Packed and ready to go, finally it was my last day in Hakodate...sadness! I had planned to take the train down from Hakodate (cheaper than flying and it wasn't as if I was in any rush). My train didn't leave until 10:40, so my host family took me down to the Asaichi, or Morning Market, to walk around and have breakfast. 
The asaichi is a daily morning fish market down by Hakodate station, where you can buy pretty much anything that comes from the sea, just about as fresh as you can get it. And I mean that in the literal sense--one of the buildings had a large tank, full of squid swimming around.
For a small fee, you can get a fishing pole and catch one of the squid. You put it in a bucket, and about five minutes later they bring it to you all chopped up on a plate, and~voila~sashimi! It was so fresh, some of the tentacles were still wriggling around on the plate! (A little bit creepy--I made sure I only ate the dead parts). Here's a video--Satoshi catches the squid!
And then....we eat!
P.S. Here's a picture, finally, of my host family! Well, part of it anyway. I never did manage to get a good opportunity to snap a picture of everyone all together, but--
On the left is Sae, my host sister; Satoshi is in the middle; and the one on the right is actually my host mom's younger sister, Aunt Hami, who often came over to hang out with us.
who, me?
- ☆sarita☆
- From a former North Carolinian and recovering Yalie: Currently living and working in the big city of Tokyo, while furthering an ever-growing obsession with Japanese pop-culture.
First off, to wrap up my last few weeks in Hakodate! :-) す～ごく楽しかったよ。
The culture classes and community activities continued, and were lots of fun! Sorry I don't have pictures of everything, but-- 
First off was ikebana (flower arranging) which was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I think it would have been nice to have more than just the one hour, but it was interesting to get to try it for ourselves. Here's mine! (left)
My favorite was shodo (calligraphy) which unfortunately I don't have any pictures of. It was at nearby Nishi High School, and we were able to go to it for two days. The sensei there was a really charismatic teacher, and I thought the class was lots of fun. On the second day, a few people got to try out writing characters on the several-feet by several-feet papers outside, and we all got to write a character on fancy hard board to take home. I wrote 嬉, the character for "happy." :-D
We also got to try out soba and mochi making at a nearby soba shop, which was great (especially the part where they fed us all loads of it after!). People took turns pounding the mochi dough with this huge mallet (see picture)--why I'm not sure, but it seemed to be the proper mochi-making method. And I got to help break the dough into balls so that it could be dipped in all the mochi-topping goodness. We didn't get to stay for much of the soba part, because that was also the day that J.E. Dean Farley and his wife came to visit all us Light-ies and take us out to an absolutely fantastic dinner (thank you, Light Fellowship!).
The last few weeks also hosted the HIF speech contest. We had a mini-contest earlier, in the first semester, and out of that 2 students from each class were picked to compete in the final speech contest (me, yay!). The Yalies represented--I managed to get second place in the advanced-class division--and Rex Isenberg got first in the intermediate-class division~go Yalies, whee~!
The final, really nice thing was that on my last night in Hakodate, my host family surprised me 
with a cake to celebrate my birthday--which, incidentally, was today. :-) It was personalized and everything, and just really made my night. Yet another reason why host families are definitely the way to go!
In Japan, July 7 is a holiday called Tanabata, which in Hakodate at least is sort of like Christmas and Halloween all rolled into one. First (and this is common all over Japan) you take these strips of colored paper and write out an お願い、or a wish, and then hang them from a bamboo stalk which is placed in the entryway. That's the Christmas part. The picture to the left is my Tanabata wish. For those of you who can't read Japanese, it says "I want to become good at kanji." ;-P
Next (the Halloween part), on the evening of Tanabata the little kids all dress up in yukata and go around from house to house singing a Tanabata song, and they get candy (sounds familiar, right?). Apparently, though, this tradition is really only in Hakodate (too bad for the other kids, huh?)
Here are some pictures of the kids all dressed up (kawaii!), and onw of my host mom handing out おかしい (sweets).
Below is a short video I took of the kids singing the Tanabata song!
I`ll post pictures later, but for now here`s a little bit about my host family, the Oowadas (大和田).
The dad, Minoru, is a doctor(my host mom calls him "sensei" sometimes). He`s not around very much (par for the course in Japan) but he`s really nice and easy to get along with (also a bit of a joker I think). The mom, Chizuru, is a nurse, which is a little bit out of the ordinary. I think most of my friends` moms don`t work outside the house anymore. I was pretty intimidated when I first met her--she seemed very elegant and put-together (if that makes sense). I felt like I was very grubby and clumsy next to her. But that just goes to show you that first impressions aren`t the end-all, because things have relaxed a lot since I first moved in, and now we`re very friendly and relaxed. There are also 2 kids in the family: Sae (16, daughter) and Satoshi (10, son). They seem to have your typical sibling relationship, with Satoshi being the screwball little brother while Sae yells "うるさい！" I see them pretty often in the evenings, since we all eat dinner together, and then sit at the table doing our homework. Sae and I also recently bonded over our MP3 players (she was impressed by the music videos on my IPod, especially Christina Aguilera`s "Candyman" video) and a mutual fondness for Orange Range.
In school news, we had the first brainstorming session for the HIF group project today. I`ve heard that the project was pretty much the bane of everyone`s existence last year, so here`s hoping this one will be slightly more fun and useful!
So Alvarez-san from my third year class at Yale is also here at HIF, but he got placed in a higher class than me (sadness!). I`m in Advanced (second highest class) and he`s in High Advanced. When I told my host family about this, my host mom`s reaction was funny, and very Japanese:
"Well, you know, in Japan we say that the second highest class is the best. Because, you know, in the second class you can still がんばって and move up, but in the highest class there`s nowhere to go but down!"
^_^
So I made it to Japan! It was a really long flight to Tokyo (13 hours) followed by about 4 hours in the airport and then getting up at 4am the next morning to fly to Hakodate--where they made us go straight from the airport to take our placement tests.
I meet my host family later this afternoon--a doctor and nurse couple, with a 16-yr old daughter and a 10-yr old son. I hope they like me! ^_^
I`ll post more later. Oh, and apologies if there aren`t many pictures for a few weeks--I somehow lost my small digital camera between moving out of Yale and unpacking in Raleigh, so all I have now is my digital SLR which, while phenomenal and supremely fancy, is not exactly portable.
Just a short post to get this blog going. I'm now officially a grad (scary!) and even though I've only been home for two days, it's time to start getting ready for Japan! I leave for Hakodate in just about two weeks, and it feels like there's still *tons* to do.
Hope I find out about my host family soon!
More to come when I finally arrive in Japan...