Japanese Grandparents

The Japanese are well-known for their highest life-expectancy in the world. It goes 83 average for men and 86 average for women. My host family was no exception. I had a great host family who really cared to make me feel at home, so my host mother made sure I met all of her family members, starting with her younger brother (who astonishingly looked very much like young Ishikawa Ryo, the Japanese number 1 golf-player) and sister, her parents all the way to the aunties and grandparents. Before I realized it, I became very emotionally attached to almost all of them.

The grandfather is a retired soldier and a 93-year old baseball enthusiast. Although he can no longer walk, he is surprisingly energetic and talkative with a rather curious train of thought. Every time we visit their house, I get to watch some Japanese baseball with him. He of course knows all the Japanese players in the American league, Matsuzaka or Okajima in the Red Soxs or Ichiro in the Marines. He knew probably more than I did (which isn't that difficult though).He also has a very cute habit of falling asleep at the dinner table as soon as he's done with eating. He claims he needs to go on a diet, because he has gained a bit too much weight in the past few months.

Me: So, ojii-chan (granpa), how about your friends? Do you see them often?

Ojii-chan: There are only 2 left.

Me: Oh... . So what did you do in your youth?

Ojii-chan: I fought in the war for Japan in Machuria. I got shot in my arm but survived. … Do they eat rice in your country?

Me: Depends on which country we are talking about (smile)

The granny is even more astonishing. For a 86-year old who is so bent and hunched, which makes her effectively shorter than her own 7-year old great-grand-daughter Momo, she is freakishly healthy. She goes shopping frequently, can carry really heavy things and converses lively like no other.

Obaa-chan (Granny): You have to come back and visit us during the New Year's. We will prepare lots of good food for you.

Me: Thank you! Obaa-chan, you should come to Poland too.

Obaa-chan: You be careful, because I might really come!

My host siblings absolutely adore their great-grandparents, mostly because they get spoilt all the time, especially with sweets. The grandparents obviously never get mad at them and buy them whatever they want. This big Japanese family is one of the most welcoming experiences of my summer and something truly worth cherishing.

Japanese Family – lots and lots of sashimi.

My host family is called Inami. It’s a family of 4, a father who is a fireman (how cool is that! Didn’t every boy at some point in his childhood desire to be a fireman?), a house-wife and two kids: a 4-year old boy Koushyou and a 7-year old girl Momo. Both of them terribly loud, quite spoilt and amazingly stubborn. The girl is nothing like a cutie, delicate Japanese I once desired. She screams most of the time, hits me and shouts at me occasionally, which just reminds me of a mini yakuza boss. I, a 21-year old am being most of the time terrorized by this 7-year old devil. I do not recall my sister ever being half as mean as this one, when she was 7. The boy is equally loud, although opposite to his sister, he does not talk to me. Whenever I try to approach Koushyou, he makes a barking-like sound and goes away. And every time he is not given what he wants, he cries very loudly. What’s wrong with these kids I kept wondering? Well, soon I learn in class that there is a wide social phenomenon of Japanese kids being 甘ったれ (amattare – an overly spoilt and dependent kid). These two begin screaming at around 6:30-7am every day, and the mother to quiet them down, shouts over them, thus only amplifying the overall sound effects. I really need no alarm to wake me up every morning. Apparently, my other program classmates have very similar ear-deafening experiences if their host family also tend to include kids.

Since the mother is home most of the time, she cleans the house every day and that includes vacuum cleaning, floor swiping and laundry (which works great for someone like me who has experienced Harvard dorm-living habits). On top of their fixation on cleanness, Japanese people have crazy but how admirable recycling habits. Each house has 5-6 trash boxes, one for different type of trash – combustible, bottles, plastic, paper, perishables etc. etc. It is really incredible how a Japanese on an individual level give so much effort to segregate the trash. And for that reason there are no public trashcans – as one cannot segregate the public trashes, one just takes the trashes with himself until he reaches a) home b) convenient store (where there are huge segregated trash containers). I wonder when US/Poland can ever reach that level of eco-awareness (I shall omit Vietnam, as it is pretty lightning years from being eco-conscious).

The breakfasts served to me was the biggest disappointment – was all western bread, butter and yoghurt. Thank god they didn't force me to eat cereal. And here I was hoping to eat the traditional meal of rice with miso soup and fish, but no, apparently too much of a bother for a typical family. To compensate for it, I get a very Japanese meal for dinner. I think I have tried everything I wanted to try – sashimi (Kanazawa’s fish is the freshest in Japan, so goes the word), tonkatsu, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, yaki soba, cold udon, unagi, ramen… . I could go on and on given all my love for food, so I guess it will suffice to say I am very more than happy with the culinary part of my experience. On the expense of my weight of course.


There is no wireless. The only one I use is a stolen one from (what I assume is) a neighboring house, which for obvious reasons is very, very slow (another reason for my blog silence). The family has wired Internet connected to their household computer, which I refused to use, mostly because it is quite inconvenient and I cannot understand the Japanese menu bar very well. For a very middle-class Japanese family, their use of Internet is surprisingly limited. Most of their free time is spent shopping or watching TV. As the father is a firefighter, his shifts are usually 24 hours long, after which he gets one or 3 days off (a very interesting working schedule), and during his days off he just spend the day around the house, playing with the kids.