Saturday, June 24, 2006: This morning we were able to relax for a little bit before we left to stay with our host families. We packed and checked out of the hotel and were then picked up by our families for the weekend.

I am staying with the Saito family this weekend. The father, Hozumi, is a doctor. The mother, Thukako, works at his office. They have three daughters. Nagisa is 19 and a student in college (she is not home this weekend), Kana is 16, and Yoshi is 14.

Thukako and Yoshi picked me up and brought me to see Yoshi’s junior high school. Her school is only nine years old and it is in much better shape than the junior high school I visited earlier in the week. It seemed to have state of the art facilities; including a broadcasting booth.

After, we went back to their house and I showed them a slideshow I put together about Buffalo, my school, and my family. Then, it was time to pick up my 16 year-old host sister, Kana, from Kesennuma High School. We came back to their house for a little while and then headed out to a local national park. The name of the park is the Rikuchu Kaigan National Park. We started out at the tsunami museum. Tsunamis have devastated the Pacific coast of Japan many times. The exhibit was created well before the disaster that hit Asia recently. It consisted of a moving floor, wind, and sound to try and simulate a tsunami. After that, we went out to the Dairiseki Kaigan (Marble Coast) and saw Oreishi. This area was formed some 230 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era. It’s also known as the “saw-tooth coast.”

Oreishi is a 16-meter high, three-meter wide marble pillar jutting out from the other rocks. Oreishi means, “broken stone pillar.” It received that name because a portion of its tip broke off when a tsunami hit the area in 1896.

We then went to the supermarket and I saw things that I’ve never seen before. I’ll include a picture or two. One of them was a “Daikon” radish – the big white things that look like huge white carrots.

Before dinner we watched Yoshi’s favorite movie, “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.”

That night, Thukako made a delicious meal for us. We had what I would call “Japanese Burritos.” We put sashimi (raw fish) and vegetables on dried seaweed that was pressed into rectangles. We then rolled up the seaweed and dipped it into soy sauce before eating it like one would a burrito.

Hozumi got home from a conference in Osaka about 9:15 p.m. We exchanged gifts at that point. His specialty is Kampo
– traditional Chinese/Japanese medicine. He combines it with the latest in technology – lasers, etc.

Later, I took a bath. This was not an option. Every member of the family bathes every night. You go into the bathroom, fully soap up and rinse off and then soak in the tub. The tub water is pretty hot and every member of the family uses the same water.