Family, Friends, Culture, and Tradition

Well, friends, I am back in Tokyo after an amazing week in Takeo. After spending so much time in the countryside, Tokyo almost feels like America! There is so much to tell you about my weekend I hardly know where to start!

My weekend began with the Home Stay portion of our "total immersion" experience. For this part of the trip, every participant in the teacher program was matched with a local family who volunteered to invite a teacher into their home for a day and a half. I was very nervous to meet my Host Family. I was so busy getting ready for the trip before I left the United States that I didn't have time to print out pictures of my family and school to show them and I was nervous that we wouldn't have anything to talk about. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry at all! My hosts had a wonderful weekend planned!

Mr. and Mrs. Kondo picked me up at the hotel at 9:30 on Saturday morning. They drove me back to their house to drop off my belongings and pack a picnic lunch. In Japan, all members of the family play a roll in preparing the meals. For this meal, Mr. Kondo gathered the items we would need for our picnic while Mrs. Kondo taught me how to make onigiri, or rice balls. There are many different ways to make onigiri, and we made four different kinds for our picnic. For the first type, we mixed sesame seeds and seaweed flakes into the rice. For the second kind, we mixed a different kind of seaweed flakes into the rice, and for the third and fourth kinds we added a little salt to the rice and filled the center of the onigiri with different kinds of pickled vegetables and wrapped them in nori (paper thin sheets of seaweed). Next we had to shape the rice. The confusing thing about "rice balls" is that they are not really balls, but triangles. Shaping the rice into triangles is much more difficult than it sounds. My onigiri looked more like ovals than triangles, but with a little practice my technique started to improve. After the onigiri were completed, we packed our lunch and drove up a long, twisting path to the top of one of the highest mountains in Takeo. On top of the mountain there was a reconstruction of a castle, with a gorgeous view of the rice fields of the region. While we ate our lunch, Mr. and Mrs. Kondo told me more about Takeo and pointed out some of the key features of the geography and told me about the history of the area.

On the way home from lunch, we stopped at a store to buy some flowers. Mrs. Kondo was going to give me a lesson in ikebana, the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging. I think I mentioned before, that ikebana is one of the arts a Japanese woman is supposed to learn in order to be considered a "good wife" and a traditional Japanese home should always have flowers to represent the season. Mrs. Kondo chose two types of flowers to represent autumn(sunflowers and a long stem with lots of purple flowers on it) and two kind of leaves (one that had thin branches with lots of small leaves and a lily pad). In ikebana, there are three important stems, a high stem, a low stem, and a stem in the middle. After the three major stems are in place, the other flowers and leaves are put in place to fill in the spaces. Just as traditional Japanese music starts slow and soft and then gets faster and louder before slowing down again, the goal in ikebana is to create a rolling effect, like water flowing in a river.

After my ikebana lesson, we all drove to the train station to pick up Hanai, Mr. and Mrs. Kondo’s 19-year-old daughter, who was away at college. Hanai is studying Speech Therapy at a university two hours away from her parents’ home and this was the first time she came back to visit since she left for school two months ago. Hanai was very excited to see her parents and they were very happy to see her. Throughout the weekend I kept hearing them repeat the word yokata, so I asked them what it means. They told me that yokata means “glad” or “happy”.

On the way home from the train station we stopped at the supermarket to pick up food for dinner. I didn’t think a Japanese supermarket would be that much different from an American supermarket, but, boy, was I wrong! It is true that, like an American supermarket, the Japanese supermarket had different sections for different kinds of food, with one section for meat, one section for fish, one section for seasonings, one section for snack food, etc…, but what was in each section was different from what you might find in those same sections in an American supermarket. For instance, in the seasoning section, there was salt, but I didn’t see any pepper! There were also lots of different types of sauce made from soy and ginger, as well as a variety of types of dried seaweed. While Mr. & Mrs. Kondo and Hanai selected the foods they needed to prepare dinner. I bought some of the seasonings we used earlier in the day to make onigiri so I can try to make them at home.

When we got back to the house, Mrs. Kondo began to prepare dinner while I talked with Hanai and Mr. Kondo. They shared pictures of their travels to Canda and Alaska three years ago and I told them about Philadelphia and showed them where it was on the map. Once the basic preparations for dinner were underway, we all went into the kitchen to help Mrs. Kondo finish the meal. Hanai helped Mrs. Kondo chop vegetables while Mr. Kondo and I set the table and I served the rice. Dinner was a true feast! In addition to the rice there were fried chicken wings marinated in a sweet soy sauce with sesame seeds and a traditional soup with a milk base that had mushrooms, tofu, chicken, cabbage, and meatballs. The soup was heated up in a big, electric pan in the center of the table. There was also a WHOLE FISH for each person! I was very surprised to come to the table and see a whole fish on my plate, complete with bones, the tail, the head, and even the eyes! While everybody took their seats, I contemplated how I would go about eating the fish using chopsticks.

Before the meal began, everyone put their hands together as if they were going to pray and said, “Itadakemas”. This is done by every person before every meal in Japan, even in schools, as a way of showing thanks to the person who prepared the food. (It's also what people in Japan say instead of "cheese" before taking a picture!) Once we said “itadakemas”, everyone began to eat. During dinner, the Kondos asked me questions about life in the United States and I asked them questions about life in Japan. I could tell that they were still not clear as to where Philadelphia is and if it is a city or a state. I asked them if they knew the movie “Rocky”. They were very familiar with the movie and Hanai started humming the theme song while Mrs. Kondo yelled, “Adrienne!” Right away Mrs. Kondo realized that I was from the same city where Rocky is set. For the rest of the meal we discussed which Rocky movie we thought was the best and which one we thought was the worst. Hanai and I also discussed music. She loves Colby Caillat and KT Tunstall. I told her that I thought she should check out Jack Johnson.

After dinner we watched some of the Japanese World Series between the Yomiuri Giants and the Seibu Lions, and then it was time to get ready for bed. Part of getting ready for bed in Japan involves taking a bath. In Japan, most people don’t take showers like we do in the United States. The bath and the toilet are in two separate rooms. The room that has the bath is like one big shower, with a drain in the middle of the floor. First, the person taking the bath sits on a stool and washes their body and hair under a faucet in an area next to the tub. Once they are completely clean, they soak in a tub filled with hot water and relax. After ten minutes or so, the person climbs out of the tub, dries off, and covers the tub to keep the water warm for the next person. I was very nervous about taking a bath this way, but really, it was very relaxing. I was so relaxed, in fact, that I went straight to bed and had the best sleep I think I’ve had since I got to Japan.

My good night’s sleep might have been a result of the relaxing bath or it might have been because of my comfortable bed. Rooms in Japan are measured by the number of tatami mats that fit in the room. The room I slept in was an 8 tatami mat room. When I first saw the room, I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to sleep. The only furniture in the room was a TV on a stand, a low coffee table, and two chairs without legs that rested on the floor. When it came time to get ready for bed, Mrs. Kondo and Hanai slid open the doors that made up one side of the room and pulled out a mattress (called a futon in Japanese), sheets, blankets, and a pillow. We moved the table and chairs to the side of the room and made up the bed on the tatami mat floor. It was very, very comfortable!

I had such a great first day with my host family that I couldn’t wait to see what the next day would bring. For now, I can tell you that Sunday was just as exciting as Saturday, but I’ll save those adventures for tomorrow’s entry!