Uda City in Nara Prefecture is located right in the midst of Japan’s beautiful mountains and forests. Since I come from a small town in Alabama, Uda had a familiar feeling. However, like every other place in Japan, there was unfamiliar feelings as well!

To say that the scenery around Uda was beautiful doesn’t begin to do it justice! It was amazing! Since Uda is located in such a rural area, there was a lot less English than there was in Omura. Therefore, many of us were not quite sure what adventures our Host Family Day would hold. The answer was simple: Ninjas.

About an hour away from Uda is Ueno City, which has Ueno Castle…. And a Ninja Village. It wasn’t only me and my host family that went. Eve and her host father, Frank and his host mother and host nephew, and Shao and Tanja and their host mother all joined us.

At Ueno’s Ninja Village you can learn about real ninjas, how they lived, their equipment, and special features of their house! Also, for 500 Yen, you can dress up like a ninja all day long! Although this sounds like tons of fun, I had heard from someone else that it was not as fun as it might seem. Therefore, I was a little hesitant. However, this day was the highlight of my trip to Uda.

For a short time, we 5 foreigners were an elite ninja assassin clan! As ninjas we ate udon, explored Ueno Castle, threw shuriken, and took pictures with some tiny ninjas! The rest of the day was spent stealthily moving from tree to tree, finding the most ninja-esque poses possible, and doing things that would just look better if it were done by ninjas!

I have to say this might have been the best Host Family Day Ever!

(Ciara Smith – Alabama – United States)

This day we had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do, we didn’t know it was going to be as challenging and difficult as it was.

We got to the temple and there was a Monk waiting for us to teach us Zen, as soon as we got there, we went to the tatami room where the altar was with the statue of Buddha. Everything was prepared for us to be there. The Monk then started with his explanation about the Meditation Technique.

Some of us knew what to expect but the majority of us were just nervous to do something wrong in such a perfect environment, you could hear a needle drop.

There we were at the temple with a Monk with a wooden stick on his hand standing in front of us waiting for one of us to move so he could punish ourselves hitting us with the stick on our back. The sound of the “punishment” was very loud and truly scary. My jaw dropped when i saw him do it to the person next to me.

Zen… meditation technique that taught us to listen to our hearts and thoughts through concentration.

Two sessions of 15 minutes of immobility for us was a life time and a nightmare for a few nor for the 28 year old monk who was teaching us about Zen, his longest period of meditation is 8 days and a few hours.