room 126

My last few days at the homestay have been happy ones.

All sorts of goofing around with Ashley upstairs in our room (anything from late night movie sessions to frisbee slipper fights and always lots of laughter), the usual too big to finish meals and walking around Nagahama.

Friday meant that all of the JCMU students were required to head in their assigned groups to elementary schools scattered about the area to play games and sing songs and entertain for a few hours instead of having class. I headed to inaekita with Jones-san from my 200 level class, and Vandenbosch-san, a 100 level. Despite being a little nervous in our drive out there (the school chartered taxis to take us each to our respective location and to bring us back before noon), and regardless of our driver getting lost more than once trying to find our school, once we got there it was non-stop fun and energy until we went back to the JCMU.

At first when we entered the school, we were directed into the office, given tea and told to wait for a while, but soon the teacher of the 1^st and 2^nd graders that we’d be playing with came and greeted us along with four little girls who promptly grabbed our hands and dragged us into the school’s gym. As soon as we entered, the classes seated on the floor started clapping and we were led to three chairs sitting at the front of the gym with our names written out in katakana behind them.

After our self introductions, all of the kids (probably 40 or so kids) lined up and introduced themselves in Japanese, shook our hand and then proceeded to play jon ken pon before moving on to the next person. Jon ken pon is basically our rock paper scissors, but they absolutely love it over here. It was fun because I kept winning and they were getting all excited about it and watching to try to make sure they did the opposite of the one that I kept choosing, but still I did alright, earning praise like ‘ohh tsuyoi’ which means like ‘ohh you’re good at that!’.

The jon ken pon introductions were then followed by, guess what, more jon ken pon in conjunction with running around creating trains of people (there was a round of singing of Bingo, too, before everyone was concerned about the train game). If you lost to someone, you had to join their train until there was only one train left. I lost every first match (we played somewhere around 3 or 4 rounds). The kids loved it though, screaming and running around with smiles on their faces, and there was of course a song for the game that they were all singing, too.

We had a quick ‘halftime’ where we were taken back into the office and given more tea, but the kids were all very impatient to play with us some more, and holding on to our hands (in my case, two girls on each hand) asked us with big eyes ‘asobo? asobo?’ (play with us?). Our break was over almost as suddenly as it was given to us, and back in the gym all of the kids were running rampant, jumping around us in circles, chasing us around the gym, etc. Once the teachers had a handle on the class again, we were divided into three groups (one of us in each) to make tanabata festival decorations (which would then be given to the three of us as thank you gifts for coming and spending time at the school).

Tanabata is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month every year in Japan (though typically on the lunar calendar) and is about the meeting of two stars, Orihime and A….something, lovers who can only cross the Milky Way once a year to see each other. A traditional decoration is to make origami and other folded paper charms to hang on a sasa branch. (Sasa being bamboo? Or some plant of that kind) I have mine hanging in my room, now.

When we finally left, all of the kids sent us off like rockstars, shouting their farewells, frantic waving, reaching out to touch us one last time before we had to hop into the taxi again. It was so much fun, and the kids were very interested in us, trying to talk to us the entire time. Japanese kids are so cute. What am I saying, any kid at that age is cute, especially when you only have a few hours of exposure.

After returning from the schools, all of us JCMU kids compared gifts and day plans with each other. I met up with Ashley and Jenny for lunch at Cocos and then Ashley and I headed back to Nagahama to go to the calligraphy class that oka-san invited us to when we first started homestaying. She met us at the Nagahama train station and we walked across the street to the Yes building (That’s really what it says…) and attended the class (our sharp eyes caught what looked like cheap yukatas in the lower story shop windows, so we’re planning on going back there today).

It was a very small group of people for calligraphy, 6 or so people, all of them the same age as our host parents or so, but we were able to try calligraphy on our own and have it checked by the sensee. It was really really hard, but Ashley and I gave it our best.

We were at shudo from 2-4:30 or so, then returned home for dinner. After dinner, oka-san and oto-san took us on a surprise trip to the biggest mountain in Shiga prefecture, just an hour or so drive away. There was a beautiful pond a little ways from it that we stopped at as well, and I took the opportunity to take lots of pictures. I may have said this once before already, but I have made up my mind that wherever I end up living for the bulk of my life down the road is going to have to be somewhere with mountains. I felt the same way when I went to Colorado and Wyoming. There’s some sort of harmonic connection with something deep inside of me that makes me feel so calm and like I’ve clicked into place.

As of right now, I’m packed and ready to move back into the JCMU dorms later this afternoon. It’ll take about a day or so to feel moved in again, but I’m still so very much looking forward to it. Since about Thursday this week, there has been a festival of sorts down the covered shop strip that we traverse every day for school, and Ashley and I are planning on checking that out today as well. So I’ll be traveling a bit today, but hopefully it all go smoothly.


(that was written earlier in the day, since then I've traversed the festival tents with my camera, so here's the endless fun going on near the homestay.)