Reflections

Well, it's been awhile since I returned to America.
I don't know why it's taken me so long to write this last post...But I felt like I needed to sum it up.
There's so many things I have to say about my experience in Japan, but I'm going to try to keep this short.
Basically, going to Japan was the best decision I've ever made.
After coming back, I've completely changed the direction I want to go with my life. Before, I was set on being a journalist, but it's become clear to me now that I want to do something in the field of International relations, and I plan on attending Georgetown University (although it's kind of a long shot, haha) or Temple University's Japan Campus after high school. And no matter where I go to school, I am most definitely going to study abroad a year in Japan. Now I know that whatever career path I chose, it is without a doubt going to have something to do with Japan.
Going to Japan really gave me a much broader view of the world, and really put everything in perspective for me. I think about things a lot differently now, and I think that's definitely a good thing.
My experience in Japan was amazing, and I think about it everyday. I really felt that my time there was too short. I told my host mom this before I left, and she said that if I'd gone later it would have been much harder on both of us. I guess she's right, but I miss Japan, I miss Matsue, and I miss my family and friends so much. I keep in touch with my host family through email and have received lots of mail from my classmates, and I actually got an email today actually saying that my host family got skype, so I'll be able to see them soon!
But I'm glad to be back in America, because now I can share with everyone all the wonderful things that happened to me in Japan! I hope that my stories will help people learn something new about it and lessen some of the stereotypes they have about Japan. I aim to use this experience as a tool to give people an understanding of Japan closer to the one I have now.

I have so much more to say, but I think I'll stop there. To sum it all up, this was truly a life changing experience.

Before I end this post, I'd just like to give a few tips to people reading who might be visiting Japan as foreign exchange students in the future.

1) Stay positive. Although it sounds cheesy, finding the silver lining in every situation will help you so much. This is the best thing to keep in mind while you're there.If you don't, you're going to have major culture shock and be miserable. Everytime something didn't go the way I hoped, I focused on the good things about it. You can always find something. A lot of the exchange students complained about things that happened to them when they were there when they came back, but I found myself having nothing but positive things to say, even though some of the things they were complaining about had happened to me as well. My stance is that you really shouldn't have anything to complain about and just be greatful you have the opportunity to be there, and remember that you can make any situation positive.
2) Accept everything you're confronted with. This goes along with staying positive. Whatever situation you're in, don't wish it had gone a different way. Whatever happens to you will be great, and you can always make it fun. Just go with the flow, and take things as the come. Don't be picky!
3) Don't have any expectations. Don't plan out the perfect host family in your head, don't hope to go to a certain place, because it's not going to happen. If you have high expectations before going and they're not met, you're going to be negative and feel like your experience there sucked. Just know that where ever you end up in Japan, you're going to have a great time.
4) And, most of all, がんばって！ (ganbatte) Don't get discouraged while you're there, and stick it out! Even if you're in a small, rural city like I was, there are new and fun things to explore all the time. Be tough, and don't give up! Things are hard at first but make every effort to adapt and you'll have the time of your life.

I hope that helps a bit. I really kept all these things in mind while I was there and stuck to them, and I think that's what made my experience so great. If anyone going to Japan has any questions, please feel free to contact me! I would love to help. I would also like to thank all the people who read my blog up until the very end. And to all the people who have contacted me with questions and read my blog, I hope I was of some help to you.
Thanks everyone!
-Katie

さようなら

I'm leaving tomorrow...
Of course I miss everyone in America...
But parting with Japan is so hard.
When I arrived in Matsue, I showed my host family a photo album I made of my life. While I've been in Japan, I took lots of pictures, and put the new ones in it as a present for my host family. When I gave it to my host mom, she started crying really hard...I've become so close to my host family, and leaving them behind is so difficult. They're like my second family now. I've spent everyday of the past 6 weeks with them and gotten to know them so well. I want to be able to watch Junpei and Akari grow up. I want to keep going to the super market with my host mom, and watching TV with my host dad. I want to remain apart of their family. But I have to go, so it's difficult. I hate thinking about how long it will be before I see them again.
I've also made so many good friends here. Yesterday, I had three of my best friends over, and they said that if they all pass their college entrance exams in the spring, they're coming to visit me. I really hope they pass so they can come do that! It amazes me how I've become good enough friends with people in 6 weeks that they would seriously fly all the way to America to see me. It's hard to leave friends like that behind.
But when I remember Japan, I don't want to feel sad. I want to feel happy! I'll look back at this experience and think about how lucky I was to meet such wonderful people, and have such a wonderful time. Leaving is difficult, but I love it here so much that I will definitely return someday.
So until then, bye bye Japan! I'll never forget you or anyone I met here!
さようなら！

Matsuri!

