Home Stay and Ryoken
It is Monday night and I am back in Tokyo. Saturday I met my host family and stayed overnight with them. It was a very busy house. There were two boys, Daichi (13) and Kouto (11) and two girls, Sakko (16) and Meiko (18). Meiko had to work on Saturday. She works at a shrine. A shrine is where people that believe in the Shinto religion go to pray. Every year Komaki has a harvest festival parade with sculptures from this shrine.
I got dressed up as a shrine attendent and was given a tour by one of the priests.
He told me stories about all of the sculptures that were around the shrine. By being around some of the sculptures they believe that I may now have more power. I think that they meant I would meet someone to marry. : ) We’ll see.
The family lives near a bunch of rice fields. Grasshoppers are a pest because they eat the rice that farmers try to grow. It is hard for me to think of these friendly looking insects as pests though. 
The next day we went to a park and had lunch. The family and I had made rice balls that morning. They were made with sticky rice, a small pinch of salt and various fillings like shrimp tempura. They tasted great. After the park I had to be taken back to the group. I joined the teachers on Sunday afternoon and we all went to a ryoken ( a traditional Japanese inn). We spent the entire time in our yukatas (light robes). We had a special dinner and some people sang karaoke afterward. 
It was a great weekend. Today we came back to Tokyo on the bullet train. Once we checked into the hotel we spent some time looking around Tokyo. It is so interesting seeing all of the buildings. Too bad it was too dark to take good photos of them. Maybe I’ll have some time to take more tomorrow.
Miss Santoro
