Tateno Family

On the morning of the 24th (Sunday) I said my goodbyes and thank-yous to the Umezaki family and moved to my third and final host family.

I am really glad that I got to live at the Umezakis' house. They were an excellent host family. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with Mr. Umezaki or Rika (29-year-old host sister) as they both have full-time jobs, but I got really close with my host mom. She was awesome! I always had good food and obentos. I got to help with dinners at night and after dinner she gave me Japanese lessons. They were all very generous and let me make whatever plans I wanted to on my own. I will never forget them.

My host father, host mother, me, Rika, and the dog (Nene).

I had not really met my third host family before that morning. I had talked with my host father for about 10 minutes at a rotary lunch two weeks earlier, but that was it. I was a bit nervous about switching.

The Tateno family pulled into the driveway at about 9:30 and I finally got to meet them .They are a young couple (early 40's) with one 7-year-old boy named Manato. We (both host families and myself) all talked for a while, loaded my luggage into the car, and said good-bye.

Hey, they got smaller since I last changed families...

My new house is in Tokyo, which is a kind of exciting. (Plus, we don't have to sort our garbage in Tokyo!!!) I technically live outside of my Rotary District now. My house is in a really nice neighborhood-- an actual neighborhood! I even met all my neighbors! My host family introduced me to all of them my first day there, probably so they didn't get worried when they see a random foreigner trying to get into the house. The house is small, but clean and it really feels like a home. There is not much privacy (seeing how I don't really have a room) but I don't mind at all. I feel the most at home in this family I think.

My house!

The living room and play/study room. I close those sliding doors (to the left) and set out my futon when it is time for bed.

From the other direction.

My host parents are both awesome. This is the first time they have hosted a students so I htink they feel like they don't quite know what to do, but they are doing a great job. My host father is a public tax accountant (or something along those lines), but he still spends a good amount of time at home with the family. My host mom is a nurse. She works at a small hospital so she gets Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays off and gets the afternoon off two other days a week.

I absolutely love my little host brother. I think we are going to be good buddies. He was a bit shy while we were talking at the Umezaki's house but as soon as we got into the car he warmed right up. He talks with me all the time and offers explanations for things I don't understand. For example, I didn't quite understand what my host mom was saying to me so he steps in front of her and explained it all in really simple Japanese. He also explained stuff around the house to me. In the shower room, "this handle is for the temperature. When you turn it toward this little red mark it makes the water hot..." We also play games on my iPod together. It was really cute when he told me that this is the first time he has ever had a big sister.

Manato and Abbey.

That Sunday, after stopping at the house for a little bit, we all went to a barbecue for lunch. It was my host father's high school friend and their families I think. It seems like they are pretty good friends and see each other a lot. The kids all knew each other really well, too. It was fun and the food was awesome. We had good bacon, beef, corn-on-the cob, onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes cooked in tinfoil (the onions were so good!) over the coals, soup, watermelon.... It was like a 4th of July picnic without the fireworks! Then they brought out the squid (not bad) and turban shells (not my favorite) and I was reminded that this is a Japanese barbecue.

My host dad in the blue shirt, me in the back, and other people.

The little girl that is Manato's age. I braided her hair so we would match. She was so happy. :)

From there we returned home and then left a few hours later for the rotary family dinner party. I got to see all three fo my host families together! It was really nice. I was asked to five a little speech with about 30 seconds notice so I thanked my host families and rotarians.

My three host families together (well, parts of each, anyway). Papa Umezaki, Mama Umezaki, Mie Nakano, Masato Nakano, Toru Nakano, Wataru Nakano, Me, Manato Tateno, and Papa Tateno.
Manato losing rock, paper, scissors to the kid he tied with in BINGO.

On Monday I had no school because of my taiikusai on Saturday. The rest of the family, however, had work or school so I left in the morning when my host dad did. I went to see Angels and Demons with my friend Austin. I was the first one to get home, but Manato came home about half and hour later. We ate snacks that my host mom left out for us and then watched the Tokyo Giants baseball game together. After a while my host mom came home and we had dinner. I got to Skype with AnnaMarie a bit in Japanese before bed, too. I think Manato had fun with that. He thought it was quite amusing that Kaite calls me "Abbey-dabby" and I wouldn't be too surprised if he started calling me that.

