20th September

Second day in Noshiro
I woke up at 7:00, the latest time I woke up in Japan. Although it had been a nice sleep last night, I still felt sleepy indeed. This morning breakfast was rice, beef, dumpling, tofu soap, and Nato. What is Nato? It is kind of sticky bland yellow bean, and its taste was not acceptable for me, neither was Sunmeng. We were really sorry for leaving it over, and Yoshi and Masako didn’t mind because they knew this taste was only suitable for the Japanese.

After breakfast, we went to Noshiro Park by car for a walk. The park was really natural with high trees and green plants. The paths were smoothly paved to be convenient for cycling and jogging. Although today was Sunday, we could hardly saw anyone walking around. Along the paths we saw Sakura trees with green leaves, map of the park, a small pond, wooden bridge, wooden house for relax, balance wood, and other wooden facilities of play ground. It would be great to have fun with nature if we could come here every morning to inhale fresh air and do body exercise.

We left the park and went to an electronic shop. Only Masako accompanied us, Yoshi drove his car to other place. Varieties of products were placed on shelves. I had never seen some of these products. They looked exquisite and trendy. Just forget about the price. Everything was good to observe only, but we could afford to buy. Have you ever seen an about 60x40cm2-screen LCD monitor? Here you can see. Masako took us to an electronic massage chairs area. There, we could try the chair for free. Sunmeng and I sat respectively on 2 chairs for around 10 minutes. Frankly, it was not really comfortable, as the massage machine hit my shoulder and back with too much force.

After electronic shop, we went to another 100 yens shop. I bought a little souvenir but spent a long time for looking around. Then we went to a DVD rental shop. On the shelves, there were many movie DVDs, from Hollywood, China, Korea, Japanese animations, cartoons and games. I could see the actors and characters I was familiar with on the DVD packages. Masako called Yoshi to pick us up here and go home.

Souvenir Exchange
This afternoon, we ate Ramen, Japanese noodle. There was no much difference with the noodle between Japanese Ramen and Cambodian instance noodle, but the flavor was not the same. Sunmeng and I added some Tabasco to our Ramen because it was not spicy. Masako was surprised because she doesn’t like spicy. We talked about a lot of differences between Cambodia and Japan, and it was the last meal we had together. After lunch, I took out some souvenirs, which sere 2 T-shirts, 2 Kromas, 3 key chains, and 7 postcards to offer to Yoshi and Masako as the memory of your homestay together. They also offered me a photo frame, a postcard of peace and 2 Japanese peace dolls made by them. We exchanged the souvenir and asked Sunmeng to take picture for us, and Sunmeng had his souvenirs as well. At 1:00, we arranged our luggage, put it in the car, and started our journey back to Akita city.

The end of homestay
Along the way, we couldn’t help with our sleepiness. We sat and slept in the car for 2 hours until we arrived in Akita city. I wondered whether the other participants had already returned or not yet. How were their homestays? I thought the later we returned, the happier we had been. Now it was 3:300 and we were planned to return at 4:00. I started to worry that we were too early to get back. When we nearly reached the Akita view hotel, Yoshi turned to Akita Central Park to meet his friend there. We pause for a moment, and a man in long-sleeves T-shirt and jeans like a traveler with a large baggage on his back walked toward our car. He was Yoshi’s friend, Takayama. He is a traveler and has been to many countries in Asia. Five of us sat under a cottage and had some conversation. The cold gentle breath passed through my body, and the warm ray of sunset shined on my face. What a comfortable central park of Akita city for relaxing after a whole day of rush. We spent one hour for conversation and we had to go back to hotel. Takayama came with us. When we arrived at the hotel, it was time to say ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’ to Yoshi, Masako, and Takayama, but we still had a farewell party together tomorrow night. The homestay of mine ended.

Most of participants had already returned and gone shopping. I thought we could go again after dinner tonight, but we were told to rest as much as possible in order to handle with tomorrow journey to OGA with Japanese university students. Especially Sereyroth had problem with her health again after homestay, and she had to choose between journey to OGA and farewell party. We were very sorry for her that she couldn’t join with us tomorrow. Additionally, for the farewell party, we had to prepare our traditional clothes, traditional dance, and speeches sated by Yuth representing for us. We had some rehearsal in Bellin and Virya’s room and every movement of the dance was refined. Another problem was that Sovann had no his traditional costume, which we couldn’t the solution until tomorrow.