My Appreciation for Family and my Hokkaido Trip

Thanks to the help of my Japanese relatives I have finally returned back to Akita International University (AIU). It feels nice to be back at AIU because I get to be reunited with my friends from this university, and I no longer have to worry about returning back to AIU. It is too bad that some of the other students will not be attending the winter semester, had to return to their home country, or leave for study abroad, but I am happy to be back.

I am looking forward to taking a class about Tohoku Culture and continue studying Japanese this semester. Anyways for this blog post, I would like to talk about my trip at Hokkaido with my relatives this past winter break.

On my last blog post, I mentioned that I came to Hokkaido by ferry from Akita with two other students. The ferry brought me to the Tomakomai port at Akita, and I then transferred from Tomakomai to Sapporo train station by riding a shuttle. At Sapporo train station, I met with my Japanese relatives at the west entrance and I stayed at their house for most of my winter break which was about two weeks.

The first night I stayed with them, I was very nervous to talk with them because although I studied Japanese for about three years, I was not comfortable speaking the language. I felt that my relatives would be disappointed with my limited vocabulary or grammar because I thought that they would assume my Japanese would improve dramatically while studying Japanese at Japan.

Despite my fears, my relatives were far from disappointed, and they treated me with great hospitality by providing me with my own room, and they taught me a lot of Japanese customs that most foreigners do not learn unless they stay with a Japanese host family. My Japanese uncle taught me how to eat sushi properly because apparently, a lot of Japanese people do not correct foreigners that eat sushi incorrectly by dipping the rice inside of the soy sauce. Whereas my Japanese auntie cooked for me and washed my dishes.

Valley of the Hobbit and the Journey to Hokkaido

After four months of studying Japanese at AIU, I have finally arrived at Sapporo, Hokkaido with my Japanese relatives. I rode a ferry from Akita to Hokkaido, and it was not as bad as I expected. The boat shifted occasionally while moving across the water, but I did not feel seasick. The ferry was called the Shin Nihonkai, and for a ticket that cost 3500 yen it was well worth the admission. Here are pictures and the link for the both the English and Japanese website of the Shin Nihonkai.

This was the boat I rode from Tomakokai to Sapporo