Taga (多賀町) and the Mansai Matsuri

Even though I've written about the graduation, the adventure is not over yet! I plan on continuing this blog for a while, so don't give up on me now, folks! XD

Since our host parents couldn't have us spend the night that night, Alisa had asked her host family if it was alright if Alex and I spent the night at her homestay in Taga, a small town not too far away from Hikone. Alisa and our friend Scott went to go grocery shopping and planned to meet us at the station, and by the time the group of us who was going was ready, we were kinda all thinking screw it to walking to the station with all our bags, so Alex, Ivan, Lu, and I got a taxi together. At the station, we went to a different platform that I had never seen before that seemed old and creepy and seldom used XD. There was nothing automated there, and I had to figure out on the map how I would get to Taga and then give my money to the attendant behind the gate. It was the weirdest thing, waiting there, and eventually getting on the old looking train with lace and ugly Victorian seat coverings. I was at the same station, but after being surrounded by modernity for so long, this seemed so foreign. Even the people there seemed un-mondern, housewives with kerchiefs, salary men in suits... Anyway, after transferring trains and a bit of wandering being confused, we arrived in Taga, and I was greeted by this:

but more interestingly, this:

Yes, that song was playing. All day long. But actually it wasn't that annoying- probably if you lived right next to those speakers it would be, but Alisa's house was on a side road, so you couldn't hear it that well from over there, so when we were walking along the main street it was fun to dance to it XD. Maybe you can hear me say it in the video, but the music and the lanterns there were all for the festival that was to take place that night, the Mansai Matsuri. Now, I might be wrong about my information. I can't find anything on the internet about this festival, and so I only know what Alisa told me because of what her host parents told her, so if something is wrong, please correct me!

Anyway, since Ivan had visited Alisa's house before, he luckily remembered the way to her house. Along the way, some old, very difficult to understand Japanese people wanted to talk to me and Alex since they figured we must be friends with the American girl in the town. They didn't really notice Ivan or Lu since they are both Asian :P. We got to Alisa's house where Alisa's host parents and their friends were socializing while Alisa's 3 and 5 year old host siblings ran around. Essentially we were there as babysitters, since we seemed to be their new play things, which I got the notion was what Alisa usually had to do when she was there. Lu started cooking, and since I'm next to useless in a kitchen (as you may have been able to tell by the pictures of the meals I make myself, aka cup ramen), I played with Haru-chan and Ko-chan, the kids. Shortly after that, Alisa and Scott arrived. Alisa helped with the cooking while the 6 foot 5 Scott became the new jungle gym. Poor Scott. He is too nice to say no, so the kids literally were climbing all over him and making him lift and throw and spin them.

comically tall Scott with Haru-chan

         

        the cooking masters

       

making shaved ice

For dinner Lu made Cola fried chicken wings and Mapodofu, which is a really really really spicy tofu dish. It's the only way I can stand tofu, but it's too spicy for me :P. Alisa also made tacos and we had chips and salsa too. By the time we finished eating it was beginning to get dark, so all of us headed out towards the big shrine. I took several videos in which you can see what is happening and I explain things. Although we know from experience that the sound quality of these is awful, so I'll explain a bit more after.

