Monday, January 25 – Wednesday, January 27, 2010-

I feel as if I’ve been in the Kobayashi family for months rather than mere days. I have a sense of relaxation and comfort that I haven’t experienced for a long time now and it all has to do with the openness and amicability that they’ve shown to me. I can already picture this becoming a lifelong relationship that we maintain, exactly like I’d been hoping for out of my exchange. In only 7 days they’ve made me feel at home in their kick-a$$ house, taken me out to dinner multiple times, included me in their store shinnenkai, introduced me to their 23 year old nephew who took me out to golf and dinner with his friends, we’ve watched movies and television together until late into the evenings, and they even found episodes of Friends in Japanese for me to watch = ) What more could I ask for?!? Photos below, they always do the best job of highlighting my week…

The outside of the Kobayashi's house. Those big, gold Kanji are from when the store used to be located in the home

Mine are the top windows on the left

Decorative Koi

This is a real Samurai set of armor in their entry way (just fyi there are sets like this in the National Museum that Bruce and I visited last weekend)

Yes, it's true, behind our house is the temple graveyard!

The living room and kitchen

Perfect place to watch some tube!

These are their nephew's friends who I went to play golf with. Lots of fun

Haruka was wearing high heels so we made fun of her when she walked around the driving range barefoot

Mika, Haruka, Sosuke, and Yoshitaka being funny

A sunset, endless rows of telephone wire, and the first star of the evening

The Hiyashia (Kobayashi's store's name) Shinnenkai. It was a great party

That's my host mom, Sumie, in the front left

Today in school, being near the 3rd year's graduation, we got to make Monja (delicious grilled pancakes with different fillings mixed in) in order to celebrate. It will be too bad to see some of these guys go, they've been good friends to me during the school days