Introduction to Iida Part I: Meeting the Host Families

The day had finally come to meet our host families, with whom we would be living for the next eight weeks in the great city of Iida in Nagano Prefecture. We walked from our hotel to the Iida kouminkan for a welcome party with our host families and a few people from the city building. We were welcomed to the city by Kumagai Fumiyo, the employee from the kouminkan who would be overseeing our stay and coordinating our program with the city.

During the course of our program in Iida, Kumagai-san was a tremendous help in making this summer run as smoothly as possible, while providing us with more opportunities for cultural enrichment than any of us could have imagined. This included lessons in Japanese martial arts, such as kyudo and kendo, as well as the performing arts like taiko and koto. I’ll talk more about those activities, however, in later posts.

After the welcome speech, students made a brief introduction speech, all of us at varying level of Japanese proficiency and some even electing to introduce themselves in English. Kumagai-san and Holman-sensei had worked for several months

to pair students with families based on the language levels of not only the students in Japanese, but also the host families’ English ability. The program is thus designed in a way that even  students with no Japanese language ability could participate and still get the same cultural appreciation as students with higher levels of fluency.

Then followed short introductions from the families themselves. After the family members introduced themselves, each student joined their respective host families. I would be spending my time in Iida living with the Shimoda’s. The family included the mother, Tomoko, whom I always referred to as Okaa-san, meaning mother, and the father, Kazunori, who to me was Otou-san. The Shimoda’s also had a 14-year-old son named Yoshiki. (Below (from left to right): Tomoko-san, Me, Yoshiki-kun and Kazunori-san)

Those more accustomed to western culture might find it somewhat odd that I would so easily call my host parents mother and father. This is actually a normal aspect of Japanese culture. According to Holman-sensei, when one is visiting or staying at the house of a Japanese family, the best rule of thumb is for visitors to address family members the same as the youngest member of the house, most often okaa-san and otou-san. While it would be considered very brash and somewhat rude to refer to older members of the house by their first name, it is within expectations that you can do so with those younger than you. For instance, instead of referring to their son as Shimoda-san (which would have just been confusing with three Shimoda-sans living in the same house), it was alright for me to call him Yoshiki-kun. You will still want to include an honorific like –san or –kun with the name, as failing to do so is also considered inappropriate.

Intoductions were followed with a lunch, consisting of a variety of foods and drinks contributed by the host families. Our welcome party was over after we had our fill of sushi and finger sandwiches, and for the first time since the beginning of or program, we students parted ways to deliver our luggage to our host family’s homes and to get acquainted with our family.

The Shimoda’s lived in three-story building in downtown Iida, within a 15-minute walk to the station, which included a basement garage. While the house sounds rather large, it was quite normal for a Japanese family to live in more narrow homes with multiple floors. Both Mr. and Mrs. Shimoda work as tax representatives running their own tax firm out of the second story of their house, while the family lived in the top two floors. I was given my own bedroom on the top floor that even had access to a balcony. Below is the view from my balcony overlooking the city and the surrounding mountains.

After I was shown my room, I was left alone to put away clothes and unpack a bit. A short while later I joined my family downstairs where Okaa-san served tea and we got to know each other better. My Japanese was basic, but luckily Okaa-san and Yoshiki-kun had a decent base in English and so communication, while a little rocky, wasn’t too much of an issue. We would get to talk more later at dinner, but we only had a short time before we had to reconvene at Iida station to go and meet the good people of the Imada PuppetTroupe, who would spend the next seven weeks instructing us in the Japanese art of bunraku.

To be continued…

Useful phrases from this week’s post:

Kouminkan – こうみんかん – 公民館

Meaning: public city building. These are office branches associated with the city government.

Okaa-san – おかあさん - お母さん　　

Meaning: Mother

Otou-san – おとうさん - お父さん

Meaning: Father

Kyudo – きゅうどう- 弓道

Meaning: Japanese Archery

Kendo – けんどう – 剣道

Meaning: Japanese Swordsmanship

Taiko – たいこ- 太鼓

Meaning: Japanese Drums

Koto - こと – 琴

Meaning: A 13-stringed Japanese instrument similar to a harp.

Bunraku - ぶんらく – 文楽

Meaning: Japanese Puppetry