Hajime
はじめまして, みな！
Hello everyone. My name is Angelica and this is my blog on Corpse Party. It’s a Japanese game that gained popularity, especially in the US for being unfair to the characters and the horrific plot associated with the game.
I’m interested in exploring this topic with you because of the relationship I have with Japanese culture growing up and my own obsession with the series.
My history with Japan dates back to when I was just 3 years old. My mother, for the exact reason I may never know, decided that she wanted my older sister and I have role models to look up to. She found an organization that allowed for young high school students to come to the United States for three months over the spring to stay with a host family. My family was one of these.
The first student we had stay with us was named Tomoko. I was told that she was smart, funny, but I can’t remember her as much as I try. After she left, my parents brought another student named Satoshi. He was our first and only boy exchange student that we had. I remember him a little bit. He liked to go fishing with my dad and one day he let go of my sister’s hand too early when she was crossing the street and cracked her head open! My mother told him to pick her up and his reaction was, “she’s crying.” …well, yeah.
After Satoshi left came Megumi. She was smart and very strict with my sister and I. She had us take off our shoes and put them by the door, would have us sit up straight, but then reward us with pocky that she brought from Osaka. I was about six years old when she left us and suddenly my family turned in a new direction. Two Japanese exchange students, and college age.
I will admit that I can’t remember all of the students anymore. In total, before my family stopped, we had hosted 24 different students, all from Japan, and while I enjoyed around all of them, a lot of them didn’t keep in communication with us after they left.
After about two years, we got a surprise call from Megumi. She was coming back! I wasn’t sure if she missed us or she wanted to travel for some reason, but she came back to see us anyways. I was about 8 at this point and remembered that I didn’t like her as much as soon as her rules came back. “Be polite to your mother,” “If you don’t eat all of your rice then your eyes will fall out,” and “make sure that you say thank you after someone gives you something.” Looking back now, I get that she was doing it out of love and anything that a big sister would say.
When Megumi left us again we finally had two students that changed my parents’ outlook on hosting forever. Their names were Yuka and Saki. Two girls from Osaka that have the biggest hearts in the world and the most love. We requested to keep them longer than usual, which luckily was granted, and took them all over Washington state. From Spokane to Leavenworth, Seattle, and Whidbey Island. I can’t describe how my family fell in love with them, only the pain it felt when they had to leave.
It was from this day forward that my parents vowed that one day we would go to Japan to visit Yuka, Saki, Megumi, Tomoko, Satoshi, everyone that we could contact. That we would make it.
Unfortunately, life happens and after Yuka and Saki went back to Osaka, the reality of how much it would cost to go to Japan seemed like a faraway dream.
Luckily enough for us, I guess Yuka and Saki missed us just as much as Megumi did because they came back as well. Paid their own way back and even brought a friend, who also happened to be named Tomoko.
Left to Right: Tomoko, Yuka, my mom, and niece, Amelia (older sister) and her dog Chupula, my dad, Saki, me.
I was 10 at this point and the next six years that we hosted felt like nothing compared to the love that we received from two strangers in our home.
In the summer of 2011, I started to take Japanese lessons. I was 14 at this point and missed my sisters so much. My mother fell to a list of health problems that ate directly into our Japan budget. What seemed like a nice summer vacation for us before I started high school, turned into a non-existent dream. Still, I wanted to learn as much as I could for the coming day that I would finally go to see them.
Finally, in the summer of 2017, I enrolled in Evergreen’s study aboard program to go to Tokyo for three weeks. Yuka had moved to a little town outside of Osaka called Himeji at this point and Saki had gotten married. No one knew where Megumi was. I got accepted into the program in April and asked my mother to contact as many students as possible to see who, if any, would want to see me again after so many years.
As if she knew I was coming, Megumi was the first to respond. She had ended up in Chiba as an abdominal surgeon and was excited to know that I was finally coming. Next to ring was Yuka and Saki. Saki had just given birth to her daughter Sae, so she wasn’t able to come to see me, but Yuka could on both of their behalfs.
While getting on a train using my Pasmo, to board and close a distance of that would take 40 minutes and 13 years to reach, I finally got to see Megumi again.
I cried my eyes out. A lot. It was super embarrassing and Megumi being her polite and mannered self, did her best to calm me down and let me know that everything was okay. I had finally made it.
A picture of us dressed up in furisode.
I spent a little over 12 hours with Megumi. My mother never told her that I was learning Japanese, so she was very surprised when I was able to read and talk a bit with her. One of the locations she took me was a shrine behind the station I had come in and bought me a couples charm that I still have hanging on my wall for my boyfriend and I.
I cried again when it was time for me to leave. If it wasn’t for the classes that I had to take in the morning or the assignments that were waiting for me at home, I would have stayed with her. But like all things, it had to come to an end.
A week passed after seeing Megumi and with only three days left before I had to leave, I was finally able to go and see Yuka. She on the overhand cried hysterically with me in front of her boyfriend and the entire Tokyo train station. Also surprised by my Japanese, since we were in Tokyo, she took us over to a little building known as Tokyo Tower. It’s over a 1,000 feet tall and we rode all the way up together.
Yuka and I.
The star festival had just taken place the night before and people were still writing down wishes to pin up. Yuka and I each wrote our own and asking for the same wish. That we would reunite one in 2020, that I would come back again.
Yuka: Yellow, me: pink
It’s been almost two years since that day and 2020 is coming up fast. I plan to keep to my promise to Yuka, Saki, and Megumi. I will return.
