Homestay - Continued

I just found this on my blogger account. I never published it. Weird. No wonder you were getting impatient. I apologize to yo all.

Main characters:
Me: The daughter from Iceland
Mama: The mother of the house, Mrs. Sato
Papa: The father of the house, Mr. Sato
Chipi: The dog of the house

Last time, I told you about stuff. This time, I'll tell you about other stuff that I haven't told all of you about yet. Last time, we left off where I was leaving APU to go stay with the Sato family. I have to apologze for the fact that in my last post, I misspelled the name Sato. It is Sato, and not Satou.
Mama picked me up from AP House and took me to the place that would be my home until the next year. It was a very nice looking white two story house with a beautiful garden outside. Pink flowers were blooming on the trees, and Chipi, the dog, jumped up and down with happiness when he saw us coming.
Inside the house was just as cold as outside, but they provided me with the best slippers ever! The looks of them are not what I am used to, as they are bright pink and fluffy, and the front is shaped like a big peach with a smiling face. But those were the best slippers I have ever had! My feet were never cold.
New Year in Japan is the most important holiday of them all, and in many ways it is similar to Christmas in Europe. Preparations are similar, the days before New Year's Eve, the whole family is extremely busy cleaning the house and cooking for the next few days, when most shops will be closed. Because the Satos were expecting me, they had already cleaned everything, and I did not have to take part in that.
Usually, it is the mother who does the cooking, sometimes with the help of the daughter. The cooking takes about three days, mama told me, both because she is cooking three days worth of food for the whole family, but also because some of the food takes time to prepare. Mama made me promise not to say, but, we didn't cook at all. We bought the New Year's food at the supermarket, because mama had hurt her fingers somehow, and couldn't handle so much cooking. So my New-Year's was very quiet.
Japanese people have strange customs, especially the older generation. I got to sleep in every day while I was with the Satos, and we always ate breakfast at 8 o'clock in the morning.
That kindof resulted in me being very sleepy on New Year's Eve and going to bed at ten o'clock, ahem. *cough*

I got to do some really cool cultural things while I was there. We went shopping for flowers, and then mama put me down at the kitchen table and told me to do ikebana! Ikebana is the art of flower arrangement, if you have never heard the word before. I was very nervous, because I know nothing at all about ikebana, but she just told me to cut each flower to different lengths, and put them so that they would face the front, and arrange them somehow that I thought was pretty. So I tried. I had 3 pine branches, 3 yellow roses, 3 branches with green leaves and red berries, which is something special for New Year, and some more things (3 of them) that I can't really remember. Then we put the flowers on the shinto shrine in the tatami room.
Shinto is the so-called original Japanese religion where there is, simply put, a god in everything, for everything. I don't remember if I have mentioned tatami mats before. You just google it. It's a very Japanese style of floor.
The living room was kindof warm. The Satos had a gas-fire-stove-heater thingy to warm up the room, and then they sat under the most coolest of tables. It's called kotatsu if I remember it correctly, and it is a low table with a thick blanket hanging from all sides so that you can pull it over your lap to keep you warm, and, here comes the best part, underneath it is a heater so that under the table and the blanket, you can have it as warm as you like! Aaaaaaahhhhh, it's so good! But the rest of the room is still kindof cold. That one heater in 0ne corner of the room just doesn't do it.
When I walked the hallway up to my room, I could see my breath.
I watched TV a lot. I got to see all the snow they had in Nagasaki! Wow! Well... wow because it hardly snows here in Beppu :P

Homestay

Main Characters
Me: Exchange student in Japan, about to do a homestay
mama: Fumiko Satou (Jp: SatouFumiko) the mother-to-be of my hometaying

Allright allright here's the sequel.

I spent new year with a Japanese family!
When you go living with a family for some time, it is called home-stay. In Japanese, the word is hoomusutei (I'm not kidding).
My family is Mr. and Mrs. Satou, and their dog, Chipi. Chipi is chained to his house outside, and is only let in during typhoons. (note; not storms, but typhoons)
My mama's name is Fumiko. I don't think I ever got to know papa's name. They don't have any children. Only a few homestay daughters.
I cannot say 'mama' and 'papa' without hesitating, and thinking wildly how I could call them otherwise. But the Japanese have this extremely strange custom of talking about yourself in 3rd persona sg. (þriðja persóna eintölu, hvernig er það á ensku?). So mama would say (and did say when I first met her on campus) "Mama has become Santa!"
Ok, let me start at the beginning.
I applied to the homestay program they had for new year's, and got the Satou family. Mama wanted to meet me before I came to stay, which I thought was a great idea, it makes the whole thing a lot less scary. Or it should anyway. So she came up to campus and we ate curry rice at the cafeteria. She paid. We talked for a while, and she was carrying this big white plastic bag. Then she suddenly said "mama has become Santa". I stared and it took me a few moments before I could ask "wha...?", and she repeated "mama became Santa today. I have a present for you."
'Oh no,' I thought, 'that can't be a present for me in the big bag there! I just met the woman!' *gulp*
And of course it was a present for me in the big bag. A big one. 16x21.5x27.5 cm to be precise. Would you ever buy something that big for someone you were going to meet for the first time? I was only going to stay with them for four days! Usually you pay back for presents with other presents later. She was putting me in her dept there!
But she seemed nice. I managed to speak some Japanese with her, and I was really proud! Then she drove me and Nika down to YouMe Town, the new mall, so that I could buy a cell phone.
The day after, before we left for Kyoto, I decided I should open the present before going to Kyoto, even if it meant opening it before Christmas. 'It is from a Japanese person,' I said to myself, 'they don't have Christmas traditions to hang on to. I'm allowed to open that before the 24th.'
And I did.
Good lord, you have to SEE it! I am 22 years old for kræsseik!!
Japanese mentality.


