Adventures with Hiro - part 1

On the day Hiro arrived at the school we were to collect him from the library at the end of the school day.  The students had spent the morning on a bus tour of the city and a visit to the beach for lunch.  We arrived at the library and all the host parents were standing around looking nervous and the students were sitting quietly in the library with their teachers looking terrified.  Hiro was sitting at the back sharing a joke with a friend.  He seemed a smiley sort but very shy.

When we arrived home The Extrovert did the tour of the house with Hiro as they were sharing a room and The Extrovert was his official buddy at school.  As I already said we probably frightened the life out of him with Mexican for dinner but they all settled in quickly and everyone adjusted to the additional family member.  He may also have been wondering why we were all home in the afternoon on a weekday as The LOML and I had arranged to have that afternoon and the next one off just incase things didn't go so smoothly.

Each day the Japanese students did intensive English lessons at the school and spent their breaks socialising with their buddies and their friends.  This made them very tired as they had to concentrate almost every minute!  It became a normal occurrence for Hiro to fall asleep in the car on the way home, or on the couch before dinner.  Needless to say he didn't stay up late very often!  Normally at home it would have been normal for him to stay up until at least 11pm.

In our house everyone cooks, but The LOML cooks more regularly than anyone else.  Hiro thought this highly amusing, in his house ONLY his mother cooked :-)  In our pre-visit information book it said that in Japan it is considered very rude to enter another person's kitchen.  Only on the last night did Hiro set a foot in the kitchen, and only to very quickly put something in the rubbish bin.  We did find this very difficult at times as Hiro wouldn't even go in the kitchen to get a drink and we had to remember to keep asking him if he was thirsty.  Next time we will get a water dispenser and put it on the breakfast bar so that anyone could get a water without having to go into the kitchen.  Hiro poured his cereal each morning from the non-kitchen side of the breakfast bar, the kids just placed everything he might need on the counter each morning and then cleared it away after he had eaten.

One night The Thinker had to cook diner for the family for his B&V (Beliefs & Values) homework.  We had sweet and sour pork Jamie Oliver style and he had to take a photo as proof for his teacher.  They are blurry photos but here we are about to eat dinner ...

Sweet & Sour Pork

Everywhere we went Hiro took photos of the food.  The weekend he was with us both boys were supposed to be away at a cadet camp but only The Thinker went as one had to stay with Hiro.  On the Saturday evening we took Hiro out to a local Italian restaurant.  He ordered the same as The Extrovert and they each had a HUGE wood fired pizza.  Hiro ate it all, after taking a photo :-)

He fell in love with Milo, an Aussie chocolate drink which is also now made into cereal and bars.  We gave him a box of the Milo bars to take home with him.  When he saw them he lit up and said "I like very much!"  He certainly got a food cultural experience with us!

Chipper