steph's blog

When they say that Japanese homes are poorly heated, they aren’t kidding. The only heating I come in contact with here is the kotatsu at meal times (breakfast has been moved there from the dining table now that it’s cold), my lovely electric blanket, and the heated toilet seat (which I no longer find creepy but rather a necessity!). There is no heating whatsoever of the rooms. Which means that my time at home on cold days is spent moving between those 3 points as necessary.

I sometimes get confused by the contradictory things Okaasan does.

• She’s worried about conserving resources when it comes to food, even telling me I was being wasteful when I cut the ends off the onion and threw them away when making spaghetti bolognese, rather then peeling and using every little bit. She saves all leftovers for another day. But when it comes to other resources she doesn’t seem to care at all – when doing the dishes she leaves the tap on the whole time, wasting heaps more water then necessary. And she has electric fans set up in the garden, at least one of which seems to have been turned on 24/7 since I’ve been here. Apparently it’s because the air is too dirty so the fan is helping clear it so the plants will grow better? Also, she has set up some kind of small electric blankets outside for the cats, which is lovely of her but doesn’t seem normal to me.

• She’s also super-paranoid about illness. I have to wash my hands and gargle as soon as I come home every time (not that I’m complaining about that) so that I won’t get the swineshin-gata influenza. If I even mention that I’m feeling a bit cold she tries to give me more blankets to take upstairs with me, even though I already have more than I need, so that I won’t catch a cold. After we watched a TV programme about some sort of virus to do with the liver (I didn’t exactly understand the whole show, but it might have been hepatitis?) she went to the doctor the next day to get tested for it. But on the other hand, she has no idea about food safety! The dishes are washed in cold water, which surely isn’t getting them properly clean. Meat is left out on the counter for hours. One time she was going to be away so prepared my dinner of fried chicken in the morning and left it out on the table all day (under a food tent, so at least flies weren’t getting on it, but still). I actually secretly threw that out because it seemed so wrong to me :/

So yeah. Only two weeks until I’m home, and I’m sure there’ll be some things there that used to be normal that will feel strange (like driving! I’m a bit nervous about it actually!)

Topics I (or anyone else who knows me) never thought I’d be making a blog post about #1: making my bed. Like many of the small everyday activities, it’s different here than it is at home. During orientation week when I was staying in Seminar House, none of us knew which order things were meant to go in (was the sheet to go over or under us?!) so we kind of made it up as we went along. At least here in my homestay I know how to do it!

Today was a lovely sunny day, so I was finally able to put my futons out like I’d been meaning to for about a week. I just kind of shove them out the window so that their ends are lying on the 1st floor roof underneath my window. And after the first time I learnt to close the screen windows behind them, so that bugs don’t all come inside while it’s open all day.

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Since I just read about someone else’s experiences with their homestay, I thought I’d finally get around to writing some things about mine, so that anyone who’s thinking about applying for homestay can have a range of information available :)

When I signed up for homestay, I said that it didn’t really matter to me what type of family I was placed with, and I honestly thought that I was telling the truth. But even though I’d said that, there was still a certain type of expectation. I thought there would probably be children, whether young or my age. Even if there weren’t children, that there would be two host parents – the words “host family” somehow doesn’t fit a single person. And yet that’s what I ended up with – Komai-san, 66 years old, recently widowed, likes gardening and fishing. Basically, someone with whom I have nothing at all in common.

For the first little while things went well, we both made efforts to adjust. But after a few weeks I started getting really homesick, really busy with uni, and unhappy with my homestay because it wasn’t like I’d been subconsciously expecting it to be. There weren’t any trips to interesting places – and I’m not saying I wanted to be taken all around the country, I would have been happy to go to the local shops together with someone who could tell me what stuff was. Though I’d read a lot of advice saying to interact with the host family as much as possible, there was only so much time I could spend with Komai-san before my head would get too full of Japanese and I’d lose all concentration. I feel like it would be easier if there were more people and I could sometimes just sit back and listen and absorb, rather than being expected to uphold half of the conversation. I also felt like I wasn’t what Komai-san wanted in a host student – she really likes to talk, and my conversation skills in Japanese are rather lacking, particularly in the topics she’s interested in. And felt guilty for spending my time after dinner alone in my room, as we’d been told countless times not to do.