Anyhow, I left APU after long goodbyes at noon on the second last day of the year. When I came outside, snow was gently drifting down from the heavens; the first snow of winter. And I was going down to Oita City, where it never snows. Dammit, I wanted to see the faces of the people here who have never seen snow in their lives! :D There are many of them.

To be continued...

Next: My days in a typical Japanese freezing home.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Main characters:
Me: Still the same exchange student in Japan.
Bart: The wonderful man who paid for the shabu-shabu.
Nika: The girl with the camera.
The maiko: A maiko is an apprentice geisha.

I want to begin this wonderful new year by emphasizing the fact that the last entry was not written by my fingers, nor was my computer anywhere near the spot where it came to be. One of the actual fried dorks of the DorkSquad has already confessed in the comments, but the other one has yet to come forward. After a blog like that, I am not so surprised...

Ok, but on to the news, because a lot has happened since I last logged on. Whenever that was. First of all, as you can see from my comment to the DorkSquad's blog, I spent Christmas in Kyoto, the city of Japanese culture and tourists. The trip started with a little boat trip from Beppu International Port with the Sunflower, over the Sea That I Can't Remember The Name Of, and aaall the way to Osaka. It only took twelve hours, so there's not much to tell from that trip. Except we got some fried chicken and french fries from a vending machine there.
In Osaka, also a great city, we went to the Russian consulate so that Nika could sign some papers and stuff.
How is it, what is the difference between a consul and his consulate, and an ambassador and his embassy? Embassies are on their own national ground, no matter where in the world they are, does the same apply to consulates? Because I didn't have my passport...
Anyway, the people at the consulate were very nice and courteous and after waiting only a short time *cough* they politely told us that the papers Nika had weren't good enough and good bye.
That's when we left for Kyoto by train, which turned out to take just as long, and cost exactly as much as going from APU to down town Beppu by bus. Gosh. Papers still unsigned.
In Kyoto we met people! Ingvar-kun, Bragi-san, and Gústaf-san from our Japanese course in Iceland, and Heather, and the Germans, and the French, and, and some Japanese people too. Together we had a great Christmas meal. Hangikjöt og niðursoðnar grænar baunir, brúnaðar kartöflur og laufabrauð. Some rice pudding with almonds. Hmm, what was there more? There was a whole lot more, because everyone one brought something, and we were almost twenty people I think. And I just remember the Icelandic food :P And the rice pudding, that was not ours.
We had a most wonderful time there, the atmosphere was festive and everyone was happy. We had candles, and a Christmas tree with presents underneath... aah :D It made me so happy! I had so much fun, thank you guys for letting us partake in you're Chrismas festival!

The next few days we spent sightseeing in Kyoto. We found about one million Starbucks, and, going to Fushimi Inari Shrine, a billion fox statues and kazillion red torii gates. If I ever manage to get my pictures out of my new cell phone, you might see some. Or if I get pictures from Nika and/or Bart. O, what am I saying, I'll just link to Bart's blog when he puts them up. Right Bart? ;) And then we went to see the 1001 statues of Kannon the bodhisattva. His name is not Kannon in English, but who cares, you're not going to know him anyway. Ingvar came with us to see that one, then wandering about Kyoto in search for food. We met Bragi and his girlfriend at Fushimi Inari where we got lost between the torii gates and wandered about the mountain for hours! We saw the Golden Pavilion and it's golden phoenix, we saw the most famous Japanese Zen rock garden there is, where there are 15 rocks, but you can never see more than 14, no matter your viewpoint. We saw International House, one of the Kyoto Sangyo dorms.
Oh, we saw a geisha! On Christmas Day, we walked around Gion, the part of Kyoto where there just might possibly be a geisha on her way to a party. The neighbourhood is big, with one small part of it built in old style, with expensive restaurants and an interesting air about itself. We entered one of the restaurants and ordered some shabu-shabu, a very Japanese meal that consists of fresh vegetables and thin slices of meat, this time lettuce, mushrooms, spring onions, noodles, tofu, and beef. The vegetables were all in one big bowl, but each of us got a big dish of meat slices of our own. On the middle of the table was a pot, with boiling water. We said itadakimas, cheered for Christmas, and selected some vegies to be put into the boiling water, then picked up a slice of meat with our chopsticks and dipped them into the water, just long enough for it to be cooked, which was only a couple of seconds. Then we ate. And we ate, and we ate. Nika and I had some Japanese plum wine with the meal, which turned out to be a verry good choice. They served it in wine glasses with ice cubes, but it tastes like liqueur. Sweet, but so good.
When we had finished our meal, and had some mandarin sorbet afterwards, we left the restaurant fully sated and happy. That's when Nika shouted "geisha!!" and began to fumble with her camera. I didn't really think that we would ever ever see one, so I didn't realize what she was doing right away, but when I looked up, there was this maiko dressed in a colorful kimono, with a big, long cushion on her back and white make up, red red lips and her hair done up in the traditional fashion. My mouth dropped as she smiled at us, knowing exactly what effect she had on us, hurrying past us, and before we knew it, she was gone. Where to, I have no idea, it all felt like a dream, and we have only a couple of fuzzy pictures from the back to remind us that we really did see a maiko.

Next: I did a homestay with a Japanese family over the new year. If I haven't blogged about it in two-three days, send me an email!