nothing to prove

japanese smores

Last weekend I went back to my homestay for another weekend of drinking and food, anyone surprised? What can I say? I am a sucker for being feed and watered for free. The main reason I went back to my homestay, besides them being like my family in Japan, is that they had another student from St. John's staying with them. His name is Paul Telthorst and we actually had sculpture together last year. Real genuine guy that doesn't speak a lick of Japanese, well he can ask where the bathroom is. Anyway, they wanted me to help them with Paul because they were afraid of his inability to speak Japanese. To be honest I think they would have been fine because their daughter speaks way better English than I speak Japanese. Oh well, i wasn't going to tell them now.


When I first got there the usual array of food was waiting for me but this time Paul and Asuka's friend, Manami, where there waiting. The family slowly started filing in and we got to enjoy some drinking with the Dad again. This time Yuko and Takuya weren't there with their children running around like crazy. It was kind of strange because that was the first weekend, since I started going to my homestay, that I didn't see them at some point during my stay. Oh well, it is not like I will never be visiting my homestay again. In fact, they were already wondering when both Paul and I would be returning for our next visits. From what I gathered when talking to him, Paul definitely had a good time as well so maybe I will see him there next time I make the trek to Shiozawa.



Anyway, back to the weekend, the next day we headed up to Echigo-Yuzawa park and for those that don't know that is actually one of the places we visited on my first with my homestay. We took the gondola up to the top of the mountain and just kind of wandered through the park. It was a bit different this time because instead of me, Asuka and the parents there were just the twenty year olds walking around. Go-Karting, getting ice cream, bobsledding, and meandering through the gardens were just some of the things that we did in our short time there. Afterwards we went to the train station to visit a sake shop. It was really cool because there was a wall of over 100 different kinds of sake and you paid around 800 yen ($8) for five shot tokens to try whatever sake you wanted. Let's just say that Paul and I were feeling it after no food and 5 shots of sake. After picking up a bottle of sake, we headed back to Shiozawa for dinner.


The last big event was the Japanese barbeque, something I hadn't done yet so that obviously made me excited for it. We had it at this temple near there house, I actually visited it last time, where we set up camp. Once the coals got hot, after a good twenty minutes of fanning, we started to grill away. In true homestay fashion, we had over two grocery bags full of meat, vegetable, fruit, and marshmallows. At a Japanese barbeque you grill the food and then use a dipping sauce on your plate. It was delicious especially with the cold beer that went along with it. Then the highlight of the evening was the roasting of the marshmallows and instead of looking for a stick we just used chopsticks, it was quite amusing. After eating way too much food we got all packed up and headed back to the house.

Once we got there we got a fun visit from Hina-chan, their seven year old neighbor. Now keep in mind this is a shy girl with way too much energy on her hands. Naturally we had to do fire works that night, which were surprisly a lot of fun for being a bunch of sparklers. Sadly that was my last night there because the next day I headed back to pick up Melissa, Kate, and Kayvohn from the shinkansen station since they had just gotten back from Thailand. Needless to say, I am excited to visit again.

posted by Aaron @ 6:24 AM