During the summer You can host a Japanese student through 4-H and a group in Japan called LABO. The students are in the age range of 8-21.

In 1997 I had the opportunity to stay with Nami (the same girl we had hosted in '96).

While I was in Japan, I had to go to school, I had to learn Japanese. I think that was the most challenging, but also the most fun. Our teachers, Harioke Sense (Sense is Japanese for teacher, Harioke is her name), and Junko Sense made the activities fun. Japanese has no real verb conjunction, only present, past, and future/habitual tenses. We learned vocabulary we would need to make it in Japan. We didn't learn some of the phrases that I have learned in routine Spanish classes, simply because it was not necessary.

Every day to get to school, I had to ride a bus from Ryoke Sanchome to Kawaguchi train station. I rode the blue train to Akabane, about three stops away. Then I transferred to the Saikyo line for about five stops to Shinjuku. Shinjuku is the second largest train station in the world, it is a train station under a 23 story mall. From there, I would walk a mile to my school. Some people are interested in costs? It would cost about $5 to go one way. Others have heard horror stories of the train situations in Japan. I can assure you, any rumors you have heard ARE TRUE. These train stations hire men with little blue bellhop uniforms to shove people into the train. It isn't pretty, but they don't complain, to be honest, I don't believe they have any capacity laws. I will include a picture of the Saikyo train from the first day of my class.

In Japan there are machines on the street any kind of things you can possibly imagine are sold in these machines, all the way from medicine to beer to stickers. The stickers are called "Print Club". They are much like the american Passport picture booths.

You put your three dollars into a machine and choose from a wide sellection of backgrounds and words to overlay your photo. Then you get three trys to take a decent picture, choose the one you like, and the machine spits out a sheet of 16 pint sized pictures of you and your friends. These are some of the "Print Club" I had taken while I was in Japan.

As for the questions I am most often asked?

Q.) What was it like?
A.) It was interesting (in a good way). Their society functions so differently from that of America.

Q.) Would you go back?
A.) Oh yes, in a heartbeat. There is so much I still wish I'd had the opportunity to see, the cherry blossom festival, Mt. Fuji on a clear day (it is forever foggy), other students we have hosted, etc.

Q.) What was your favorite food?
A.) Tori Katsu (literally, chicken cutlet), it is basically a huge chicken nugget with a sauce that I can best describe as a combination of barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and catsup.