November 16th: A day for the host family

Before I had made all my preparations and whatnot to come to Japan this time, I contacted my old host family from back when I studied abroad four years ago. We have been keeping in touch all these years, and I really wanted to see them. My host sister had gone from 9 years old to 13…..a big jump for a young girl. Especially in Japan, when you enter your “chuugaku” (middle school) years, and your preparation for college starts. A big responsibility at a physically challenging time... I won’t get into the details of the cultural context and all that stuff, but needless to say: Japanese kids have it rough during this time in their lives. I was particularly interested to see how Kayoko was handling it and how grown up she had gotten since I was last here. As her “brother”, I was impressed and pleased. Much like my blood sister, she has matured a lot and shows a great deal of promise :-) Here's a picture of her to the right of their new host daughter, holding a gift that I won in a claw machine, hah:


So I dedicated a whole day to them. I got up and going from Ian’s and met my host family at the station I used to go to everyday for school, Korien-eki:


They came with their new host student, whom I was very pleased to see. You see, I was their first host student, and I was always curious really what kind of impression I left on them (the Japanese are often not very forthright about how they think of you….in fact, they never are). I guess the fact that this is their 7th host student since me is a testament to me not being a terrible “son”. Here are some pictures of my family:




This is the skateboard I left behind when I came back to the US. They made me sign it. They're going to keep it. Wow....I feel like I'm famous :-)


“Boku no koto wo wasuranaide kudasai” I said to my host mother before I left from Japan. By the time I got back to the US, she had written my mother an email that said “I cannot forget Andrew, he was my first son”. I almost cried.