Breaking down the barriers

We spent most of our time in Kesennuma exploring the Rikuchu Coast National Park. It's pretty impressive. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. The great thing about being outdoors is that it takes no translation, no special culturual understanding. There are no faux pas.







I'm learning that when we have homestays, the first night is the hardest. It's sometimes hard to judge where they want to you be and how happy they are that you're there. I find that I sort of freeze up in any of the language that I have learned. Then, the second night we all seem to open up. Dinner became a mix of words and phrases from both languages, as we tried to get to know each other with limited means.

My first impression of our host mother was that she was hosting us out of obligation, but by the morning of our departure, she told us that we was sad we were leaving and wished we were staying four days instead of two.


Lesson learned: Just got to break down that first wall.