Japan 2006 part 3: Stories from Homestay

Hello again! This is the third entry in my series revisiting my first trip to Japan, you can catch the first post here and the second here.

peep that awesome purple car

I stayed with a Japanese family in Chiba for a little over a week on my first trip. I spent a couple days attending my host sister's high school, went to Tokyo disneyland, and some days visited local attractions with my class, as Japanese summer break does not line up with the U.S., so our host sisters were still in school. In fact, in Japan summer break comes between semesters, around August, and only lasts a month or so. Additionally the Japanese spend a sizable amount of time after school in clubs, and I elected to try out Kendo on my days at Inage High. It was a ton of fun, but if I learned anything, it's that bamboo swords HURT and Kendo is super intense.

As always, please keep in mind these are old polaroids i'm doing my best with, so the quality may be a bit poor.

My host dad was obsessed with Gundam. He showed me his collection, and then pulled out a few he had in boxes. Upon my complementing them, he immediately started offering them to me. Despite my attempts at polite refusal, as i'm not particularly interested in Gundam, I ended up with a couple from his collection. The Japanese are polite to a fault, and I have heard that a good rule of thumb is to ask if they want something 3 times before getting an honest answer. They may take your first offer as a courtesy question, think perhaps you are only politely re-insisting on the second, and then finally on the third can take your offer at face value. While this becomes less and less true the closer friends you make, I found it useful on many occasions.

One of the places we visited when not attending school was the Edo-Tokyo museum, home to this behemoth of an escalator:

The museum is actually in the space above, which is pretty neat. It is mostly a history museum, and a very cool one at that, but one time I visited there was a special exhibit on David Bowie. Not sure why, but I wasn't complaining. It's also one of the first places I saw a swastika.

Originally an ancient religious symbol, it's all over historical parts of Japan, but 16-year-old me thought it was kinda funny and weird. The museum has Samurai Armor, models of ancient Japanese cities, old woodblock prints, all kinds of neat stuff. If I manage to dig up some decent pictures of the inside I may do a separate post on it. But for now, here's a spot outside the museum to lock up your umbrellas.

Of course in between sight seeing and museums we had to do some shopping.

Asakusa shopping street

I would place emphasis on shopping areas in Japan being much more open than I was used to. There is virtually no fear of theft, for good reason. This is also apparent in the fact that most transactions are in cash. In the picture above you see a friend of mine demonstrating how you listen to CDs before buying them in a Japanese electronics store. The CDs were not wrapped in plastic. You simply grab the one you want to listen to, take it out of the case, place it in the provided player, then put it back when you're done. We took this photo because, as Americans, we were blown away by not only the store's trust that nobody would steal CDs, but also the respect of that trust by all patrons. All of these CDs would've been gone in a week in America.

This trust and lack of desire to take what's not yours transitions nicely into my trip to Tokyo Disneyland with my host sister and friends.

What fun sacking and burning is!

I remember Stitch was HUGE in Japan at the time

While at Tokyo Disneyland, a friend of mine bought a stuffed animal for his host sister at the gift shop. A short time afterwards, we stopped at a bench to rest for a bit to decide what to do next. About 10 minutes after leaving the bench, my friend gasped with the revelation that he left his wildy expensive, theme park priced gift on a bench in Disneyland, with thousands of people walking by it. Almost certain that it would be gone, he ran back to see if by some miracle nobody had taken it yet. A couple minutes later, he walked back with the stuffed animal in hand. With a chuckle, he said, "I forgot: We're in Japan. Someone was standing next to the bench holding it up, asking who's it was".

And that's when I fell completely in love with Japan.

Even so, if I could take only ONE thing back from Japan to where I live now, it would be the bathrooms. Here's the obligatory Japanese toilet pic:

Heated seat, separate bidet and butt sprays, scents, all kinds of magical things for your bathroom experience. Not to mention the post-shower hot baths to get you nice and relaxed before bed.

Thanks for looking!