My host family!

First order of business: GUNDAM CONDOMS.



And my PJs. On to our regularly scheduled topic. However, I think condoms and discussing my host family are tangentially related. (I'll let you connect the dots on that one!)

So I realized I've gone about three months without talking about my host family. There are a couple of reasons for the delay (see below.) We went on an overnight trip to a town called Magome in Gifu province. Like most Japanese tourist spots, it was a town that was kind of vaguely important a couple of hundred years ago. It's been restored to look the way it did "traditionally". Interestingly, "traditionally" tends to mean during the Meiji Restoration, which was only 200 years ago.





I believe I win the award for hottest host dad. Which is a prize in and of itself. I'm not sure why Nodoka (who just turned fourteen) looks so pissed off in those pictures, especially since she's largely responsible for the dark circles under my eyes (and if you can't see them in those pictures, you will be seeing them when I get home.)

As can be expected after living with a bunch of strangers for four months, these people are pretty damned interesting.

My host dad is a paramedic (he was very insistent on making sure I knew off the bat that he wasn't a salary man.) He occasionally rides a BMW motorcycle, but usually he bikes to work, so I've never seen him in his uniform. A couple of weeks ago he had some kind of training meeting at the local hospital, so he had to wear a suit, fortunately for the rest of the world. The man can wear a damn suit. If it had been Armani, he would've given Obama a run for his money. He's also one of the more intellectual people I've met here -- and he chose not to go to college. Coincidence? You tell me. I think he was a crazy mo-fo when he was younger, though -- he told me once that he used to play pachinko (it's like slots, but more confusing) when he was younger. He was also on his high school rugby team (baller alert!) He grew up in Nagoya, but he's told me several times that he would prefer living in the country. (People living in Nagoya who wish they weren't? There ought to be a frickin' support group, and it would probably be the size of the entire city.) He and I probably get along the best. He can't speak English well but he has a huge vocabulary (in that sense, he complements my host mom pretty well.)

I was worried that I'd get stuck with some asshole of a host dad who was maybe around on the weekends and took his wife's hard work for granted. Well, the guy has been on at least four week-long vacations since I've gotten here, and he usually has Mondays and Tuesdays off. For a while he'd make dinner when it was his day off, but lately my host mom's been taking care of that whenever he happens to get home. I'm not sure how much housework he does, but I've seen him help wash the dogs. He and my host mom talk to each other as if they're actually equals, which is a big contrast from the host family I stayed with in high school. They used super-polite language with each other, even though it was obvious that they still adored each other. My current host parents are a lot more reserved.

You can see that my host dad has a retro '40s style going on. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop at his clothes (which I would describe as Dustbowl Farmer -- this style is pretty popular amongst guys here.) He's apparently a World War II buff. And since wearing a Rising Sun in East Asia is kind of akin to wearing a swastika anywhere else he...has clothing with swastikas? I first discovered this when I opened his cell phone to explain to my host mom how Japanese and American phones are different (he was in the bath) and was confronted with an actor playing Hitler. I felt myself turn white. My host mom insists that he only likes German culture. He also has a camo baseball hat with a swastika and a totenkopf. I mentioned that in America and German, the Nazi swastika means that you generally want to kill Jews and blacks (they know I'm Jewish.) He apologized really off-handedly and I haven't seen the hat since. The creepy thing is that there's a factory somewhere in China or Indonesia that's churning out thousands of these things, and there are people out there who actually are neo-Nazis buying them.

I mean, I totally get why anyone would think Nazis are cool. Thanks, Christian Dior, for making the worst people in history the best-dressed. (I mean, look at the jacket my host dad is wearing.) Also, a flipped swastika is a Buddhist symbol, so I guess I can see where the misunderstanding would come from. I don't think that my host dad is a neo-Nazi, but for a while things were extremely uncomfortable from my end, which is why I didn't talk about the fam in my first few posts. There have been a couple of awkward moments since the Hatgate, but at this point time is so short I'm willing to let them slide.

My host sister, Nodoka, is fourteen. That should some it up well enough. She's a complete otaku (and not in a good way.) My host dad and I were trying to explain the meaning of the word to her (it also means "house"), and I had to bite my tongue so hard not to say, "You know, like what you do." She's a really good artist and wants to be a mangaka. She wants to go to a design high school and/or college, but mom and dad aren't fully behind it. (She also needs to get a damn good score on the high school placement test, and school isn't exactly her strong point.) She can be really sweet when she wants to be, but usually she's just surly and pissed off from school. She's also starting to test her boundaries, which my parents seem to be responding to by pretending it'll stop soon. She also listens to her music really, really loud until really, really late and then sets her alarm for really, really early and doesn't turn it off until it's been going for a really, really long time. And these walls are thin. Fortunately, I got permission from her to come in and turn the radio and/or clock off if she's asleep. But for a while there I thought I was going to punch through the wall.

My host mom's probably the most interesting piece of the puzzle. I talk to her the most but I'm don't really know what she's like, simply because she does the whole Japanese-wife-put-your-best-face-forward thing. She's a manager at a local coffee shop (they only serve lunch) and works as an English tutor at a conversation school. The kids she works with range from pre-school to high school. In other words, she's extremely busy. She follows a sect of Buddhism where the reward for doing good deeds is ensuring your place, your ancestors', and your descendants' place in Heaven. One time she went to a Wednesday night service and when Nodoka asked where she was, my host dad said very dryly, "She's praying for the world's happiness." I can't tell if he thinks it's a crock of shit or not, but for some reason I found his answer hilarious. Since she and my host dad both work on the weekends, we usually don't do too much together (the trip to Magome was a big deal.)

I don't have a curfew and I live within a half-hour's walk of campus. As long as I get to a nearby train station before midnight my host mom will pick me up. Other than that whole sympathizing with genocidal maniacs thing we get along pretty well. I'll miss them (and keep in touch), but I'm also looking forward to getting back to my real family. Only two more weeks!