(For some reason the pictures aren't loading right now, and all of the commands are in Japanese, so I really dont have and idea whats going on, but I'll try to post pictures of the festival in the next post. Read on if you have incredible patience.)

Well, I spent last weekend at a Japanese jinja (Shinto shrine) to take part in the omatsuri summer festival. When my host mom first explained it to me, I thought we were just going to spend the day at the festival and then go home. Obviously, though, the language barrier proved too mighty in this case, and suddenly I found myself sitting in a car that was being driven by a Shinto priest (I don't know the Japanese name for a priest, so I'll just refer to them in English). Unbeknownst to me, we would be spending the night at the shrine; I was actually pretty excited when Takuya explained it to me. I ended up going with Takuya and a Swedish exchange student named Patrik. Luckily, Patrik speaks fluent English, so I had a faithful companion along the way.
When we got to the town (which was about 2 hours away from my house), the priest showed us around the inside of the jinja and told us where we'd be sleeping. Over the course of the weekend, we spent most of our time hanging out with the Shinto priests in an awesome Japanese-style dining room, feasting on really good wa-shoku (Japanese food). Patrik was pretty shy, so he didn't try to talk to the priests that much, but I had a good time trying to communicate with them. Takuya, Patrik and I also were allowed to watch the ceremonies of the festival, which seemed pretty exclusive (nobody from the outside was invited in, from what I can tell). At night Patrik and I went around looking at the various stalls, getting plenty of stares from all of the Nihon-jin. It was a good time.

The next day, we woke up at 6 a.m. to the sound of loud firework-esque booms. For the rest of the day, Takuya, Patrik and I took part in the omatsuri procession. Basically, all of the Shinto priests and some other dudes dressed up in kimonos and follwed this mini-jinja that was on the back of a truck. The procession went around the town of Zenibako, and from what I could tell there were predetermined stations where people of the local enclave would round together sacrifices to make to the shrine.

So, we spent almost the entire day stopping at what must have been at least 30 locations collecting these donations of sake and other foods. Every stop, we all got off of our bus (if the previous destination was far away from the current one) and began a 5 minute-long prayer. It involved bowing and clapping...towards the end I started to catch on. Overall, the procession was really cool for the first two hours or so, but by the seventh and final hour we were all starting to get pretty tired, the Jinja-men included. I felt especially bad for these cute little girls who had to perform a dance at every stop, because they were either sitting in the back of a pickup truck or doing their dance for the entire day. Overall though, it was a really cool experience and I learned that Jinja priests are really cool and friendly.

After my stay in Tokyo, the next (and final) stop was Kutchan, where my host family lives. It's a medium-sized town in southwestern Hokkaido, with a population of about 15,000. It actually seems a lot bigger than that because most of the people live packed in at the center of the town. Once you hit the outskirts, though, everything turns into farmland and forests. The area is known for its powdery snow in the winter, and supposedly a lot of Australian skiiers and snowboarders come up for the winter (my host mom said that the population of the area doubles in the winter!). The main street of the town is lined with little shops and restaurants, and the town is pretty busy during the day. The pic to the upper left is a shot of the main street from the train station (it looks much bigger in person).

Outside of Kutchan town, though, it's all about the nature. Hokkaido is the least densely populated island of Japan, so there are still a lot of untouched forests and sprawling rice paddies across the area. The dominant natural feature of Kutchan is Mt. Yotei, a huge dormant volcano (6,227 ft. tall) that dominates the view south of the town. Here's a pic of this impressive mountain in comparison with Kutchan town:

Here's another pic of 羊蹄山:

Mt. Yotei and the nearby mountain range aside, though, the area kind of reminds me of Connecticut. Hilly, rocky soil, winding country roads...it feels pretty familiar, but different at the same time. However, there are a lot more farms out here than there are in Connecticut.

Now to my host family. I am living with a father (otousan), mother (okaasan), 23 year-old sister (Kanae) and 15 year-old brother. (I can't post any more pictures in this entry, but I'll show you pictures of the family at some point in the future.) There is also another brother who's 21 years old but he's in a nearby town studying in college, so I haven't met him yet. The family lives in a two-story house, but my immediate family is confined to the second floor. My host father's mother (who I call obaasan) lives on the first floor, but I only see her when I go downstairs to take a bath at night.

Because I haven't started going to school yet, I spend the majority of my day with okaasan. She can't speak English at all, but my two years of studying Japanese at Taft has given me enough vocabulary to carry out a basic conversation (and I always bring a dictionary in the car just in case). Okaasan has taken me with her on grocery shopping trips, visits to friends, and even one day we drove out about an hour away to meet her older sister who lives in a fishing village. That day I saw workers in the fish yard gutting freshly-caught octopus, which was quite a sight. One of them gave me a fresh part of the octopus which okaasan said was called "tonbi," but I still haven't figured out what part of the octopus it is. They all started eating tonbi during their break, and the worker handed me my own piece, so I decided to eat. It was actually pretty tasty, to my surprise. Also, okaasan is a very good cook, and my meals are always filling and delicious.

I also spend a lot of time with Takuya, because I live in his room. We share a lot of common interests, among them: baseball, guitar and videogames. He's really into baseball, which is good for me, because I love baseball too. Takuya is definitely not the quiet type, and he frequently asks me questions about how to say something in English or about America. I'm happy that he's asks a lot of questions, because I'm always happy to answer.

Otousan is very kind as well. I only see him at night when he comes home from work, but he's not the kind of Japanese salaryman that you hear about in stories, you know, the kind who gets out from work late and hangs out in a bar with his buddies getting drunk until 1 in the morning. He's a nice guy, and he was very happy to find out that I liked The Beatles. Consequently, our bonding method has been through music: he asks me a lot of questions like what bands I've heard of or what songs I can play on the guitar. Last night I even went to a little jazz concert with him in a nearby town, that was a lot of fun.

Kanae is very friendly too. I only see her at night as well, but when I do see her she is always very nice and outgoing. She often asks me about American pop culture and boasted that she loves the Powderpuff Girls, which I thought was pretty amusing.

Overall my stay in Kutchan has been fun and rewarding. Although I haven't met too many kids my age yet, I've still made good relationships with my hosts and I really enjoy living with them. Kutchan is a beautiful little town, and I'm really happy that I'm staying up here in Hokkaido (luckily I get to avoid the brutally hot weather that my southern-dwelling YFU friends have to endure).

Next post I'll tell you about my first weekend in Japan, which I spent living in a Shinto shrine overnight with Takuya and another exchange student in order to experience the omatsuri summer festival!

I saw that some of my YFU friends have started up blogs of their Japan adventures, so I decided that I'd might as well start one too. I have to go out soon, so in this first post I'll recount my 2-day-3-night stay in Tokyo.

The flight from San Francisco was long (veery long), but we did finally make it to Narita. When we got off the plane and passed through customs, we were immediately separated into our departure groups. Also, I tried my first "toilet shower" in the airport...very "shokkingu". Then, the JUSSE kids got onto our bus and headed off for the hotel in Tokyo.

Our hotel was right next to the Tokyo Tower. Here's the view from our window:

Tokyo was pretty awesome. It's gigantic!! The streets are not aligned to a grid at all, so the city is a big mess. But what a great mess!
While we were there we met some Japanese government officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and we also spent some time at the YFU Japan headquarters where we met the former Japanese ambassador to the US.

After those meetings we got to explore on our own, so I went around the Minato-ku area with some of my friends. We saw Keio University, visted lots of convenience stores (they're EVERYWHERE in Japan), and stopped in a cool little shop where I captured a prime example of Engrish language. More pics coming!