Reflections on Saroma, Japan

My time in Saroma, Japan was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I met so many sweet and kind people. It’s really interesting experiencing the cultural differences between America and Japan. In Japan when you enter a building, especially schools, you take off your outside shoes and put on indoor shoes. The building’s floors are a lot cleaner! Also when you wash your hands there are no paper towels so you have to bring a handkerchief to dry your hands. Those are only a couple of the differences.

The traveling was very long; it was basically 24 hours flying and waiting in the airport, but it was all worth it. When I first got to Japan, I couldn’t believe how many signs were in English and Japanese. It was very helpful, but I just didn’t expect to see all that English. After we got to the town of Saroma we went to the City Hall and ate lunch with the Vice Mayor and the Principal of the Saroma Junior High School and many other officials. It was an amazing first meal.

When my host family came and picked me up, I went to go sit down on the passenger seat and I waited for a few minutes. Then my host mom opened the door and said “No, I drive.” I felt really embarrassed because I didn’t see the steering wheel right in front of me. Now I know that they drive on the left side of the road and sit on the right side.

My weekend was very relaxing and my host family was very hospitable; on this entire trip I was never hungry. They always kept me well fed. I met many new friends at Saroma Junior High School. I taught them some American games like “Bubble Gum Bubble Gum in a Dish” and they loved it. It was so fun playing those games with them because they would just laugh so much and have a lot of fun. We would go sit with a group and get interviewed. It was a great learning some new games. I bet my family and friends will have great fun learning the games I learned.

I also got to know the people I went to Japan with a lot better. On the weekdays we would hang out and do things together like go to all the classes and go shopping. Now we are like one big family. On one of the weekdays we went to Karaoke and the last song we did was “I will Always love you” and we all linked arms and swayed to the music. That was one of my fondest memories of all of us. An amazing memory was climbing Mt. Horoiwa with all our host brothers and sisters. The view was amazing at the top. When we got to the bottom we went to the visitor center right by it and had lunch and tried pumpkin ice cream. Saroma is known for growing pumpkins, so I really wanted to try it and it was amazing.

Zane bought this banana milk drink from the vending machine there (vending machines are everywhere in Japan) and he fell in love with it. So Tobin, Ethan, and I bought ourselves the drink and we all call it the “heavenly drink.” It’s my favorite drink in Japan.

Next, we went on a boat ride on Lake Saroma, which is very beautiful and we all got soaked especially Krista”s host sister, Neigu who was kindly protecting Zane from getting wet. It was a very cold boat ride. When we visited the school in Kitami (a city about an hour from Saroma) I was so amazed at how many club activities there were, more than 20! I saw archery, flower-arrangement, karate, and a few others. There are many more club activities than in the Palmer schools.

My host family was great. They tried their best to communicate with me, and even though it was hard I got to know them very well. They live on a dairy farm and it’s very cool seeing how it works. They have to get up at 3 a.m. to milk their cows.

When we went shopping I wanted to buy a kimono so I went to the checkout and my host parents insisted they buy it for me — it was so kind of them. One of the things I enjoyed most with my host family was going out to eat and going to “The Aquarium of the North Earth.” I saw Kim Akers at the aquarium so we saw some of the fish together. My favorite fish were the touch tank ones where you could put your hand in the tank and the fish would clean your hands. It was a very weird feeling. It was like my hands were vibrating. I also loved seeing the skeleton fish. You could see right through their bodies. My favorite restaurant I went out to eat with my host family was the revolving sushi bar. It was so good and fun grabbing whatever you wanted out of the revolver. My host family loaded me with food at that restaurant. I lived with my host parents, sister, and grandmother. The grandmother was always very amused at me and it was funny seeing how she would laugh at me or just smile.

I loved visiting all of the elementary schools in the Saroma area. The kids were so adorable. They would hold your hand and walk around with you and they loved playing games. The most common game we played was where you put a long string of plastic on to your belt loop to look like a tail, then you would run around and try to protect your tail and try to get others tails. The winner was the one with the most tails. I also just loved eating lunch with the elementary kids. They were very friendly and cute. Another good memory was when I took a cooking class at Saroma High School. It was a great experience cooking Japanese food, Japanese-style! The hardest part of cooking was cutting the squash. The squash was very tough. I will miss Saroma very much and everybody here. I know for sure that I will come back to Japan and I will try to see some of the people I met here. When I first decided to apply for this exchange program I thought it would be great meeting new people, but I had no idea just how close I would get to them. When we had to leave for security I realized that my time here was truly over for the time being and I just got consumed with tears. This had been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had and it warms my heart thinking about everyone and everything in Saroma, Japan.

Zoe Copp will be an eighth-grader at Palmer Junior Middle School this fall.