. Then we picked up Ayaka’s grandmother (who lives next door and when I came before gave me a beautiful green silk kimono that she had handmade!!!) and the 3 of us drove about 40 minutes into the mountains where we stopped at a small village that makes crystals with particularly beautiful scenery and a waterfall (I became a massive nature nerd this week but it really was pretty). We also went up a rope-way cable car to the very very top where we could see Mt Fuji in all its glory. Stunnningggggggg
In the evening we went next door to grandma and grandad’s very very traditional Japanese house for granny’s home-made houtou noodle which is another speciality of yamanashi. We sat under their kotatsu which is a low table with a heater built in underneath to keep your feet warm!
Ooru-gooru
the massive automatic music box Day 2) Ayaka and I went to Lake Kawaguchi-ko which is a big lake very close to the base of Fuji-san with spectacular views. (I had visited this too with my school last time but from what I remember I don’t think the visibility was very good that day). We went to a place there called Ooru-gooru (literally still don’t know what that means) but inside there were loads of automatic musical instruments such as music boxes which were fun to look at. We took a little walk around too and since its ‘kouyou time’ -when the leaves turn from green to red (basically autumn) everything was excessively pretty and it was even the day of the kouyou festival in Fuji town so there were lots of food stands etc.
We then picked up Ryouhei from his university and and the 3 of us went bowling, to an amusemt arcade (where we did purikura!), out for dinner and to karaoke to end the day. The restaurant where we had dinner was called donnamonja and here each table had its own hot plate in the middle so basically they bring the ingredients to the table and you cook the
Ryouhei and Ayaka
Cooking monjayaki in the restaurant monjayaki yourself (like okonomiyaki but softer)- I managed to flip it all by myself so brownie points to me. It was also the first time I’d done karaoke in a fair while and now im proud to say I have some Japanese songs under my belt 😊
Day 3) home time.😞 We left at 9 am in the morning so I anticipated being back in Nagoya for about lunchtime ish but we were never in the car for more than 30minutes at a time- the dad was so kind he took us on loads of detours so that they could show me various places along the way and we even stopped for lunch in an excessively posh restaurant with views of mount Fuji!
I’m so tired now I hope I didn’t make it sound boring because it was the FUNNEST few days- so natsukashii to be back there again and I had almost forgotten how unbelievably kind my host family were-such such nice people! Ayaka even bought me a hello kitty bowling pin shaped clock to make me feel less bad for losing at bowling!! They’ve invited me to go skiing with them at Christmas (HAH) and the
mum shed a cheeky tear when they dropped me back home! <3
Aside from Yamanashi, other comparatively unexciting things:
*I saw my first raccoon (^o^)
*Ayaka had a sweet-potato flavoured ice-cream. I have nothing against potatoes or ice-cream but NEVER mix them
*I got an A-grade in a report that I wrote about the afore-blogged Asuke festival which was a great surprise but also I was very pleased because I read about a million pages researching it. 😊
*A man on a news show on TV was wearing a shirt that said ‘blow me’. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit which was awkward because I then had to explain to my host granny what it meant. Yeah, granny.
*Our dog has started wearing its winter clothes-genuinely horrific, I still refuse to touch it
*I killed a mosquito at the dinner table the other day which merited me a standing ovation because I have ‘such good eyesight’
*I saw an apple in a shop for 470yen - that’s £4, for an apple. In the same shop you could buy a pineapple, pear, melon and 2 apples for £52!!!
*Also
i found some beautiful jeans in a store down to ¥330 (less than £3!) so obviously I went for them, and have set myself the challenge of being able to fit them by Christmas (it’s a miracle that they’re long enough so it’s my task to lose all the weight that ive put on since I got here)😊
*Now its become chilly my sleeping facility has changed, and so on top of my wheely bed now I have a hench blanket that’s a cross between a blanket and a dead animal- its SO thick and very soft and motivates me to go to bed really early just so I can snuggle in it, which is only a good thing.
*I was told I was ‘pera pera’ for the first time (means fluent) so I was very flattered even though I know it’s nonsense, and also told that I am a Japanese person which can only be a good thing?
Anyway, things are still unbelievably funn, my only sadness this week is there was no bonfire night in Japan, i had to google images of fireworks instead to keep me going 😞
xxxx
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