While abroad -Maintaining a blog assignment - part 2 of 3

5. Describe the perceptions of the U.S. in your host country. Are there a range of perceptions or are they general? Are they what you expected? Do host-naitonals ask you about the U.S.? What do they ask? 

hmm, I think in a conscice fashion, perceptions of the U.S. in Japan is like how people in Hawaii view japan. A lot of people in Hawaii want to go to Japan, think that the true japanese citizen looks obviously different from a local American-Japanese person who was born and raised in Hawaii. There are probably a range of perceptions out there throughout Japan, however, after getting my hair cut, I get a more of the surprised, not so interested, confused reaction from Japanese people. I think the perfect example of this was when we recently went to an elementary school to play with the fifth graders during P.E. All the study abroad students were divided up and assigned to a group of three fifth graders. when my group saw what I looked like they didn't seem to be too thrilled in comparrisson, and even more disbelieving when I started trying to talk to them in Japanese. One of the two boys actually wandered over to another group, where the study abroad student could not in any way be mistaken for a japanese or chinese person and could barely speak japanese. The other two kids in my group had to periodically tell him to come back and that he was being rude. this wasn't the first time i felt like it may have been a bad desicion to get my hair cut.


However, the trump for this was, it was because i did not look stereotypically American that my host family wanted me. The fact that I looked a little like one of them in my passport photo (pre hair cut) helped to ease their worries about hosting for the first time and the receptiveness of the grandparents to foreigners in general from what they told me. 


Thus far, my host family has asked me any thing. These questions range from what the weather is like, culture-shock experiences going from hawaii to Oregon and Hawaii to Japan, and any other combinaiton of japan, oregon, and Hawaii; the weather; to the everyday question my host mom asks: what did you have for lunch?