I am really glad that I am fitting into my new family and their routine okay. I am excited to get to know them better. They really are so fun! The other day I almost started crying because I only get to live with them for 2 months then I have to go back home. They are so generous. They bought me two tickets for Tokyo Disneyland or Sea, tickets to a water park for me and some friends, AND they are taking me on a trip to Hokkaido!! I am so excited! :D

Taiikusai (Sport's Festival)!!

I completely underestimated the taiikusai. It is way more important to the girls than I though it was and it was way more fun than I had anticipated.

Maybe the reason that I wasn't really looking forward to it during the week leading up to it was how busy I was. My taiikusai was Saturday (the 23rd) and on Sunday morning I was changing host families. Both of these events required a lot of preparation. As you can imagine, things got pretty crazy for a while. Every day for about two weeks I had to get up early to practice our mukade (literally means centipede) race and relay before school started. On top of that I had some very late nights trying to get all my laundry done, things packed, and information deleted off my family's computer. That led to lots of blog updates and attempting to update pictures to Michael's website because I had to delete them all. Phew!! I also had to have all my preparations done on Friday because I was busy with my taiikusai all day on Saturday.

I had a blast with the taiikusai! I didn't totally fail at the radio exercises (see older post) like I thought I would. I dominated the 400m dash. My team, that practiced so hard for it, won the mukade. We won the tug-of-war. Our relay got 5th of 6, which is quite an emotional story. We won the kaso (skit-like performance) in which Perry was a hit! AND to top it all off, my class won overall!

Waiting for their race at the gate that leads onto the grounds.

The track is just over 100m, so my 400m was three and a half laps. I ran it in about 1 minute and 23 seconds (haha! My coach would KILL me if I ran that time in a track meet) and the other girls were about a half a lap back. It was fun. I could hear everyone cheering for me. It's like I am famous here. A lot of the parents were even yelling my name...

Getting ready to line up for the race.

My next event was the mukade. All of our hard work paid off as the last two legs our our team (it's a relay) managed to overtake the other team. There were lots of screams, jumping up and down, and then tears. Then I started laughing... partly because I was happy but more because it was fun to see my friends so happy about it.

Mukade. Yeah, it was intense.

Celebrating after winning the Mukade.

The tug-of-war was intense. There must have been at least 50 girls on each side. I the second one from the front on our side. We lost our first one, but won the rest. The team that beat us got disqualified for something... so we ended up taking first over all.

Mano-san and I showing off our red ribbons during our lunch break. (red mean 1st place in Japan)

The final relay was the most emotional race I have ever been in. Our original relay team had two girls from the basketball club on it, and those two are fast. However, the basketball team qualified for a game that day so we ran with a different team. The relay was going to be tough competition to start with and now that two of our fastest girls were gone, there wasn't really much hope. There had been hope that the basketball girls would get back before the relay started, but as it got closer to race time they didn't show up. The rest of the relay team was crying before the race even started. The overall points were close, but they didn't have them up anymore so there was a bit of pressure on the team. We ran hard and tried our best. I actually think that that is the fastest I have ever run a 100m. It felt fast at least. At the end, it wasn't enough. We got 5th place. And then the girls really cried. I almost cried! We thought we had let our entire class down. Everyone was thrilled when they announced the final point totals and we had won first place. And, you guessed it, there were more tears of happiness.

Our Kaso also got first place. We had awesome costumes and the whole idea of it was really good, I thought. The other classes' were good too though. When I made my exit as Commodore Perry the crowd started clapping and I hear several "oh, Perry!"s. I couldn't help but smile. It was really fun, actually.

Me as Perry, Risako (left) and Shibu-chan (right) as my henchmen.

After the taiikusai I ran home, took a quick shower, and left for Yokohama station for our after party. We went to Shakey's Pizza, an "American" pizza and pasta buffet place. It was so good and I ate a ton! It was really really fun to see all the girls outside of school and uniform. Everyone took tons of pictures.

Shakey's pizza. And this wasn't even half of the girls.

I got home at 10:30 (the only time I was past curfew at this house... On the lastnight) but my host mom didn't care at all. I called her from the station to tell her ahead of time. Then I stayed up for a few more hours writing letters for my host family and getting stuff ready for the morning.

My only taiikusai experience I will ever have was a really good one.