Things built up, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do (and writing emo emails to my family). In the end, I decided that I wanted to see about moving out, so went to talk to the homestay coordinator at the CIE. She was absolutely lovely, and talked through all of my issues with me. Somehow she managed to convince me to give it another try before making up my mind. She also rang Komai-san to see how she felt things were going. It turns out that she had been worried since before I arrived that a young person would find her boring and get lonely there, and that she didn’t have any problems with the way things had been going. She also cleared up a couple of points I’d been confused on, such as the fact that I am in fact allowed to come home late at night as long as it’s organised beforehand, and some issues to do with illness. Apparently all Okaasan wants is for me to study plenty, and to have good experiences in Japan. I was literally told to stop thinking so much about how other people might be feeling, and basically given permission to be a bit selfish. It still feels a tad rude sometimes, but I’m trying to follow orders!

Anyway, since then (a bit over a month ago) things have been going smoothly. It may not be the ideal homestay experience where one forms friendships with the family that will last for a long time, but we’re both happy enough. It seems that she’s still thinking of having another student next semester, so I can’t have put her off foreigners forever.

To others who are considering doing homestay, I’d still whole-heartedly recommend it. There’s a good chance you will be placed with a really great family. But if things aren’t going the way you think they should, you should always talk to the homestay coordinators and either try and work something out, or if no solution can be reached there is the option of moving out (either to a different homestay, or to the dorms). You don’t want to spend your time in Japan feeling miserable because of your home situation.

Today’s adventure was Spa World, a multi-storey bath complex. Photos aren’t allowed, for obvious reasons, so you’ll have to put up with my rambling instead.

We met around 10am at Yodoyabashi, then took the subway to Doubutsuen-mae which is near Spa World. It was the creepiest station I’ve been to yet – looked old and deserted. There were signs saying we were at the ‘Festival Gate’, but it certainly didn’t feel very festive. The Spa World building was quite impressive though. It’s 8 storeys tall, and the entrance was really spacious with a high ceiling.

We hadn’t known that there was some kind of promotion on, so rather than 3000yen we only had to pay 1000 to get in. We bought a ticket from a machine, then recieved a wristband at the desk on our way in. The wristband works as a payment system for everything inside the building, so you don’t have to carry cash around for drinks and things. Just pay all the charges when you leave.

We had to first remove our shoes and leave them in lockers on the entrance floor, before taking the lift up to the 4th floor. Spa World has two main sections: the 4th floor is the European themed baths, and the 6th floor is Asian themes. Each month the floor that is exclusive for women or men alternates – for November the women’s floor was the European one. We’ll have to go back next month to see the other one.
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Looking at this, it doesn’t seem like I’m very busy. But somehow it’s just enough that I can’t really do anything on school days, except maybe Monday afternoons. Oh, and Thursday mornings for cleaning my room XD At least I don’t have any 9am classes :D

On the program for the Opening Ceremony was a list of the countries from which the international students had come. It was my final proof that I’m all alone here…

In front of the Neyagawa Police Station is this chart showing the traffic accidents for the day before. It lists the number of incidents, the number of deaths, and the number of injuries. It doesn’t seem that rare for someone to be killed on the road here. I can kind of see why, with the way that people drive their cars and bikes.

And one final figure: this time in 2 months, I’ll be on a plane home! (does anyone know where I can get a prettier countdown? this one is kind of hideous)

Since I’ve obviously fallen behind terribly, here are a few photos from the last month or so :) I’ll even try to use my words a little bit this time, since the photos are fairly disjointed and a bit of explanation is required.

On September 27th I went to Fushimi Inari shrine on a field-trip with my religion class. This shrine is on a mountain – okay, maybe a hill – and actually rather than one big shrine there are various small shrines and things all over the mountain.

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One of my missions while I’m here is to try every flavour of Fanta that I find. There was one that I had last month that was Italian Peach flavour, and it looked like it was part of a series of world flavours. So the new flavour in the series has come out, and guess where it’s from?

I had to google to find out what “cassis” is, and apparently it’s blackcurrant. I don’t think it’s a particularly NZ flavour, but whatever. It tastes okay, and the bottle’s super-cute :)

Here’s the guided tour of my homestay house :)

Okay, I’ll start from the start. Here’s the front gate:

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Better late than never, right? A few photos from my trip to Tokyo during Silver Week.
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It’s been a long time, right? I’m finally settled in and feeling happy enough at my homestay to write here without making people reading this worry too much. I actually thought I was completely adjusted and happy, but then I started listening to some NZ music earlier and cried (well, it was ‘Welcome Home’ by Dave Dobbyn so it’s the kind of thing that’s going to make overly-emotional expats cry!)

Anyway, it’s my second Japanese birthday! It seems strange that in total in my life I’ve been in Japan just over a month, and celebrated two birthdays here. Well, I say ‘celebrated’, but it’s not like I’m actually doing anything for it XD
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