So! I've been in Hakodate for about two and a half days here and I'm totally loving it. I was going to do one of these earlier when I put up the older Hokkaido entries, but I've wound up completely messing up my sleeping schedule, so there wasn't really a venue for me to do it in. So, you get one now!!
TUESDAY continued with a run to a yakiniku (a Japanese dish where a group of people shares a hot plate/grill to cook vegetable/meat/seafood) place on our way out of the museum our home stay families. It was pretty delicious, and there are pictures to come. This was the point at which we all finally split up for the two weeks; James got put in a car to go to meet his family while the rest of us hopped on our separate buses to head out to meed ours. I finally arrived in Hakodate at around 5:00 where we sat around for about an hour for more 'orientation' before they took us out to meet our families. I kind of made a fool of myself when, instead of greeting Mie-san (who I'll be calling Okaa-san, meaning Mother) first, I went straight for Rico and Misaki, the little girls, when our family walked up. *awkward* Whatever, they were TOTALLY cute so I was TOTALLY justified. (Can you tell I'm still feeling awkward about it?) After the dinner that the HIF folks provided, we went home and met Eisaku-san (The dad, who I'll be calling Otou-san, meaning Father) and Meito, the brother, hopped in the ofuro, put up the blog entries I'd written earlier, and went to bed.
WEDNESDAY was an early morning, wit breakfast with the family (well, mostly just Otou-san and Meito), followed by Okaa-san walking Yoh-chan and I to the bus stop that would take us to the shiyakusho, the random government building that the HIF folks arranged for us to visit. The governmental-types talked at us in Japanese for a good twenty minutes and I didn't understand any of it. At the end we were supposed to be asking questions, but people (including me) were being lame and not coming up with anything, so I decided to be the overzealous, brazen United States-ian and asked some random question about good ramen places or something just to get the ball rolling. Once that was done, everybody started taking pictures etc and then we headed out.
That was the extent of the planned activities for the day, but I decided to go sightseeing with two of the other girls for a while. We wandered pretty much all over town to see the old historical buildings and stuff. We also had some of the BEST soft serve I've had in my life (Hokkaido is pretty well known for their milk and milk products... and I can TOTALLY see why). I headed back to the Morita's around 4:00 and spent the afternoon with the kids. After dinner, the whole family headed out to an Ainu concert. It was pretty cool, a nice mix of the traditional parts of the music with modern instruments and stuff. Two groups played for us; the first was just two female vocalists with a guitarist that played with them for one of their songs, and the other was a group of about eight, with two guitarists, a bassist, a pianist, two guys on traditional percussion instruments, and two vocalists. At the end, the two women from the first group came up to sing with the second group and their guitarist played a western drum set for the last song. It was pretty awesome; I'll try and put some of their stuff up ASAP.
YESTERDAY (THURSDAY) was kind of a lazy day, though mostly by accident. Got up for breakfast with the whole family and then was going to nap while Okaa-san got ready for the day. We were going to go to the library after that, but I passed out and didn't wake up until lunch time. I was kind of bummed, but whatever; my door was open so if they'd been really excited about it they could have woken me and we could have gone. Yoh-chan fell asleep too, so it wasn't totally my fault.
Once I finally did get up, we had a pretty traditional Japanese lunch which was TOTALLY DELICIOUS; Okaa-san's a good cook (although she's got nothing on Mom). After lunch Okaa-san drove me and Yoh-chan over to a nearby temple for zazen meditation (essentially the same as what I did at Kan'nonji temple at ICU) and a sadou (tea ceremony). I got to be the first guest for the sadou which is a pretty big deal; it was SUPER COOL. As before the seiza was kind of a pain, but it wasn't as bad as last time. After the sadou, we got to whisk our own tea which was also pretty cool.
After we were done at the temple, Okaa-san came with Misaki and Rico to pick us up and we all headed back to the apartment. Once we got there I spent a good two hours playing with the kids, which was tons of fun, but TOTALLY exhausting. We also got to help Okaa-san make gyoza, traditional Japanese dumplings. After that we had dinner without Otou-san (who I think was stuck at work because it was raining and he was on his motorbike and didn't want to come out in the rain) and then headed out to meet him at an onsen. It was really fun to finally get to go to one with an actual Japanese person and see the proper onsen etiquette a little more up-close. It was TONS OF FUN!!
TODAY hasn't been much of anything yet; got up for breakfast with the fam and am just kinda hanging out now. I think we're going to a park later, but I'm not sure. We'll see.
I'm going to go ahead and give a first-impressions-of-the-family write-up.
(A slightly out-of-date picture, but it's the one they gave me and I haven't taken any of my own yet so... yeah! There you go!)
Rico is an adorable little ball of two-year-old energy; I totally love her.
Misaki is the five-year-old who is also a little bundle of energy and totally cute. She also seems to suffer from the middle-child issue of not really knowing how to get attention, so... yeah. It's been interesting to see how she reacts to suddenly have more people to pay attention to her, ESPECIALLY because I think she's a total cutie and have been spending a bunch of time with her, and can't quite figure out how to split the time between all the kids yet. *shrug*
Meito is quite possibly the sweetest, most adorable big brother I've ever seen in my life. He looks out for the girls and helps out a ton, although he's still a totally seven-year-old boy. It's an interesting combination but he totally pulls it off.
Mie is pretty much the classic Japanese housewife, which works out pretty well for me and Yoh because it means she's around to help with transport etc.
Eisaku is also a pretty typical Japanese guy, although I'm about 80% sure that he does most of his work from home, which, from what I understand, isn't typical. *shrug* Whatever, he's cool.
I'm still working out the house etiquette etc, and I'm still not totally sure what's expected from me on a regular, day-to-day basis, but hey, what can you do, right? I'm also not sure how I feel about being the only one that buckles her seat belt in the car an a regular basis and I'm REALLY not sure how I feel about how much Otou-san rags on Okaa-san about the way she makes the food, but I'm just going to keep on keeping on and we'll see where that takes me.
I think that's all from me for now... Hope everyone's doing well!!
(9/23 Edit: Associated photos can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039191&id=1186934580&l=2b0cbc8857
Enjoy!!)
~ Anna
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