A Weekend With My Home Visit Family
Sunday, February 15, 2009
This past weekend I went to stay with Yuko, my home visit partner, at her family's house. They live in a part of Kyoto that is not right in the city, but a bit farther out so there are farms and a lot of trees.
On Saturday we went to Nara Koen, which is famous for its deer.
The deer are so used to seeing people that they came right up to us. Of course, they wanted to see if we had food. We didn't buy any deer crackers though, so we had nothing to give them.
The younger deer were a bit more skittish and wouldn't let me get very close for a picture.
From the top of the mountain in the park, we could see all of Nara, and even as far as parts of Kyoto.
I knew Nara Koen was famous for the deer, but it was still amazing to see how many there were.
Yuko told me about a trip she took in elementary school when they came to this park. They sat on the hill in the picture above to eat their lunches, and a deer came up and stole her lunch!
The deer above was standing outside a restaurant and crying for food. It wouldn't move even when cars were trying to get in and out of the restaurant's parking lot.
Yuko's father took this picture of me in front of a little building we passed. I'm not really sure what kind of building it was. He told me that the roof was traditional Japanese style.
On Sunday, Yuko and I went for a walk in the neighborhood around her house. At the local shrine, there were purple cabbage plants.
They looked like flowers. I think they're really pretty; I still find it hard to imagine that these are cabbage.
The shrine had pictures inside of various community events. Yuko said that there is a festival where kids come to the shrine and pretend they are sumo wrestlers.
The area around her house has a lot of rice fields and a few orchards.
It's already the temperature of the beginning of spring here, so some farmers are already out getting ready for planting season, and some of the trees have started to blossom.
I'm going to stay with her again in a couple of weeks. It was a lot of fun, although I will admit that I was a bit nervous that I would do something impolite by accident. I think if I made any mistakes they must have forgiven me, since they invited me back. :)
That sound awesome! ^_^ Farmland! Wow...we haven't seen any of that in weeks. Nara also sounds really nice. I need to take a trip down there and see Hooryuuji and Himeji-jo.