IrishOboe

One of the activities that the Hippo family club supports is homestays across the globe. In this spirit Alex and I were invited to spend the day with a Hippo family club family. We did this last Saturday and it was a wonderful time!The family is a Korean Mom, Japanese Dad, and three great kids all under the age of six, I’d guess. They live next door to another Hippo family with three boys. They near Shirane, which means they’re in the country. It was beautiful (though of course there isn’t much space, it’s still in the valley). The kids were great to me even though I couldn’t understand much of what they said. I had the hardest with the youngest girl because she couldn’t understand why I did respond to her requests and little kid English is hard enough to understand let alone little kid Japanese! With the older kids I was able to make up games and have fun without too much language and they were gracious when I couldn’t understand them. We cooked lunch, played games, took a walk, talked, cooked dinner, talked, and had a grand time. I had fun playing a hiragana game where all the hiragana characters are laid out on the table and one person reads out a set of proverbs one by one. After listening to the proverb the players must find and claim the hiragana card that the proverb started with. I was able to play this game since you didn’t need to understand anything, just identify the sound. Of course, you have to be quick with your hiragana! I was impressed with the ability of the younger kids, but they were all impressed with my substantial stack of cards, as well! I guess I have learned something while I’ve been here.

I learned a ton of Japanese that day and it makes me wonder how much more I could learn if I were in that kind of environment a lot more. I learn a lot from conversation, but watching parents talk to kids and kids talk to parents and watching the resulting actions from the spoken words is an easy, wonderful way to learn. Plus, it was a delightful day. I was both pleased with how much I understood and could communicate and humbled by realizing that I have a lot to learn before I can say I speak Japanese.

But anything is possible, right! To encourage you, I’ll share how amazing the kids were with chopsticks! The two-year-old helped flip meat on the grill with her little chopsticks! Everyone skillfully got food and ate it using chopsticks. One of the youngest got sloppy and had his chopsticks taken away and was given a fork, but he could use them just fine when he wanted it. I have a great video of the two-year-old eating corn on kernel at a time with her pink chopsticks. It’s truly inspirational! I don’t think it special that I use chopsticks, and I don’t know when I thought Japanese people learned, but it still surprised me to see kids that young with so much dexterity. I know kids older than that in America who can’t use fork! Hm, but I wonder, are chopsticks actually easier? Stabbing food can be dangerous, and scooping food can be tricky. What could be easier than using something like a tong? It’s food for thought, and my signal to go to bed.