Saturday was Tenjin Matsuri! It was definitely the loudest and craziest I've ever seen Matsue.
My host mom helped me put on my Yukata. I think I could sort of do it on my own now, but I will never be able to tie an obi. The obi is the part that goes around your waist. It's a very stiff and thick piece of cloth, but somehow my host mom worked it into this amazing bow! How she did it I will never know. Magic maybe?
After that, I met my friend Hiroko (who gave me the yukata) at SATY to take purikura. I thought this might be a little strange...Walking around the mall in a yukata? But actually lots of people were there in their yukatas, so it was fine. We took purikura, and were off to the festival!
I was surprised to find that the main attraction at the festival was a bunch of adorable Japanese kids ghetto dancing...But they were really good! And also, you throw some money in a box thing at the shrine and pray.
Mostly, there are lots of little games that you play. There are lots where you try to catch things like fish (live ones) or bouncy balls with little paper nets. I didn't try, but it looked pretty hard because obviously the net breaks when you put it in the water! There was also this thing where you cut out a pattern along these lines, and if you can do it perfectly, you get money. But it's very difficult. Mostly, I just walked around and ate stuff :) There were lots of things to buy, but my luggage is morbidly obese already, so I decided it'd be better if I didn't...
I don't know what it's actually called but I also got to saw the first part of the parade type thing. Little kids were carrying these big float things and cheering, and it was really adorable! I don't really know what everything is called so it's hard to describe, but I think the videos will give you a better understanding. One of the floats stopping in front of me and this little kid started screaming "GAIKOKUJIN!!!GAIKOKUJIN!!!" (Foreigner). Actually, many more people were pointing out the fact that I was a foreigner than usual...when I walked by people, I'd here whispers of "foreigner!foreigner!" That was amusing :)
After the festival, I was supposed to walk home. I thought that my friend was sort of walking the same way (because my host mom asked her before and she said yes), so I was fine with that. My host my said my host siblings were also walking home, but they left before me. Except it turned out my friend was actually going to walk back to the mall to get picked up, which was the exact opposite of the way I needed to go. So I thought, "ok, I'll just call my mom to come pick me up."
Except I didn't have her number with me.
And I had no clue where I was...
So I walked around for a bit trying to find some landmark I could identify. Eventually, I stumbled across the park I'd taken a walk to the other day! Good thing I took that walk, otherwise I seriously would not have know where I was. So I sort of knew the way from there, and after about 30-40 minutes managed to make my way home. What a site that must have been. Lost foreigner in a yukata stumbling around in the dark in Matsue...And my house was very far away from the festival, I'm not sure how my 10 year old host brother made it home like this.
Also on the way home, a man stopped me to ask for directions to the festival. I was like "Me? You're asking ME?" But luckily, I had just come from there, so I could tell him. When I apoligized for being bad at Japanese he was really surprised. I think since it was very dark he thought I was Japanese...
But yeah, other than that scary walk, the matsuri was very fun!

The Beach!

On Thursday, I went to the beach! I don't really have much to say about this, except that it was really beautiful. Texas beaches are ugly and muddy, but this water was super blue, and there were mountains surrounding it. It was awesome. We had a barbecue as well, except we grilled things like noodles...And it was really delicious! My little brother brought his friends, And my host mom's friend brought along her daughter, who goes to my school and is 15. So I got to hang out with her :)
My only complaint is that in Japan, they designate and close off little swimming spots for you. And at the beach I went to, they did it with an unfriendly looking concrete wall. But it was beautiful anyways :)
Here's some pictures!
There were tons of hermitcrabs, I don't know if you can see them in that picture though. And my brother and his friends caught sea urchins.

I love my friends. And karaoke.

