I suppose, now that I’m going to leave in two weeks, that I should describe my host family. My host parents are in their fifties, with two kids that have since grown up, graduated, and moved away. Their elder daughter’s already married off, so now the pressure’s on their younger son and his girlfriend, who just bought a condo near my homestay.

My host father is somewhere high up the food chain at a local kimono distributor—the perfect front organization if he were a mob boss like Uncle Vito. He likes American movies (and not Japanese movies), cracking bad Japanese puns, and the Yomiuri Giants baseball team. (The neighbors are Hanshin Tigers fans, so on game nights there’s a little tension.) He’s also athletic, having run a marathon in Hawaii.

My host mother, like many Japanese wives, doesn’t work. But she’s lived in Kyoto all her life and spends a lot of time visiting friends. She also enjoys sewing, Western flower arrangement, and gardening. She likes romantic comedies, especially if they involve Julia Roberts. She speaks really loudly with a thick Kansai accent, so phone conversations with her always take longer than they should. But she’s really nice, and she insists on making me breakfast each morning and not allowing me to help clean the kitchen at night.