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| Zurn sensei and Rachel at the Doll Factory | Meghan's Showa hostfamily |
By Fred Lauer and Meghan Stelzig
Wow what an amazing night. I got to my host families house and found out that no one spoke any English. I was really tired by the time we got to Showa. It was really hard trying to understand what everyone was asking me. I went to sleep and woke up at 6 am. Finally partially rested I started to understand more of what they were asking me. My host families house is amazing. Everyone is incredibly nice. It's hard to communicate once in a while, but it's very gratifying to get a sentence out that makes sense. Right now we're heading to a Daruma factory in Koshigaiya. All of us are on full stomachs and ready to go. We just started on our way on the trains, we go through Minami-sakuri, Kasukabe, and Kitakoshigaiya stations, and walk around 20 minutes to get there. I'm hoping that the daruma is fun to make, and it's great to be back with the people I know. I'm looking forward to tonight, we're watching moulin rouge and having ramen.
Back on the train now, and we're heading to Showa. The Daruma factory was very interesting. We made a traditional Japanese doll used to bring a wish to the bearer. We took a good walk, and got some interesting new drinks from the random vending machines lining the streets. All in all today was fun, now back to the host families.
By Meghan Stelzig
Yesterday our host families brought us to the train station at 9:00am. We took a train to the daruma shop. Daruma is a good luck type of doll. The guy there showed us how the darumas are made. We each got to paint the faces on our own darumas. The idea of darumas is that you paint one eye on and make a wish- like success or happiness. When your wish come true, you can paint the other eye.
After the daruma shop we went back to the train station. For some reason not all of our host families could pick us up. Those that had their host families come ate lunch with them. Ben, Rachael, Brian C., Clayton, Tony, and my host families did not pick us up. We went to lunch together with sensei, Zurn, sensei's mom, sensei's sister, and sensei's niece (Momo). We ate at a ramen place.After we ate lunch we met our host families at the train station. Clayton and Brian C. left with their families. I guess Rachael, Ben, Tony, and my host families are friends because they had a whole day of activities planned together. First we went to the Kikkomon soy sauce factory for a tour. It was interesting to go on a tour that was not in English. I understood more than I thought I would though. The parents were teasing Zurn because Nagaisensei said he does not know any Japanese!
After Kikkomon, we went to a traditional Japanese doll factory. The factory makes dolls for girls to get from their grandparents as a present the first new years that they are alive. Most of the dolls were around 1,000 dollars!
After the doll factory we went to a shopping center to go to a hyaku yen store (dollar store). Japanese people really like to put English phrases on clothing, but most of the time they don't make sense. For example, at the shopping center we saw a shirt that said "Revive my season".
After shopping we returned home with our families. My host mom wanted me to try a lot of Japanese food so she brought her daughter (17) and I went to a sushi bar. I was surprised that I liked a lot of the food there. I even ate eel!