IrishOboe

One of my students is going to do the rest of his high school study in Ireland (who’s jealous?!) so before he leaves his family invited me for dinner and the night. Apparently that’s not culturally odd, so I accepted the invitation. It turns out Shin’s place is at the very south part of the Kofu valley region so it took me an hour to bike there, but it’s a beautiful ride so I enjoyed it. It also explains why the invitation was for dinner and the night . . .One of my students is going to do the rest of his high school study in Ireland (who’s jealous?!) so before he leaves his family invited me for dinner and the night. Apparently that’s not culturally odd, so I accepted the invitation. It turns out Shin’s place is at the very south part of the Kofu valley region so it took me an hour to bike there, but it’s a beautiful ride so I enjoyed it. It also explains why the invitation was for dinner and the night . . .

So, Tuesday March 7^th I met Shin outside school around 5pm and we biked to his place. His father built their house and it’s so cool! It’s basically a log cabin with all the unique elements of a home-made house. There’s one main living space with a kitchen separated by table and it’s all made of wood. In the middle of the living space there’s a swing! I just had to tell them about our brachiation ladder after I saw that! Above the kitchen there’s a loft, which is where I slept. There’s a door to a balcony area off of the loft. It’s so cute! It’s hard to describe it all, but it was just so charming. Shin’s room was off of what looked like a library, or at least two walls were floor to ceiling bookshelves, though one wall was entirely manga (Japanese comics). In the middle of the manga bookshelve there’s a small door decorated much like any teenager’s complete with a Keep Out sign that lead to Shin’s room. He was to shy about the mess to let me look inside.

The other special feature of the house was its eco-friendly design. Their electricity is generated by a number of solar panels and windmills – all installed by otosan (father in Japanese – they told me to call them otosan and okasan – how fun!). The roof water drains to a tank that they use for watering the garden. Unfortunately the water isn’t as clean as it is in New Zealand where their roof water is the drinking water!

Shin’s sister Haruka was home on a short break from Art school in Tokyo. She had some lovely works all over the house, including a mural on the roof. I particularly liked one large work that looked like any modern splattering of paint before I realized that it was made up entirely of simple smilie faces like : ). They were all different sizes and colors and directions so it wasn’t terribly obvious what they were. I thought it was cool!

Haruka loves cooking, so she made dinner and breakfast, both of which were really delicious. She lived in Australia for two years so her English was pretty good. Shin did a pretty good job, too, and okasan and otosan had a fair amount of English as well. Again, I had a hard time understanding their casual Japanese, but when they spoke formally to me (to help me out in understanding) I could understand quite a bit.

We had a lovely dinner of okonomiyaki and takoyaki around the kutatsu (low heated table). Haruka made the okonomiyaki and I think I’ll try to make it sometime. It looks quite easy. Shin made the takoyaki, but instead of tako (octopus) he used kimchi – I liked it better than takoyaki! It was so good. It was all so good. They cooked on a grill placed on the table so our food was hot until served. It was great! For dessert Haruka made cookies, though they weren’t really sweet at all and were strongly flavored with crushed soybeans. They were good, though. I can’t figure out what the Japanese think about sweets. Some of their desserts are so sweet I can hardly take it and other times they seem hardly sweet at all. Then there are the times they think something is very sweet that I don’t think is sweet and vice versa. It’s strange!

After dinner and chatting otosan set up his telescope and we looked at the moon. It was too cloudy to look at the stars. I forgot to mention that he has a homemade solar cooker and all his electricity is controlled by a remote. As usual there was only a little space heater and they didn’t have it on. It was warm inside, though because of the nice, thick wood walls. I was plenty warm in my futon with many blankets.

In the morning Haruka made a Japanese omelet, which was so good because she put some brown sugar in it. I’ll have to try to make that, too, but you need a special pan. We also had grilled fish, rice, and cabbage soup with miso (I’m not quite sure how it’s different from miso soup, but it was good). I sometimes wish I had a home-stay so I could learn more about Japanese daily life. I live on my own so I’m not really learning how the Japanese live and what they eat, etc. Maybe I should ask some teachers at school to take me in for a week!

Wednesday morning I biked back in the morning. I felt bad that I made them all get up so early for me, but we couldn’t do it on a weekend because Haruka was only home from school for a short time and they wanted to have her as interpreter. It would have been fine without here, but it was great to meet her and eat her food!

What fun! Who needs to travel when there’s so much in one’s backyard! I wonder if I can take this lesson to America. How much of Orlando have I never explored?