Harry Pears

Monday 11th Feb 2008

The first night with my host family went really well, and we were up bright and early in the morning to meet at the town hall for 9PM. The group was split in two, and my half started off the day but going up the ‘Ropeway’ [basically a cable car] to 1121m. Up on the mountain we had a very quick snowball fight with the teachers and then went and looked at trees and stuff where the ice had all frozen over on them. It looked good, but the ice was very slippery… I slipped and whacked my tail-bone on the ice. That was painful! For a few das after I couldn’t bend over without it hurting. Walking uphill and running was painful, too.
After the short trip back down the Ropeway, we went and made some Soba noodles. They were actually incredibly easy to make, even though we were getting taught by people who didn’t know a single word of English. For lunch we had some of the noodles in soy sauce with boiled radish and spring onion; they tasted very good considering I had made them. The rest we got to take home to give to our host families.
Now, the best part of the day IMO- the hot springs. Wow, they were hot; I mean /very/ hot. The outdoor bath was too hot to stay in for a long period so we had to venture back indoors to the cooler of the two. Even though you have to go in naked and only have a small modesty towel, it was worth it. The atmosphere is so calm and the water was extremely soothing. Even though it was a great experience, I can’t see how Japanese families sometimes go to the hot springs every week- they’re too hot!

Tuesday 12th Feb 2008

We were meeting at the town hall at 8.30 to go to the town centre and experience the cultural things which we missed out on when we couldn’t watch the play.
The first cultural activity was trying on Yukata’s / Kimono’s. They were surprisingly comfortable and not /everyone/ looked totally stupid in them. Whilst wearing these, we participated in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony which was good fun for me because all I seemed to be drinking in Japan was tea [Japanese and English] and coffee. However this stuff was different to the other varieties I had tried; it was very bitter. Luckily, there was a cake like thing made from bean something or other to ‘clean your pallet’. After this, me, Ryan and Ben pissed about and made some extremely funny videos before we went and watched traditional dancing then had a go at some ourselves. The dancers were all very kind and gave each of us one of the fans that had once been used by a professional dancer. Mine is now hanging on my wall [xD].
After this we all hopped on a bus again and went to one of two schools for the afternoon. At mine we went in pairs to a designated class and introduced ourselves then ate lunch. Afterwards we went and played basketball where I got a ball whacked into my cheek. Not nearly as painful as running the day after you land on your tail-bone, however. Next we went back to the classroom and spoke a little about England. We were supposed to be in an English lesson, but seemed nothing like one; all the children were doing origami or playing with traditional wooden Japanese toys. It was fun all the same.
After the school day had ended, we got on the bus again to the Sayonara [goodbye] party where we would meet up with our families again. This was good fun as we got to spend time with our host family as well as our friends.