Houyou (Hugs)

So I did a homestay this weekend. Long story short it was awesome. More about that later, first a rant about Toyko people and new friends in general.

When you have friends and family around for a long time hugging is kind of second nature. It felt like every time I walked into 002 (my CS lab) I would be greeted by like 4 or 5 hugs. 002 People you know who you are. I miss all of you a lot!

Turns out hugging isn't as common in other parts of the world. Americans or Seattllites are just a bit more expressive in that sense I guess. In any event hugs don't happen here. I didn't notice it for the first month, but now its starting to catch up with me. In Tokyo there is very little intentional physical contact in public. Yes, bump into people on the trains, but I've not once seen a group of friend give goodbye hugs.

This carries on to my program as well. Part of the problem is that there are only 4 girls, none of them are American so no hugs there. Also hugging another guy, for the most part is just gay (joke, but in all honesty guys don't randomly hug each other as much). Anyhow thats one of the little things I'm starting to miss.

Its also why the homestay was so cool. The family I was paired with was fantastic. I've got a picture of them up on facebook if you want to see what they look like. Long story short two kids ages 4 and 7 who were cute beyond belief. The mom and dad were both in their late 40's and super nice. The first day I hung out with them. We went to like 2 different houses for various types of eating parties.

The first was a family friend she was super nice and had studied abroad in Mt. Vernen of all places. Also her two kids were beyond cute.

Next I went to a dinner family at my homestay grandmas house. This family defies all standard notions about Japanese racism. They ALWAYS used the word gaikokujin when referring to foreigners in general and generally referred to them by their nationality. Everyone spoke great English, even the grandma and grandpa. It turns out that the oldest brother married an Indonesian girl so it makes some sense. Dinner was fantastic, and then we lit off some fireworks. Baller.

The next day we went to Ueno Zoo one of the more famous zoos in Japan. I photoblogged a lot of that on my facebook, so I'm not going to talk to much about it. It was a lot of fun and I still felt the same respect that I felt last night. Also the two kids stopped being show shy and started climbing all over me. I gave them both rides of my shoulders (In Japanese kataguruma, or shoulder car). It was nice to actually have contact with someone again.

The family and I are totally going to remain friends, they want to go swimming with me next time. I'm really looking forward to it.

A lot more happened this week, but I hate reading blogs that are a daily account daily life, I think they are kind of boring. I'm going to keep this blog limited to everything that doesn't happen in my daily life. If you want to talk to me about that stuff ask me directly. However I will still post teasers about what happened. In short, Earthquakes, Gokon, Racism, Nerdyness and Nomihoadais. Ask me if you've got questions!