New Family Bonding

This is a post about the last two weeks, even though I wasn´t quite as busy this time around, I still found a lot of things to write about.
On Monday my class went out for dinner to celebrate successfully surviving our first Culture Festival. The family of one of the boys in my class owns and runs this very nice Chinese restaurant in town, so we went there. The food was as great as the company.

Kanpai!

What happens if you ask Saa-chan for a "cool pose".  I think I´ll start doing this in pictures instead of the peace sign from now on.

Haruka <3

Saa-chan was in charge of the culture festival preparation, so we gave her a cake to thank her for her hard work.

There was also some confetti poppers, which led to confetti war.

Probably the best sweet and sour pork I´ve ever had. There was so much food I was bursting.

Class 11. I remember observing everybody getting things ready for the festival and thinking "damn I really care about these people". They´re a great bunch.

Even though I had a great time at dinner, I felt a little guilty as well. It was my last night with the Takagi family, and I wasn´t spending it with them. But both my host dad and grandma were out of town that night, so we would´t have all been together anyway. My friends invited me to go take puri or something after we finished eating, but I had to go home and spend the little time left with my host mom. We had a good talk, were she told me she was glad that I had become her daughter.

The next day I went to school as usual, and got driven home by my host mom. We picked up the last little things from my room, and then we stopped by the different floors to say goodbye. I promised myself I would´t cry, but promises get broken from time to time. First I said goodbye to my host grandma, we thanked each other for the good times, and agreed to meet up some time so she could tach me to play Mahjong. She also gave me a little present; a small Chanel notebook. Then we went down to the dental clinic floor, to say goodbye to my host dad, who was still at work.  He was in his scrubs, but I still gave him a hug. Then my host mom drove me to my new home. She helped carry my things up, and then we hugged and said bye. I felt a little bad that there was no proper goodbye, but then I remember that I´ll be staying with them again in July. I guess this was more of a "see you later".

My new host family, the Kendas, showed me around, and then gave me some time to unpack. Then we had dinner and got to know each other better. I asked my host dad what his job, and to that he laughed and told me that he´s retired, so he just walks the dog, goes to dinner parties, and plays golf. He´s a Rotary Governor too, which is a pretty big deal. My host mom runs a cafe, which is located right next to our house.

Soon we heard a small knock on the door. Enter my host nephew! Apparantly he´d been talking about my moving in for a while. I was pretty stoked to have a kid in the house again.

Kazu-kun, four years old. He was really exited to show me his English learning app on the iPad. 

We made lots of origami, among them some shuriken.

I got this message from my previous dad. It´s good to know that he´s still looking after me haha

I spent the next few days settling in to the family routine. School went on as normal.

On Saturday host mom had a dental appointment in Kanazawa, so we decided to make a day of it. 

Mom gave me her Hermes scarf to use as a blanket for the car ride.  I´ve never felt fancier. I told my real family about it. Dad told me not to get too used to the brand, unless I´m planning on getting a good job and marrying rich hah

We dropped host mom off for her appointment, and then host dad and I went to Kenrokuen garden. It was absolutely beautiful, and I was able to get some pretty nice photos. It was such a beautiful day.

We had an ice cream break. I´ve been eating all the matcha flavoured things that I can find lately. Delicious.

After we finished exploring the gardens, we made our way over to Kanazawa castle. My first Japanese castle. It was also gorgeous.

Doesn´t look real.

Then we picked host mom, and went shopping. We found  a store called "Victoria Golf". I had to take picture. I´m guessing they sell golf related things there, but one can never be too certain.

When we returned host mom and I ate dinner alone, ´cause host dad had a dinner party of some sort to attend. We had octopus with some mushrooms, among other things. Delish.

On Sunday I got up early to go for a run. I´ve been eating so much food and sweets, that I need some more exercise to make up for it. I felt like hell while doing it, but it feels so good when you finish. I cleaned up and got ready to go to a kendo tournament. An exchange friend was competing, and one of my best friends from class was also competing. Since it was in Takayama of course I´d go watch. I don´t quite grasp the rules of kendo, but it was fun.

My classmate Mizuho. She almost got to the finals.

