Welcome to the Homestay! (1/5/13)

Hi everybody,

We met our host family today! They’re really nice! They’ve also hosted many students before (but not any pandas but I don’t think that will be a problem)!

This is my host brother!

They live in a really cool part of town that’s kind of quietly tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the city. They even live next to a big bamboo forest!

Meet the animal friends of the bamboo forest!

And while we were in the forest, we met some other animals. Many people here have and were taking them out for walks. 

Just at thought - I think that animals are better at being international than people. Yup. For example, dogs speak very similarly here and back home, can understand me, and can come to an understanding even before speaking at all (usually via staring each other down and sniffing but hey it seems to work worldwide). And I have yet to meet a panda that doesn’t speak my language either.

We ate lots of stuff today. I don’t think we’ve yet talked about izakaya and Japan-style western food. First izakaya (Japanese pub). It’s a place to eat lots of little, usually fried and/or greasy, dishes and wash it down with your favorite beverage. Often there is yakitori (lit. grilled chicken), featuring various grilled meats on a stick.

But probably the more interesting discussion is Japanese-style “western” food. Let’s start with curry. Curry or kare, coming from India, is a Japanese staple. It is very similar to Indian curry, using many kinds of similar spices. But it tends to be thicker (like gravy) and slightly sweeter and is usually served with some form of katsu (breaded and fried). I like tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet).

Tonkastu kare raisu (pork cutlet curry rice)! Itadakimasu!

Today we continued this “western” exploration at the izakaya. The funny thing is that Melissa, who doesn’t really like Japanese food all that much, would have loved the izakaya western food. There was potato salad and hotdogs (which she likes), but I was also surprised to see a Japanese variation on things like plain pasta and pizza. We ordered karikari pasuta (crispy pasta). It was plain, dried pasta with salt, which you ate kind of like stick pretzels. Melissa would have liked it. She also would have liked the weird pizza, which featured potatoes. Potato pizza! Who knew!

What's more American than tomato pizza and potatoes?

Hopefully we can explore more of this town tomorrow! See you!

-Sumi