Let's go all the way back to December 30th, the day before New Year's Eve. I had made a list of places I wanted to go and things I wanted to see in Fukushima-ken for during my Winter Break. My top wish was to go back to Tokyo and visit the Tokyo Tower and Akihabara, one of the many sub-sections of Tokyo. I was lucky enough to find out that my club's Rotary President, Kaichou-san (kaichou means president in Japanese), was going to Tokyo on the 30th and was willing to take me with him. It was such a blast! I visited Asakusa again, took a tour around the Asakusa area while riding on a traditional Japanese cart, visited a “Maid Cafe” in Akihabara, saw the Imperial Palace, went to the business section of Tokyo, took apart of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's year end closing ceremony, and finally, visited Tokyo Tower! I will never forget that amazing day I was able to spend with Kaichou-san, living my dreams come true.
I was really excited to experience a Japanese New Year celebration because people kept telling me that it was like their version of Christmas, since Christmas is not very big in Japan. I spent most of my New Year's Eve's morning with my host mom's daughter-in-law and her family shopping for that night's “feast”. For the rest of the afternoon everyone, my host mom's son, daughter-in-law, and grand kids, helped pitch in make the dinner. We ate all sorts of foods including soba noodles (buckwheat noodles in a soup broth), oysters, shrimp, a special New Year's soup, mochi (Japanese rice cake made of sticky rice pounded into paste and molded into shape) and a bunch of other things that I can't recall at this time. It was all very delicious and our hard work was worth it in the end.
From after dinner to 11 pm we watched the special New Year's Countdown Music Show, much like the ones we have in North America. I am a fan of Japanese music, it is incredibly catchy, so I enjoyed seeing many of the popular bands of today that my friends are always talking about or hearing them on the radio. I also played some games with the younger kids and made a bunch of origami, my origami crane is getting pretty good, and snacked throughout the evening. At eleven the kids were getting tired and grumpy so their parents took them home. I was exhausted from the previous day's adventures so I was surprised that I was able to stay up until the clock struck midnight.
Two main traditions of that Japanese people take part of at New Year's are visiting a shrine to pray for good fortune for the new year as well as a having a huge house clean-up on New Year's Day. I had to get up early that day to help clean all day and we ate a lot of mochi, which is one of the main dishes during the New Year's celebration. (We have so much that we are still eating today...) Another Japanese New Year's tradition is that adult family members give their children money so my host mom as well as her son's family gave me some money, which was very kind of them. All in all, it was a very interesting experience.
For the last week of Winter Break, I was asked if I would like to stay with another Rotary member's family. They really wanted to host me but were not on the pre-arranged “host family list”. I eagerly said yes especially when I found out that they had two kids ages 9 and 10. As I look back on that week my heart breaks a little because I miss that family so much; we just clicked. I'm not saying that I never really liked my other host families because believe me, I love them all! But that family was a younger family who were extremely interested about me and Canada, as well as it was their first time hosting an exchange student. They went over the top for me, taking me wherever I wanted, treating me to dinner, dressing me up in one of their kimonos to go visit a shrine together, I couldn't be more thankful for having the chance to stay with them. Their son, Yuuki who is 10, reminded me a lot of my brother when he was Yuuki's age and their daughter, Saki who is 9, is the little sister any big sister would want. I still see them as my little siblings and they would call me onee-chan (which means older sister) and I love them so much. Two nights before I left, I was up late talking with my host parents and they told me that I was their family, that they saw me as a part of their family, and how much they loved me. It brought tears to my eyes because I couldn't believe how close we got in such a short time and that none of my host families up to that point had ever told me anything like that. It was so tough leaving them, but I will treasure those memories forever and hope to see them again.
It was strange going back to school after a three week long Winter vacation, my sleeping schedule was completely out of whack for the first week. When I did go back however, I had noticed that my Japanese had improved greatly over the break and my friends were shocked as well. This made me feel very happy and now me and my three close friends are closer than ever because we can talk about a lot of different things. I'm not fluent yet, Japanese is a tough and slightly complex language, and have quite a ways to go but...I`m getting there. :)
The rest of January was fairly uneventful compared to my Winter Break, but I still enjoyed going to school everyday to be with my friends. However, I was looking forward to the last weekend in January, the weekend of our Rotary Winter Camp!
