On the weekend of October 9th, I stayed two days with a home-stay family. The family lived in Nagakute city which is close to where my apartment is. I was amazed by the kindness and warmth the family showed towards me. Like the name implies, I was treated like a family member durring my stay. We were complete strangers in reality but none of that seemed to matter. There was a mutual interest in each others' culture that bridged the gap between our nerviousness.
The first day we sat around and talked about our lives. They were very interested to find out about life in Texas and what I thought about Japan. I observed something while I was being questioned though. Specifically I remember the question: What does your dad do(for work)? Yet, there was no question about what my mother does. I do not know enough about Japanese culture to make a fair observation but it seems like women are not given the same respect as men when it comes to work(run-on sentence?). Regardless, it was a pleasant conversation. Later that day we went to the Toyota museum downtown and watched a movie (Angels and Demons) at their house. I let the family choose the movie. It was fun watching a movie but we watched it in a room with no furniture. The father had designed the movie room to be a traditional Japanese room with a big screen projector and surround sound. Watching the movie on the hard tatame mat floor was... interesting. Honestly, it was a little uncomfortable but fun to experience.
On the second day we went to the anual Nagakute festival. It is a war reenactment festival that includes hundreds of volunteers. They even had martial arts demonstrations at one point. The festival was a great experience and some clips can be seen above.
All in all, the homestay experience was a blast. To anyone studying abroad, I highly recomend staying with a homestay family. Hopefully, I will get an oppurtunity to visit my home-stay family again before I leave.

Thanks for reading,
Tristan