Day 1 in Japan

June 3, Saturday – We arrived at Chubu Airport, Nagoya at around 7am. Our host families should be waiting for our arrival. I was worried when almost all the host families had arrived and my host father was nowhere to be seen. He was a bit late. Ogasawa-san, the head organizer of this year’s home stay greeted us. Then, we introduced ourselves according to our numbering. Then, we departed with our host families. My host father, Shigeyuki Kurauchi is very friendly. Chubu Airport is something like KL Central, a center for several transportations. It is a station for train, ship and flight. We headed to Hekinan City, where I am going to stay with his Toyota Crown, Royal Saloon. It is huge and wide. I love the car boot. I sure can put a lot of things inside. There is a navigation system in his car too!

My host father is a politician. My host mother is the owner of a nurse care center, a sort of service center for disabled senior citizens. I heard that her business is very good. My host father has 4 children – 1 son and 3 daughters. His youngest daughter is the same age as I, a management student in a university in Nagoya. Hekinan City reminded me of Busan, Korea. There are a lot of small shops, the road is not spacious and the electric wires are messy.

It took us around 40 minutes to reach my host father’s house. It is located just beside a road junction. He parked his car at the parking space opposite his house. It is sort of weird for a Malaysian. His house is a traditional wooden Japanese house with a small garden. We quickly unloaded my luggage and headed to a nearby supermarket. All the host families are supposed to gather there and shop for the materials for food of the night. There was a welcome party at night at 2nd floor, Hekinan City Hall. We will be making some Malaysian food for the Japanese to test out. After that I went home with my host father, took a nap and then prepared for my dish, “tang yuan”. My host father helped me out with rolling some of them.

Some of the foods prepared were such as “bak kuh teh”, black rice, “tomyam” and some other desserts. We performed a Chinese dance, 3 songs (namely Negaraku, Permata Dunia and My Neighbour Totoro theme song), demonstration on a bamboo game and introduction to Malay language.

The weather was cooling at night. I should have brought along my jacket.