Today I went to hang out with my friends from another class. I had to take the bus to Matsue Station, and man was it confusing! You have to pay a different amount depending on how far you rode the bus, and I completely don't understand how they know how much to pay. So both times I kind of held things up trying to figure things out... After meeting up with my friends at Matsue station, of course we went to SATY. And of course, we took more purikura atSATY!! I love purikura so much. So much. After that, we didn't really know what to do, so we went to the arcade. We played this awesome taiko drumming game. They told me to play it because "This is Japanese culture!" Japanese culture indeed. And it was super fun.

After that, we went to karaoke. I really really really truly love karaoke!!
I can't sing at all. Seriously, I'm horrible at it. But at karaoke it doesn't matter. Everyone sings, no matter what. Japanese boys are really really shy, but even my friend Naoki sang at karaoke. If I eat lunch with him and my other friends, he'll sit one seat away from us, but he'll sing at karaoke. People can really let loose, so it's so much fun! Plus they have all the japanese songs I want to sing. That explaination didn't accurately express my immense love of it, but karaoke is deffinitely going to be really far up on the list of things I'm going to miss about Japan.

Here's my friends singing Sailor Moon's theme

Hiroshima

So, on Monday I left Matsue for Hiroshima to go and meet the president of Mazda and do other various Mazda related things. I took the bus with my host mom (three hours, not too bad) and arrived at the station in Hiroshima to be greeted by my YFU friend Anh and her hostmom, who I was staying with for the trip. My host mom left for her hotel, and I went with Anh and her mom to do a bit of shopping :) Anh's host mom left, and we went to Hondori stree together. Hondori is this street that's closed off to traffic where there are just tons of shops! It's awesome.
Also, if you look in the top right hand corner of the first picture, you'll see pictures of Arashi! It's part of Au's campaign for some awesome phones including the most awesome boy band ever. They're seriously everywhere in Japan. Everywhere. It's wonderful. But I digress...
Anh and I headed straight for the idol shop. The idol shop is amazing. Amazing. You walk up the stairs and are suddenly surrounded with pictures of boybands and actors and singers. The walls are completely covered with photos. Actually, the ceiling is too! You walk around and write down the number of the pictures you want, and then they get them for your from the back. I'm not going to say how much I spent, but lets just say it was a lot. Probably more than I spent at any other store....And unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the store because you can't take pictures in it. :(
After that, we returned to Anh's house. You have to use a lot of public transportation in Hiroshima, and it's really expensive! We rode a street car (like a train but on the street), a train, and a sky rail. They skyrail was really cool though! Anh lives on top of a mountain, so she takes it everyday.
Anh's host family were really kind to let me stay with them, and I had a lot of fun with them! They all speak perfect english (lucky for Anh!), so it was really easy to communicate. Anh has a little sister (10), and two little brothers (7 and 8), as well as her parents. It was really fun staying with them, and I had a lot of fun with Anh as well :)
They next day, we were off to Mazda! First we all sat down in a confrence room and heard speeches by various employees, and then the President of mazda, Mr. Yamanouchi, came to speak to us. After his speech, we were aloud to ask him questions. Then he presented everyone with some gifts from Mazda (a shirt and two hats). Afterwards, we took pictures with him, and he gave everyone his buisness card! That's pretty special, he doesn't just give those out to anyone. Once we were done with all of that, someone interviewed me for the newspaper in Hiroshima...And only me...And then in the paper, the picture was of me..Why?? Mostly they asked me what I thought about Mazda and the president, and what car my family has, and what car I want (of course, I said Mazda :P). So yeah, 6 weeks in Japan and I've already been in the paper twice!
next, we went to tour the hydrogen station. Mazda has made hydrogen powered vehicles, and their only byproduct is water! It's awesome! When you put your hand in front of the exhaust pipe, your hand gets wet! They explained to us how they work and how you fill them up, and then we got to ride in one!! This was really special, even Mazda employees haven't ridden them yet. They wouldn't let us take pictures of them then, but this is a photo of one from the museum.
After lunch, we had a crafting activity. We made dust pans. Apparently Mazda always wins these competitions where you make stuff out of metal...So we got to make stuff out of metal! We went into the room where they were practicing for the competition, and it was seriously 100 degrees in there. I'm not exagerating, they even told us that it was 100 degrees. Then we got to bend these metal sheets into dust pans! Then we decorated them. I drew flowers on my hadle and wrote "I love Mazda!!" in Japanese. The best three dust pans were going to win prizes, and first prize was four tickets to a baseball game!My dust pan won second place :). I thought it was funny because they kept talking about the dust pans like they were these amazing works of art. "And the bending on this dust pan was just so beautiful," "Oh, the dust pans you created are so beautiful and wonderful!" I thought it was kind of funny :) But it was really fun making the dustpans! I will treasure my award winning dust pan forever.
After that, we toured the Mazda museum and factory. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures in the factory so I don't have any, but you can take them in the museum!
They let us get in some of the museum cars, even though you're not supposed to ;) I have pictures of me in it, but I like this one better :) That other red car is a concept car, and it's supposed to look like it's moving even when it's not. It's funny, in every picture I have of it it looks like it really does look like it's moving! But that could have just been me moving the camera...The green and orange one won a 24 hour race. Awesome! Anh's family have a model of this one at their house.
The factory was really cool too. You walk above it, and can look down on all the people putting parts in the carsMine won second, so I got two keychains. It was funny when they were presenting the awards, . They do it so fast! The museum and the factory were both really interesting.
After the museum, we tried out some of the demo cars.
After that, we went back to the confrence room for some closing statements. One of the other YFU students, Lauren, gave an awesome speech in Japanese! She's really good, it was really impressive. Then we heard some other closing statements, and it was time to go home.
...Except I didn't go home, I went shopping again! This time with Anh and two other YFU friends. We went back to the idol shop, and I bought more stuff..It's impossible not to in that store. Yesterday, they girl working in the shop forgot to put a keychain in my bag that I bought. When I asked for it, she remembered exactly which one it was and gave it to me. Probably because I had the funniest fragmented conversations with her trying to figure out what was going on last time...This time I also had to play translator. I like doing that though, it makes me feel good when I'm able to communicate with people in Japanese. We went to some other shops too, I bought some clothes, and then we headed home.
The next day, before I left, I went with Anh and her hostmom to have some Hiroshima style okonomiyaki! It was delicious!! Okonomiyaki is made like a pancake, only it has vegetables, meat, noodles, whatever you want in it. There are two types of okonomiyaki, Hiroshima and Osaka style. I've had both now, and I must say I prefer Hiroshima style. :) But it was so big I could barely finish it!!
Hiroshima was really fun :) I loved getting to see all the Mazda scholarship recipients again, and I had a lot of fun catching up with them. Me and Anh had so much catching up to do that we only slept about two hours the night before I left! I thought that would be ok because I could sleep on the bus, but there was an old man snoring really loud behind me...Oh well, small price to pay for such a great time!

