Japanese Exchange Student Diary

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Yuki's Year in Minnesota

A Japanese exchange student's diary, written with her host family, the Andersons
Tokyo → Minneapolis-St. Paul → a small town with one stoplight, August 1999 to June 2000

How to read this page: Yuki writes in pink and the Anderson family writes in green. Yuki writes her parts herself, in English, and Mrs. Anderson only fixes the spelling if Yuki asks. (Yuki asks a lot. Yuki's English is better than she thinks.)

Hello! Konnichiwa!

My name is Yuki. I am 16 years old and I come from Tokyo, Japan. I am a second-year high school student at home, and now I am a junior at a high school in Minnesota, USA, for one year. I live with the Anderson family: Mr. Anderson, Mrs. Anderson, Kristin (15) and Erik (11), and a dog named Gus who is very big.

I came to America on August 14, 1999. The plane from Narita to Minneapolis was 11 hours and I did not sleep. When I came out of the airport gate the whole Anderson family was holding a sign with my name on it and Erik was holding a balloon. I cried a little. Mrs. Anderson also cried. Mr. Anderson said "well, welcome to Minnesota" and carried my two suitcases, which were very heavy because my mother packed too much rice.

I wanted to make this page so my family and friends in Japan can see what I am doing, and so other exchange students can know what to expect. Mrs. Anderson helps me with the HTML. Erik says the page needs more "cool stuff." We are working on it.

First Impressions
Everything is big. This is the first thing every exchange student says and it is true. The roads are big. The cars are big (the Andersons have a minivan and also a truck). The refrigerator is big and it makes ice by itself. The house has a basement and a garage and a yard with no fence, and there is grass everywhere, and nobody is in it! In Tokyo if there was that much grass there would be five hundred people sitting on it.

It is quiet. At night I can hear crickets and nothing else. No trains. I could not sleep the first week because it was too quiet. Now I like it.

The sky is very large. I did not know the sky could be so large. In August there were thunder storms that came across the fields and you could see them coming for one hour. Mr. Anderson took me out on the porch to watch. In Japan we go inside.

People talk to strangers. At the grocery store the cashier asked me how my day was going. I did not know what to answer. Kristin said you just say "good, how about you?" and you don't have to mean it. Now I say it to everyone.

School. American high school is very different. You change rooms every hour! In Japan the students stay in one room and the teachers come to us. Also here there are no school uniforms, so every morning I have to decide what to wear, which is hard. Also we do not clean the school ourselves here. In Japan students clean the classroom every day. I told this to my American friends and they did not believe me.

The State Fair. The Andersons took me to the Minnesota State Fair at the end of August. It was the biggest thing I have ever seen. In the dairy building there was a girl sitting inside a glass refrigerator in a coat while a man carved her head out of a big block of butter, real butter! Mrs. Anderson says she is a dairy princess and they do this every year. And everything is on a stick. I ate cheese curds, which I did not understand but I liked. Erik ate three corn dogs and was sick in the minivan. Mrs. Anderson says this happens every year.

The Food
I will be honest because Mrs. Anderson said I should be honest.

Things I like: Pancakes with maple syrup (we do not have real maple syrup in Japan, only the fake kind). Wild rice soup, which is a Minnesota thing. Sweet corn, from a farm, boiled the same day. Tater tot hotdish (I did not know what a "hotdish" was. It is a casserole. Everybody here has a recipe. Mrs. Anderson's has tater tots on top and I think it is the best.) Apple pie. Root beer, which tastes like medicine at first and then you want more.

Things that are hard: Cheese on everything. So much cheese. Milk with dinner, a big glass, every day. Portions are very large and I did not know I could leave food on my plate; the first week I ate everything and felt sick. Bread is soft and sweet. There is no rice cooker in the house! Mrs. Anderson bought one at the mall the second week and now we have rice three times a week and Erik eats it with butter, which I try not to look at.

Things I brought: My mother packed instant miso soup, furikake (a seasoning for rice), umeboshi (pickled plums, very sour), and green tea. The Andersons tried umeboshi. Their faces were very funny. Kristin likes the green tea now and drinks it in the morning.

There is a Japanese grocery in Minneapolis and we drove there once (one hour) and I bought nori, rice vinegar and Pocky. Erik has now eaten all the Pocky.

Homecoming!

Last week was Homecoming. Nobody explained this to me before I came, so I will explain it to you.

Homecoming is one week in September where the whole school goes a little crazy. Every day has a "dress-up day." Monday was pajama day (I wore pajamas to school! My mother would faint). Tuesday was 70s day and Kristin lent me a shirt with big flowers. Wednesday was "twin day" and my friend Amber and I wore the same sweater. Thursday was school colors day. Friday was the football game.

American football is not soccer. I knew this, but I did not know it is so slow and then so fast. I did not understand any of it but the marching band was wonderful and I screamed when everybody screamed. Our team lost. Everybody was happy anyway because there was a bonfire after.

Saturday was the dance. I wore a dress that Mrs. Anderson and I found at the mall and Kristin did my hair. A boy named Tyler asked me to dance and I said "you betcha" because I had just learned it, and he laughed so hard. (More about slang below.) I danced for three hours. In Japan we do not have dances like this at school. I think we should.

Also there is a Homecoming King and Queen, who are chosen by voting, and they wear crowns. I asked Kristin what they are king and queen of and she said "just, you know, homecoming." I still do not really understand but it was very nice.

What I Miss
My mother and father and my little brother Sho. My grandmother's cooking. My friends from school, who send me letters and one time a package with magazines. The convenience store on the corner by my house, which is open all night and has the best onigiri and hot oden in winter. Trains that come exactly on time. The public bath. Karaoke with my friends. My own bed, which is a futon on the floor, not high up like an American bed (I fell out one time). TV shows I cannot see here. Hearing Japanese all around me. Being able to say exactly what I mean.