Oh goodness, those videos took a long time to load. So anyway, I was told the lanterns are supposed to represent dead ancestors, and that is why the bon odori is preformed as the people walk to the shrine, in honor of the dead. The Bon Odori can vary from place to place, as can the song it's played to, but ultimately it is very similar to what you see and hear in the videos. The reason the groups are all dressed differently is because they represent different companies in the area. After watching the procession, we joined the sardine tin tight crowd in praying at the shrine, and enjoyed some music and entertainment and had fun doing shopping and whatnot. There was one thing though...
At one point, the gang of kids wanted to go to the main road to look at the food there, so Alex and I were going along, but we asked them to wait a second because Haru-chan wanted some shaved ice. In the short time it took us to get it, they were gone without giving us indication as to where they went. We walked Haru-chan back to her parents, but then Ko-chan wanted some shaved ice too. We took him down to get the treat, and when we got back to where his parents and their friends were....no one. Alex and I were doing our best not to panic, but as we wandered around the huge shrine grounds, the people were becoming fewer and fewer. Ko-chan didn't seem worried as all, he just went around contently eating his shaved ice, but Alex and I were not pleased. Apparently Alisa's family thought it was fine that as long as their five year old went with us somewhere, they were no longer in charge of him, and we can totally FIND OUR WAY BACK HOME. Because that's where they had gone, back home. We know this because eventually we made our way out of the maze that was the shrine and found the rest of the gang buying things on the street. We idoled around, waiting to see if Alisa's host parents would come out, and when they didn't, we went back. What if we hadn't even found Alisa? I had already asked them where she had gone to, so they knew we didn't know where she was...grr, whatever, I just hate being put into that kind of a situation, especially since they were just taking advantage of us as babysitters. But it's in the past, so it's not a big deal. Anyway, here are more pictures.

When we got home I was rather exhausted from several very busy days, that, and being a human jungle gym, but the kids just wouldn't go to bed! By 10:30, I was like "Ok, Mary needs to get to sleep now" XD. Alex, Alisa, and I settled down for our last sleepover, before heading out early in the morning for our penultimate destination.
 I'm going to add this part now afterwards, because Ivan said that I sound ungrateful since I talked mostly about just the negative story and only skimmed the good things. To clear up,  Taga was actually a lot of fun, and although I didn't write about everything we did at the house, it was really cool, like a mini party, and it was a great way to cheer up after the sadness of leaving our host families and friends we made at JCMU. The kids really adored us, and they were super cute- really tiring though. I know I couldn't play with them all day everyday like that, and I could see why Alisa already looked tired after just a short time since she went through that everyday XD. I think Alisa was quite lucky to have such a host family, since I know people who didn't have it nearly so good. It was actually really sad to leave them the next day, especially because when we missed the train, they drove the three of us to Hikone from Taga. Alisa tried to be cool about it, but we could see she was sad to leave them, and even her host dad was about to cry when they hugged goodbye. I was so thankful we were allowed to stay there, like I wrote in my previous post, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it more throughout this one. I'll try to be clearer next time, and speaking of next time, this story is to be continued... 

Mary

Location: mah beeed
Mood: hungry. huuuungryyyyy!
Listening to: Ryouhou for you - Ulfuls
Japanese for the day: だめ！dame! - NO!/ No good!/Don't do that please! >_< (especially useful when chastising obnoxious children **ahem ahem**)