Tea Ceremony Club

Yesterday, after school ended, my friends Akari and Rei took me to tea ceremony club, or sadou. Japanese people have been drinking tea since the 9th century, so tea ceremony is very old. There's a certain way of doing everything: walking, the way the bowl is turned, the order in which you pick up certain things, etc. It's all very intricate and particular, and of course very interesting! They gave me a big bowl of green tea to drink, and everyone was really surprised I drank it all because it's supposed to be really bitter. I dunno, it tasted pretty good to me! So I drank tea and ate little tea ceremony snacks while everyone took turns preparing the tea for eachother.
After they finished, I got to try on a yukata! I wish I had brought my own, but since I didn't, I tried on Rei's. It's really confusing to put on, I'm not sure I could do it on my own! It also didn't really fit me...but it was really fun!
Me with Rei and Akari (first) and the older members of the club (second)

After trying on the kimono, they let me make some tea on my own. I'm pretty sure I didn't get the technique and all right, but I successfully made tea! Basically, you take three scoops of tea, add water, and whisk it with the chasen, or tea whisk. When they whisk it, their hands move so fast you can't even see them! I couldn't do it quite as fast, but the result was still the same.
Tea ceremony club was really fun! I wish I'd thought to go earlier, because I would like to go more...
The older students showing me how to make tea, tools for making tea, and Rei (left) and Akari (right) being silly :)