The members are the mom, dad, brother (12 years) and twin girls (8 years.) The son has some developmental disabilities and lives at a special school during the week but comes home to play on the weekends. He's a really cool kid and certainly a pleasure to around.
The mom is a really funny woman, she's very young at heart and isn't very "Japanese" in a traditional sense. She's very out going, sarcastic, and jokes a lot. When we were driving around the other day doing errands the twins were in the back seat screaming away ands he kept going "quite please, i'm driving." They'd get louder so she finally slapped on the breaks and goes "Okay! Out of the car please!!! OUT!!! OF!! THE CAR!!!" They certainly shaped up. I had a flashback to my childhood and playing "I'm not touching you." in the back seat. It's great seeing her interact with the son, I'd never experienced a person with disabilities in Japan and assumed it was a rather sensitive subject. My host mom just runs around and plays along with the song, Yumeto. (His name means Dream Person, which I think is so perfect.)
The twins, are quite a handful. I met them at the orientation party the first day. There were lots of tables full of food for all the students and host families to eat. It was a big buffet. The girls, Hikari and Nozomi ate a ton of pizza, donuts, fried chicken, watermelon, oranges, and so on. WHen they finished they both pulled out giant plastic cups from their purses and a roll of saran wrap that they stole from the kitchen. They stole 9 more donuts, oranges, tomatoes, fried chicken, and 7 pudding cups. They filled their purses with food. We got home and they poured the food out of the cups that they had filled with food. There was a lot of donuts covered in chicken grease and watermelon and orange juices. They ate all of it.
The girls also stole a bunch of paper cups and gave them to me in the car because they said they weren't sure if they had enough "normal" cups for me. Then they asked if they had to speak Japanese to me with an American accent so that I could understand it. They also told me about how they recently saw on TV that there are a lot of problems in America regarding Zombies. They were dead serious. (No pun intended) Their favorite game to play with me is "Fart on Mike." I'm gonna see if they can change that though... if not they are in for some serious revenge.
It's a very different family from my previous, which I'm glad. I wouldn't want something the same because the other one was so perfect for that. This is the polar opposite, a fast paced suburban, young household. We live totally in the burbs. It's just farm land, no stores, just houses. I'm about an hour outside of the city by train, it's interesting. The geography of the area is very interesting. If you face one direction it looks like an east coast beach town with the ocean. If you look the other way it looks like Colorado. Here are some pictures...
and the twins at the dinner table... (Yumeto, the brother let one rip...it was hilarious)
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