Meet the Oohiras

Hello blog, its been a while, I'm terribly sorry for having neglected you...but I'm here now with all sorts of fun stories to tell! :D

As part of the program, the Ryuugakusei center (Foreign Exchange Office) sets up a weekend home stay within the Ibaraki Prefecture (a prefecture is essentially a state). Some people stay with a family by themselves, but if there is more room, frequently two or sometimes more students stay with the same family. I was lucky and got a family all to myself :) Everyone, meet the Oohiras! :D

I was one of the only people whose home stay took place in the city of Mito, and they actually live in Ishikawa-jou, the next township over from Hori-chou, where I live, so its a 10 minute bike ride and they've all ready said they want to hang out some more :) They were really nice! The Dad's name is Masayoshi ( I think...no one ever told me his name...but I don't feel to bad...he couldn't say my name anyway :P), the son, Hiro, Mom, Atsuko, daughter, Haruru and their German exchange student Marie. :D

Atsuko picked me up from school on Friday evening and we went grocery shopping before we picked up Marie and Haruru from martial arts. We ended up playing lots of poker and Uno and having a grand old time. Haruru proved to me that she is the cutest nine year old that I have ever met. She constantly was correcting my Japanese, making funny faces and stealing my camera to run off and take pictures. She was hysterical.

Before I came to their house I went to Jupiter which is an imported goods store to get some Hershey Chocolate. Haruru quickly discovered that she loved Mr. Goodbar's and raided the Minatures variety bag, so no one else but her got any!

They had a legitimate Japanese Ofuro, so I got to experience that, which was really, really nice and very relaxing. I was sleeping on a futon in Marie's room and when I went to go to bed, Haruru ran into the room telling me that "I want to sleep with Big sister Caitlyn tonight!"...She was beyond adorable. I think I may attempt to pack her into my suitcase.

The next day we woke up early and went to the huge Aeon/Jusco mall in Uchihara because Haruru really wanted to take Purikura with her two big sisters. :D The pictures turned out adorable, but due to a technical mix up we didn't get any of them sent to our cell phones :( Oh well! Marie and I then went off to Jusco to go shopping for clothes!

Marie is living with them for a year and is from Leipzig, Germany. She is a complete and utter sweetheart and I she and I have all ready made plans to go shopping together next Saturday :) She's so sweet and has the most amazingly positive outlook on everything...it just totally blew my mind. It was fun to when we were at Jusco, we got to speak German, which was nice, and she said it was the first time she had spoken German since getting to Japan. She's excited for our shopping date, since I told her I'd take her to the import store to get some German chocolate, and I told her it could be our German day :)

Later that night, we went bowling with the family, including Hiro, who was usually MIA, which was fun. Unfortunately, Haruru didn't have the strength to play, so she kept rolling gutterballs, which being as she is 9 years old, ultimately resulted in tears. :( I tried hugging her to make it better, but she would have none of it. It was still quite fun, especially because we did it as a family.

The Mom is from Kobe, which is the Kansai region, which if you know anything about the region of Japan, that is by Osaka, which is very famous for its unique food. They are known for their Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki, which is what we had for dinner :) You make it in a little griddle in little balls and flip them around to roast them. Its made from some kind of unique batter with, I think, seaweed in it. Usually the filling is Octopus, but we also put in mocha, cheese and ham. I tried the Octopus and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be, but it was quite different. I would never choose to make it for myself, but I'm glad I had the experience of trying it.

The next day we all packed into the car to go to Ooarai to go clamming! Before we get to clamming, I would like to elaborate on their car. Its freaking insane! First of all, I have not seen a car with three rows in it since coming to Japan, but they had one. The car also has cameras on either side of it, so that when you come to a stop, it automatically turns on the cameras and where you usually see the GPS, you see on either side of you and around corners. Also, when you back in to parking spots (because Japanese people do not pull into parking spots ever. The always back out.), there is a camera with guide lines that show you where you should be parking, vs. where you are going based off of how you have the wheel turned. And when you put the car into park the car says "Otsukaresamadeshita!", which I guess the closest English translation in this instance would be "Welcome to your destination/home". Their car is sick!

At Ooarai we dug around in the sand for a good hour digging for clams that they were going to eat for dinner. I actually managed to find some myself, and once I understood what the heck it was we were doing, it was pretty fun! We even brought Wen, the family dog, to the beach with us. When he's not yakking in the car because he gets carsick, he's rather cute :D

After that we headed for the fish market because Haruru wanted crab for dinner as well. She got to pick her crab, so she was quite happy with herself over that. I spent a few more hours at the house before they had to take me home, but it was a really fun weekend and they all ready invited me to a BBQ with them in the near future.

Well, I really need to get one with memorizing my speech for tomorrow's presentation, so I best be going....until later!