Graduation

Alex and I then spent literally an entire day packing. It was such a problem, trying to get all of our newly acquired possessions into our suitcases. Even though our flight wasn't for another five days, we needed to send our larger suitcase to the airport, since there was no way we could carry those things around with us, and also because we had to leave our homestay early. Okaasan and Otousan were leaving for Tokyo very early in the morning after our graduation in order to babysit their other two granddaughters, which meant that we had one more night we needed to find a place to stay. When we found that out earlier the week before, we were a bit worried, but luckily our friend Alisa said we could spend the night with her at her host family's house, so we were so relieved and grateful for that. However, that still left the rest of the trip. Mizuho actually went out of town and Yuki had had a surgery and didn't feel up to keeping us occupied, so that meant returning to Tokyo early was not an option. We had actually wanted to go back to Osaka and hang out there a while, and since Miki, Saki, and Mayumi had all seemed eager to hang out again, even saying we could stay at their place, we thought that would be a great option. We had sent them all texts about our situation, but no one responded. We started sending out texts to all of our friends in Japan. No one was answering us. Mind you, this isn't facebook where you can be like, "oh, he just doesn't go online often", no, we are TEXTING them, and they have our number, they know who we are. We believed it was because they either couldn't or didn't want to take us, but didn't want to have to tell us no. Japanese people don't like having to tell people no, which for Westerners can be very frustrating, since we take things at face value and to us it's the speakers' job to convey the message, not the listeners' job to read through the given answers to interpret what you want. When dealing with Westerners, it's best to just say what you mean, even if that's not what you normally do. Of course you can be polite about it, but don't say things just to make them happy. Especially if they ask you "do you understand" and you say yes even when you don't. I have had SO much trouble with that over the years with exchange students from Asian countries. I like to help, and I understand how frustrating it is to not understand what's going on. Yeah, sorry, I had to rant a little about that for like two seconds, but I'm done, I promise. 
Anyway, a week later, Mayumi texted us asking if we meant to stay at a hotel or at her house, which was fairly obvious since Alex wrote "can we stay with you at your house" in the original text, so it seemed like a delay tactic. Alex responded, but Mayumi never answered until the day before we were leaving, which by then we already had other accommodations. We went to Okaasan and asked if we could just go with them to Tokyo, but they weren't staying at their son's apartment, but rather at a nearby hotel, so that would be impossible for us. Okaasan suggested though, that we stay in Moriyama with her other son's family, since Tomoko-san is a teacher and she will be there during the day since it was summer vacation. We arranged to stay with the other Mabuchi family and we booked seats on a night bus to Tokyo and then a hotel in Tokyo at the airport since our flight left at 6:50 am on the 8th. It was like a huge weight was lifted off our chests, and I think we both felt so bad for putting everyone in such an awkward place, but there wasn't really another option, and we were just so glad something worked out.
Once we finally packed everything up, Okaasan and Otousan took us out to dinner to a restaurant that served Chinese dishes. The restaurant was really casual, but the food was really good, and no one really talked much since we didn't have anything to say really, since we'd just been home packing all day. I thought about how it was our last meal together, and I was really saddened by that. But it was really nice.

お母さんとお父さんと最後の食事

The next day we got all dolled up for our graduation and we started to get in the car. Okaasan had us put our bags in the front seat, so I asked where would Otousan sit. She said he wasn't coming, and it was then that it hit me that I was leaving them. I ran out of the car and Alex and I gave Otousan our card and said goodbye to him. He watched us leave, and I was already crying. At school, we all had a run through of what we would do for the ceremony, and I had time to take a few pictures with friends before the host families came in to watch us graduate. We had a speech from our director, who I was not very fond of, and it amused me that he was worse at giving speeches in Japanese than the students were, so haha. Then a representative or two from each level would come up and give a speech. My friends from level one were adorable, and Helen from level two and the guy from level four were very good, but Alex's speech for our level was really something special.

After we had really cute Japanese desserts and drinks and talked and took pictures until we could get our grades. Okaasan tried to leave when we were going to Matsui sensei's office, but I made her promise to stay.

Me, Jeff, and Alex

Level 1 kids' speech

Level 2 speech

Alex, giving level 3's speech

Level 4 speech

The Environmental Science kids' speech

Matsui sensei

Me and Melville sensei

Our fancy desserts :D

三年生！

I was not at all happy with my grade. I swear my teacher was biased. I think she knows I think that too, which makes her even more biased. But my speech was really really good and I only made one mistake total and she gave me a B +. It's not like that's bad, but my speech was really good, and really interesting comparatively. So I ended up with a 3.0, and I was already sad and what not, so this didn't put me in a better mood. And then Okaasan had to go. She tried to just shrug it off like it wasn't a big deal and leave, but Alex and I ran after her and hugged her as we cried, and before long she was crying along with us even though she was telling us not to. Alex asked her to please remember us and she said she could never ever forget us. She left, and soon afterwards Alex and I had to leave too, so we grabbed our duffle bags, said our last goodbyes to our friends, and headed off to Taga with Ivan and Lu.

Mary

Location: My bed in my dorm, where I have been literally all day while writing this.

Mood: sad, because now I'm thinking about saying goodbye to Okaasan (´Д｀。)

Listening to: Never Forget - Gothic Storm

Japanese for the day:　全然分かりません。zenzen wakarimasen. - I don't understand at all.