You can´t even tell he´s a foreigner

<3

Since the tournament finished early, we went out for burgers and walked all over town. The weather  was amazing. I could´t believe we were going into November, it was that hot. With the running and all the walking combined, I could hardly move the next day.

On Tuesday one of my teachers invited me to try the flower arrangement club. I said yes of course. Made new friends here too, and the sensei invited all of us over to her place some time for tea and cakes some other time. I have this agreement with all the clubs I´ve visited so far, that I can basically stop by whenever I want. It´s a really great way to get to know new people and try new things.

The flowers all symbolise something, what I´m not quite sure yet.

My new friend Riho and I biked home together. She told me her mom attended the culture festival, and her mom said that I was cute and had a "nice style". She took this picture to prove to her mom that we´re friends haha. 

I came home and set up the flower arrangement for my family. My host dad went to this shinto shrine thing, and was wearing this cool outfit when I came home. I made him pose next to the flowers.

Friday was Halloween, but I pretty much forgot about it. I was eating lunch with my friends, and as soon as we finished they started pulling out cakes and candy from their backpacks and put it neatly down on the floor. I didn´t get the memo that we were having a Halloween buffet, so I didn´t bring anything. They didn´t mind.

Thanks to the filter my friend used while taking this picture, I look even whiter than usual. We all stuffed our faces with so much cake, I was surprised we didn´t explode.
After school I went to tea ceremony club, and the girls gave me all the left over sweets. I really need to learn how to say no. 

Saturday was the first day in a long time that I got to sleep in. Or so I thought. At seven thirty my host nephew burst into my room and shouted "wake up! we have to talk to the gods!" Turns out that there was a shinto priest downstairs that was going to perform some purification ritual, since we were going into a new month and all. I frantically got dressed and went downstairs, half asleep. The whole family plus the priest had been waiting for me. The ritual started, and after the regular chanting and bowing and offering of food, I was allowed to go get some more sleep.

When I woke up I got some study in, and watched some tv with the family. It was the first time in a while where I had no plans, and it was so nice to have some time to just relax. A little later I went shopping for school supplies and other things.

You really never know what you´ll find when out shopping. It´s like a treasure hunt.

We went out for dinner, and this was what dinner looked like. Japan really knows how to do meat.

Host brother Yutaka, nephew Kazutoyo, and sister in-law Yuko. They live upstairs, so we get to hangout a lot. 

Host mom Keiko and I.

The family sans host dad. He was out of town for some Rotary thing.

After dinner we went to a hankyu doujo. Hankyu is basically mini-kyudo. The distance between the archer and the target is much smaller, and the targets and bows are smaller as well. You shoot while sitting.

The distance was approximately ten meters.

After I shot an arrow.

Host bro tried too.

I did pretty well, and the people running the place were pretty impressed. I was able hit the centre, which made me really happy. I can´t wait til I can shoot at kyudo club as well. 

Yuko also tried her hand at hankyu. She got a mini lesson from the grandma running the place.  We finished up and headed home, where we had some cakes and watched some tv. 

Sunday was another lazy day, which I didn´t mind at all. I had some fun taking pictures with my brand new polaroid camera, and later my host mom and I met up with her friend and we went to check out this antique market and some temples.

Hana, the family dog.

At one of the temples we visited they were selling all kinds of foods. I got to try these fish shaped cakes filled with bean paste. Super tasty and super filling. I didn´t have room for ramen afterwards which was a bummer. 

My host mom´s friend has a daughter who went on a short term exchange to Norway a while back. We talked a lot about cultural differences between Norway and Japan, and she told me her daughter really wants to meet me the next time she comes to Takayama, which is totally doable.

We soon split up, since I had some errands to run. I had to give a few papers to my counsellor, who runs a Japanese sweets shop. I visited his shop to deliver the papers, and was amazed to see what a long line there was outside the shop. There was also a "Trip Advisor" on the window, which I thought was pretty darn cool. I met up with my counsellor and we had a chat about the family change and how things were going. He tried speaking English, but I only answered in Japanese. "Wow your Japanese has gotten good!" It was pretty nice to hear that. It motivated me to go home and study some more.

I had a good two weeks, and have really found myself at home with the Kenda family. Until next time!