Growing up, I had been surrounded by Japanese culture. My hometown has a number of Japanese stores, and I had many classmates whose first language was Japanese. Even when I played soccer for my middle school team, we had a large number of Japanese students on the team. My mother told me that at a game we had, a student on the other team said that my team was speaking Japanese so much that he couldn’t understand what our game plan was. These experiences drew me to studying the Japanese language. 

When I came to MSU, I realized that I was struggling heavily with speaking and writing casual Japanese. Coming to JCMU, my main goal outside of learning more about the language and culture was to become more confident in speaking casually. When the opportunity to participate in an extended homestay came up, I knew that this would be a pathway to achieve this goal of mine. 

A few days after I arrived at JCMU, we were given the opportunity to go to a homestay orientation. Here, we learned about what the homestay would be like, what responsibilities we had on top of our classwork, and other details regarding our potential homestays. I realized at this point that I would be able to achieve my personal goals by participating in this homestay. 

My host family, the Shibatanis, had a dynamic that reminded me a lot of my family at home. I ended up having a basketball-loving host sister, Kîra; a brother who has plans to study abroad in New Zealand, Kîto; an energetic dog named Cherry; and two incredibly encouraging host parents; Yoshi and Sachi. Even though I was halfway across the world from my family, I found an extension of them in my host family. 

I will be the first to admit that this homestay wasn’t always the easiest. Commuting to classes proved to be a bit of a struggle at times, especially since the nearest train station only had two trains every hour. The return home was both picturesque (as seen in the photo above) and long. There were times when I got to the platform right as the train was pulling away, which meant that I had to wait for the next one before I could begin heading to class, and was late every time this happened, which thankfully was only twice. My host family also didn’t speak any English, so there were times when thoughts were lost in translation. 

That being said, it was truly an incredible experience. My goal was to become more confident in speaking casually, and I was truly welcomed into their family, so we all spoke casually to each other without it feeling weird. We also took a number of trips as a family, including going to the Lake Biwa Museum in Kusatsu, spending a day at a beach in Fukui, watching Kîra's basketball team play in a tournament, as well as watching the Otsu Firework Festival
on my final day in Shiga with Sachi's parents and siblings. 

Putting myself in a situation where I wasn’t 100% comfortable was something that I was nervous about going into, but looking back on this experience, I’m so glad that I pushed myself. Experience is the best teacher, and I would not have seen the level of growth that I did without going on a homestay.