A Very Japanese Weekend

After having to work on Saturday to make up for the National Holiday On Monday (God forbid that everyone just takes a day off) we went to Fujimoto-san's house (one of my co-worker's). He invited us to stay over at his house on Saturday in order to play in a volleyball tournament on Sunday. Our German friend Elmar came to play with us. He is over 6 feet tall and can spike the ball like no one's business, basically he was our secret weapon. Our friend Yoshi (who lived in the US for 8 years) drove us to the small town of Onomichi which is about an hour away from Hiroshima. Finally a real house!!!!!!!! well at least for one weekend. It was the first time we had ever stayed in someones house. The funny thing is that no one in the house speaks English. Fujimoto-san is learning how to speak English, between what he had learned and my 59.5% knowledge of basic Japanese we some how understand each other. Here we are eating with his family on the floor:

Fujimoto-san is the guy in the couch and judging from the picture I'm sure you can understand why we get along besides the huge language barrier. His wife and daughters, who are 15, 11 and 8, where really nice and attentive to us. The only one who did not like us was the dog Minto.

It was the first time we slept "the Japanese way", on top of a futon on the floor. We also had 2 mini pillows that felt like you where sleeping on a giant Bennie baby.

I think the dolls did not come alive in the middle of the night. Or did they?!?!?!?
The next day we where off to the Volleyball tournament. Once we got there we met the rest of our team. Aren't we intimidating or what!?!?!?!

We played with 4 complete strangers who could not speak any English and somehow ended up in third place. In my opinion we did well. The girls came to see us play and hang out for a while.

After the tournament we went to eat Onomichi's famous ramen noddles in a little shop near by. I'm almost certain that the people there had never seen a foreigner in their lives because they stared at us like we had 3 arms the whole time. I did not care because the noddles where damm good.
In general I think this weekend was a good experience for everyone. We got to practice some Japanese and Fujimoto-san's family got interested in learning English so that they could talk to use next time. On Monday when we where all back to work Fujimoto-san came over and said how grateful he was that we encouraged his girls to speak English. I told him that we where the one that where grateful for his family's sincere kindness. He said that his dream was for them to be fluent in 2 languages. I told him that my father (we are 3 girls also) had the same desire and it came true. I realized that things are not so different after all.