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When I opened up the email detailing an itinerary for a trip to Japan, I was ecstatic. Two years ago, I received an email from the Kakehashi Project, a government-funded exchange program focused on building bridges between American students and Japanese culture, daily living, and government affairs. The email listed a beautiful and thrilling adventure around the golden pillars of the Meiji-Shrine, Harajuku’s hip-and-fashionable jam-packed alleyways, and, most shockingly, a step into the Imperial Palace with Japan’s Imperial Highness, Princess Takamado. Rather than rambling on about the elegant temples, cultural hotspots, and that one single handshake with a member of Japanese royalty (which I could rave about for days on end until your ears fall off), I want to focus on the pieces that aren’t so well-documented on the internet or any form of social media: the daily life of a quiet Japanese family of farmers. For three days, I stayed with a kind host family in Kami-machi, a rural town with an estimated population of about twenty-four thousand near the coastline of Miyagi Prefecture. I remember stepping off of the bus and meeting my host family for the first time. I quickly bowed, awkward and clearly uncomfortable, and they followed suit. It was a family of four: a mother, father, older sister, and baby brother. The father did not talk much, but his warm smile helped in creating my own. After this quick exchange of introductions, I scrambled into the back seat of a tiny, black car and watched the open green pastures whiz by from behind the foggy car window. When I tell people that they fed me well, what I really mean is that the food never. stopped. coming. Splashes of the sea drenched my taste buds with every meal: bright salmon roe on top of steaming white rice; raw fish caught just that morning at the local fish market; leaves of lettuce, carrots, and lotus root almost entirely picked from the backyard garden; multiple plates full of rich dipping sauces, some salty, others sweet; hot tea, the steam wafting up from a hand-made clay mug. Since I was never a big fan of seafood, I was shocked to discover that I loved the taste of fresh clams served in miso soup. This twist on a simple classic brought me back home to the east coast of America at my mother’s worn wooden dinner table. Over these warm, homecooked meals, my view of Japan’s peaceful countryside changed to one struck with reality. I learned about the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, what I simply labeled prior as “The Great Earthquake-Flood that Hit Japan.” I learned about the parts that weren’t taught in the news or in the American schooling system: the colossal damages that breached through small towns near Japan’s coastline, the homes and families lost and broken from the disaster. In my eyes, the pastoral beauty of the land and the warm, quiet homes changed forever. I thought about the welcoming, smiling faces and loud, roaring laughter of the family I was staying with and was amazed to discover an underlying strength first unnoticed. Their joy of life was so apparent, and I found myself falling deeper in love with their personal home traditions. The mother and sister dressed me in the colorful silk of the kimono, so different from the familiar hanbok of Korea. I remember twirling in a circle, catching my reflection in the mirror, and just staring, amazed that the person I was looking at was actually me. When it was time to leave, I recall tearing up as I hugged my new family goodbye, scrambling onto the very same bus that I arrived in. As the bus slowly rumbled down the dirt road, we waved furiously at each other from behind a stained glass window. During the ride to the airport, I thought about the new way of life I had learned, the bleak history of a home that looked so vibrantly hopeful. I was leaving a home to go back to a home and smiled at the thought. As I got into the plane targeted for the US, I repeated a single promise to myself: “I can’t wait to come back.”