Day 3: Yanai

Happy day! As usual, this post is very long, but my favorite parts are towards the end! :)

As we left Hiroshima, I was quite excited for what came next! The trip was already off to a great start, and I looked forward to see what Yanai was all about, and meet our host families! Yanai is a very small town, and located on the map below!

As we were driving in, I enjoyed seeing a more rural Japan than I had expected! I tried taking some pictures, but it was sort of rainy, and many of the pictures came out blurry!

One random thing is that these cube shaped cars are incredibly popular, and I thought this one was a cool color!

Another fashion post for Lizzie!

 This fish is the symbol of the town, and there are fish hanging everywhere! This was a very large one hanging in the hotel where our program facilitators stayed.

 Soon after our arrival, it was time for a walking tour! The rain made everything seem really beautiful and magical! It was very quiet, calm, and relaxing!

Click "read more" to see the rest of this post!

Our tour guide told us that Yanai gets its name from the willow trees in the area.

I really liked this creative manhole cover!

We went in several museums that had a lot of cool things inside!

I loved these tapestries!

Shirakabe Machi, or "Town of White Walls" is where we were exploring. You can see all of the carp fish symbols displayed along the street.

We visited this beautiful shop that had homemade pottery for tea ceremonies. Every item was unique and beautiful!

Here is another street view!

Shoutout to mom, since she loves blue hydrangeas!

The rain really made all of the Japanese style gardens come to life!

The next two pictures are from a soy sauce factory that we visited, that has been making soy sauce for over 400 years! Each large barrel holds soy sauce in a different stage of the fermentation process!

In another museum we went to, I was happy to see badminton racquets!

Our tour guide showed us how to homes could easily be converted into storefronts, by slide different panels up to the ceiling and hooking them up.

This looks like a common floor plan for Japanese homes. I love how open everything is!

This is an old samurai outfit!

Another shoutout to Lizzie, with an old sewing machine!

I always love seeing the different textbooks of other countries! It would be fascinating for me to look at different textbooks from around the world to see how events are represented and how different societies think!

Lunch was so yummy! We went to this udon place that made all of the noodles right before your eyes! It was so delicious and is making me hungry right now as I type this up! Fun fact: While it is often considered to be rude if one slurps their noodles in the US, it is acceptable to do so in Japan because that shows how much you love the food!

Some of our crew after lunch!

Our next stop was a delicious sweets factory! Something I learned this day that would continue to be repeated throughout our trip was that while tea is very common and an important part of Japanese culture, tea is often served with sweets! Their sweets were super scrumptious!

Mallika and I are excited to sample our sweets!

I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but this one was sort of like an inverted cupcake, since the cake around the outside seems sort of cupcake-like, and then there was a vanilla creme in the middle.

 This one was filled with red beans! I loved the sweet red bean paste!

And this one was an incredible strawberry chocolate truffle!

As I've mentioned before, I loved it when English words were used in unique ways for different names of companies. This is for a shopping center, I believe.

In the late afternoon, we had an hour of free time to prepare for the host family banquet! A lot of us were a little nervous, especially since our Japanese was only surface level. Many of us were quizzing each other on vocabulary while we waited for our families to arrive. Here is a picture of Bridget, my partner for the homestay, and I!

One key moment that I really enjoyed during the banquet, was a speech presented by our Campus Honors Program Director Bruce Michelson, which was then translated into Japanese by Kimiko Gunji, who was our trip's fearless leader. Bruce has an incredible way with words, and the way he described what this whole trip was about and the concept of traveling really resonated with me! There will be a few clips in the next video I am working on!

During the speech, it was cute to look over at the members of the Children's Taiko group, as they were watching.

My heart has a special place for this little guy! There was one seat left at our table, and he joined us! He could not have been more adorable! When he sat down and his taiko leader was talking to him and telling him that he should say hello to me, it took him a little while before he met my gaze and said "hello!" nervously! It was cute to see another boy and the next table over look at him, secretly point at me, and make the talking sign with his hands, implying that he should try to talk to me. Throughout the evening, I learned that he liked dodgeball, apples, oranges, taiko, and that he was a fifth grader, among a few other things. Two of his friends even came over to say "My name is ______ and I like _______", giving a particular hobby of theirs! It was wonderful, and looking back, it was this moment in which I wish I knew much more Japanese. Conversing with children from another country could be such a powerful experience anywhere, so I felt lucky I was able to talk to them a little bit here!

Bridget and I with Gunji Sensei!

Bruce talking to two students who were going to be visiting U of I in the upcoming year! One adorable side note, the Japanese people were very hospitable, and I was drinking orange juice at the banquet. While I am always happy to independently refill my beverages as necessary, my host mom was adorable and kept refilling my orange juice by getting up and walking around the table. The Gunji Sensei was talking to these boys earlier in the evening and even sent them over to refill my orange juice! It was a very kind, orange juice filled evening, haha!

After the banquet was over, we drove back to our host families' house. Everything was beautiful! The beds are called "futons" of sorts, I believe, and consist of comfy bedding that is spread out on the floor.

Everyone takes off their shoes when they walk in, and then put on house slippers, which you then take off before walking into specific rooms. There are even separate slippers you put on in the bathrooms.

When we arrived at their home, our host mom made us a beautiful dessert tray, which I wanted to take a picture of, but I will do my best to describe. It was supposed to be like a river, and there were lots of blue and purple rock shaped candies that were very fruity, next to shortbread cookies that looked like the riverbed, which marshmallow fish gummies on top that looked like they were swimming! She also served us tea while we presented them with gifts. What we didn't realize was that they would give us gifts too! (shown below) The kindness of this gesture was overwhelming! We also spent about an hour and a half or so looking at photos, both the ones of our friends and family that Bridget and I brought, but also of their family and friends! It was such a wonderful evening!

It was an amazing day!! My smile muscles hurt and I just felt ridiculously happy inside, in a way that seems to warm through any possible sadness. It was another day that just reminds me how much I love people, especially when there are people who are willing to open their homes, hearts, and minds to strangers they have never met. It definitely made me realize that I would love to host exchange students in the future as well, just to create opportunities for young people to have the same sort of experience I have had, now both in Spain as well as Japan!