It is a strange feeling. I am very happy here and also some nights I am very sad, both at the same time. Mrs. Anderson says this is normal and it is called being homesick, and that it is okay to cry and also okay to be happy the next morning. I e-mail my family on Sundays from Mr. Anderson's computer, which is Sunday night for me and Monday morning for them. My father just got e-mail at his office for this. He types very slowly.

I Taught the Andersons to Make Onigiri
Onigiri are rice balls. Every Japanese child knows how to make them and every Japanese mother puts them in the lunch box. They are the food I missed most, so on Labor Day I taught the whole family. Here is how, so you can too:

1. Cook Japanese rice (short grain, it is sticky; long grain will not work, we tried). Let it cool a little so you can touch it but it is still warm. Warm rice sticks together. Cold rice does not.
2. Wet your hands with water and put a little salt on your palms.
3. Take a handful of rice, about the size of a tennis ball. Push a little hole in the middle and put the filling in: a piece of salted salmon, or a pickled plum, or tuna with a little mayonnaise (this is very popular in Japan). Cover the hole with rice.
4. Press it into a triangle. Turn, press, turn, press. Not too hard! It should hold together but still be soft when you bite.
5. Wrap a strip of nori (seaweed) around the bottom so you can hold it.

Results: Mrs. Anderson made very nice ones on her third try. Kristin made round ones because she said triangles are "too hard, no offense." Erik put a piece of cheese inside his, which is not traditional, but I tried it, and I have to say it was not bad. Mr. Anderson ate six. Gus ate the one that fell on the floor.

Now Mrs. Anderson makes onigiri for my lunch on Fridays, with a note in the lunch bag like my mother used to do. I did not tell her about the note. She just knew.

Slang I Have Learned (a list, with mistakes)
In my English class in Tokyo we learned "How do you do?" Nobody says "how do you do." Here is what people say:

"You betcha" - means yes, definitely. Minnesota people say this. I love it. I say it too much.
"Uff da" - Mr. Anderson says this when he lifts something heavy or when the team loses. It is Norwegian. It means something like "oh, no" or "oh, boy." I have started to say it.
"Ope" - what you say when you bump into someone. Like "sumimasen" but shorter.
"Cool" / "sweet" - both mean good. "Sweet" does not mean sweet. This confused me at dinner.
"Whatever" - Kristin says this to her mother. I do not say this to her mother.
"What's up?" - a greeting. The answer is "not much." It is NOT a question about the sky. I looked up. Amber still laughs about this.
"Hotdish" - see The Food.
"Pop" - a soda. Not "juice," which I said the first week. "Pop" is a very funny word to me.
"The cities" - Minneapolis and St. Paul. "We're going to the cities" means driving one hour to the mall.
"Duck, duck, gray duck" - a children's game. Erik says every other state calls it "duck, duck, goose" and Minnesota is right and they are wrong. I do not know who is right. I only know Erik is very sure.

And for my American friends who read this page, some Japanese: arigato (thank you), oishii (delicious - say it to Mrs. Anderson), ganbatte (do your best! good luck!), sugoi (wow, amazing), and itadakimasu, which we say before eating and which Erik now says before every meal, very loud.

The Andersons' Notes
From Mrs. Anderson: We decided to host a student after Kristin's friend's family did it and would not stop talking about it. We were nervous. We'd never been to Japan, we don't speak a word of it, and our town is not exactly Tokyo. Then Yuki walked out of that gate with her two enormous suitcases and a smile that didn't quit, and the nervousness went away in about a minute.

Some things I've learned in six weeks: that Yuki takes her shoes off at the door and now so do we, and the floors have never been cleaner. That when Yuki says "maybe" she often means "no" and is being polite, so we ask twice. That she will not take the last piece of anything unless you put it on her plate. That she is braver than any of us; I tried to imagine Kristin at 16 flying alone to a country where she didn't know a soul and I could not. That teenagers are teenagers everywhere: she and Kristin stay up too late talking, and there is a running argument about the bathroom.

If you are thinking about hosting: do it. Talk to the exchange organization at your local high school. Yes, it is work. It is also the best thing our family has done together in years.

From Mr. Anderson: Yuki is a good kid. She helped me stack the wood for winter and didn't complain once. I've been showing her the constellations off the back porch. She had never seen the Milky Way. That's all I've got. Linda says I have to write more but I think that says it.

From Kristin: Having a sister for a year is way better than I expected, except she gets up at 6 a.m. and hums. Also she is better at math than me and she's not even trying. Also everybody at school wants to be her friend now, which is fine. I'm going to Japan someday, she promised, and her mom already said yes.

From Erik: YUKI IS COOL. She taught me to fold a paper crane and she knows all the Pokemon names in Japanese and they are different!! Pikachu is the same though. She says winter in Tokyo is not that cold and I said WAIT. She has never seen real snow that stays. I can't wait.

Coming soon: pictures! Mr. Anderson took a whole roll at Homecoming and the film is at the drugstore. Also, my first Minnesota winter (Erik keeps saying "just you wait"), Thanksgiving (my first), and a page about my school in Tokyo for my American friends.

Other pages we like: Origami Every Day (Yuki: "she is very good!"), Sushi at Home (Mrs. Anderson is going to try it), Study Abroad: Salamanca, Spring 1999 (another student far from home), and the rest of the Tokyo neighborhood.

Visitors since September 5, 1999:

Write to us! [email protected]
(Yuki reads them all. Mrs. Anderson reads them first. Sorry, Yuki, house rules.)

Last updated September 24, 1999. © 1999 Yuki and the Anderson family.

Mata ne! (See you later!)