Last Thursday, my host mother Hiromi-chan asked me to invite a friend over to hang out. I brought Peyton, who goes to Elon University with me; Hiromi's friends Kyoko-san, her kid Taro-chan, and two other middle-aged women also came over. I went to Kyoko-san's apartment with Hiromi a week before, and it was a blast. Taro-chan is the coolest 8 year-old I've ever met. Japanese kids are awesome - they're hyper and wacky, but well-behaved at the same time. And they speak Japanese better than me. Much better.
We started off by playing the Japanese version of the board game Life. Peyton and I were more or less at the mercy of the others, since everything was in Japanese, and we don't learn board game vocabulary in Japanese class. We lost miserably.
Hiromi-chan made salad, eggs, grilled chicken, sausage, and spaghetti with tomato sauce for dinner. Then she broke out a bottle of sparkling wine, a bottle of red wine, beer, beer, and more beer. If you were to ask me who parties the hardest, I'd be tempted to tell you middle-aged Japanese housewives.
From there, we got out 4 Nintendo DS's and played a couple rounds of Taiko Drum Master. Then, Peyton, Taro-chan and I played Super Mario Kart DS together.
We went on to play Uno and Trump. All the game-playing truly helped us overcome the language barrier. We could all laugh and do something together without any confusion. At the same time, it was nice to have Peyton there as someone who spoke English. While I enjoy the challenge of being limited to speaking Japanese, it's nice to have a break once in a while.
We were all having so much fun that Kyoko-san and Taro-chan missed the last bus at 11 and ended up staying until 3 in the morning. At least, that's what I heard from Hiromi-chan. I conked out around 12.
Last Thursday was awfully fun, and my host mom displayed incredible generosity in providing such an extravagant dinner for everyone. On top of it all, she's already offered to host more of my friends for dinner. There's no way around it: Hiromi-chan is a really cool host mom.