Like any RYE event, the Winter Camp was a blast! We went to Bundai-san (Mt. Bundai) again, we went there for our first Summer Camp at the beginning of the year (wow has it already been that long?), and spent the whole weekend skiing. I was especially excited because we were able to meet our district's next year's outbounds for the first time! As I had mentioned in a previous entry, I have already met the outbound from my town, so I was excited to meet the others. There are four in total, three girls and one boy. The girls are going to America, France, and Canada and the boy from my town is also going to Canada! (Specifically Alberta! I hope he is able to come to my district!) As in addition to us and outbounds, rebounds and a lot of Rotex also attended the Winter camp so it was a full lodge! Everyone thought that because Karly and I are from Canada that we were experts at skiing but truth be told, that was only my second time skiing and the last time I went skiing was almost four years ago! I was very, very rusty but thankfully I only fell once during the whole weekend. But of course by the end of the weekend we were all completely exhausted and could barely move because of how sore we were. (Well, at least I was.)
Hayate (my club's outbound), Momoko (my club's rebound), and I were also fortunate to take an extra trip to Inawashiro Lake and Aizuwakamatsu City before heading home after Winter Camp. Even though we were all exhausted, we still enjoyed the extra trip. Inawashiro Lake is the second biggest lake in Japan and home to so many swans and ducks! Birds don't “fly south” in Japan so all the poor ducks were shivering in the snow banks. They were also extremely tame and would walk right up to you, probably thinking you had food to give them. One even flew right past my face! It had really startled me. At Aizuwakamatsu we drove to the Aizuwakamatsu Castle, the most famous castle in Fukushima-ken. The caste and the grounds around it was covered in pure white, glistening snow and it was just dazzling! No matter how many times I visit Japanese castles, I am always blown away by their beauty and structure.
January had ended just as quickly as it had began and before I knew it it was already February. I still can't believe how quickly time seems to be speeding by for me. February 1st was a school holiday and for a week I had been planning with some of my school friends to go to Koriyama, a bigger city 40 minutes away by train, to spend the day hanging out. You couldn't begin to imagine how excited I was for this trip; it was going to be my first time really spending time with these girls out of school. Japanese high school is so tough on students and everyone is being pressured by their teachers and families to get good grades so they can get into a good university. They also almost have a test or extra lessons every weekend to attend that I am always opted out from. So whenever I asked my friends if my friends were busy and wanted to hang out, the answer was always no. For the first little while I was really discouraged by this, and it took a lot of time getting used to. But now I just treasure the time we have together at school and continue to ask them when they are able to go out on the weekends with me.
Anyway, getting back to our Koriyama trip, one of my exchange friends, Karly, who is pretty much my best friend here, lives in Koriyama so we were able to meet her at the Koriyama Station as well. We spent our whole entire day at the Eki (Station) because most big stations in Japan are also the town's giant shopping mall and the “to-be” place to hang out. We took a lot of Purikura (Japanese photo booths), ate a delicious Italian lunch, and shopped until we dropped. I am in love with Japanese fashion so I bought a bunch of new, cute outfits which were also unfortunately quite expensive. I think that is only one of the things that I have found more expensive in Japan than Canada are the clothes. My school friends got along with Karly and we are making plans to go out Karaoking next time there is a school holiday!
That same night I attended a joint Shirakawa Rotary Club New Year's Party which my club hosted. All three Rotary Clubs of Shirakawa attended and I sat at a table of all women from the other two clubs. I enjoyed talking to the ladies and telling them about me and Canada and they made a fuss over me all evening and even asked to take photos together afterwards.
And this brings us up to this past weekend's events. On the 11th, Friday, it was Emperor's Day so everyone had a holiday and during the whole weekend one of Shirakawa's biggest festivals took place, the Daruma Ichi Festival! My friend Ena, who is one of my exchange friends, and I made plans together for her to travel to Shirakawa and spend the day together at the festival. It was kind of funny though when she arrived because she had told me to meet her at the Shirakawa Station, which was really convient because it was only a five minute walk from the festival from there. However, she did not realize that Shirakawa has two stations, the local, older station, and the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) Station, which is a 40 minute walk from the festival. Can you guess which station she actually arrived at? We had a good laugh about it afterwards and even though it was cold and snowy we saw it as a way to get more exercise and burn calories. I think I walked for a total of eight hours that day, my feet felt numb with pain afterwards and even today they hurt a bit. At the festival we ate way too much delicious food and bought a ton of souvenirs. It's always an adventure when I am with my exchange friends.
So that pretty much brings you up to date of what I have been up to lately! I hoped you all enjoyed my rather long entry today. On Tuesday I will have been in Japan for officially six months. Even just typing that makes it feel so unreal...has it really been that long? It is hard to comprehend that I have only less than five more months left to go before I head back to Canada. I will defiantly be making the most of the rest of the time I have here and cannot wait to see what else is in store for me.
じゃあまたね! Until next time!
~Stephanie
