These are smoked fish with soy souse and welsh onions. Photo by: Mai Takeuchi

By Mai Takeuchi

I am Mai Takeuchi, an exchange student from Japan. I have dreamed of the American lifestyle since one of my best friends had been to America and showed me pictures. Then I participated in summer camps, sometimes in Australia. I thought it was not enough for making friends or improving English, so I decided to be an exchange student for a year. On the very first day I arrived in the U.S., I moved and became very excited. It has gotten harder day by day, and has been much harder than I expected. However, I have a nice host family, teachers, and friends, so I knew my life was going to be all right.

Although I am getting used to it here, I miss Japanese food badly. It is so great because it is a part of Japanese heritage. It is healthier and more lightly flavored than American food.

This is a really cultural styled dinner. There is sushi,  green tea, and rice. Photo by: Mai Takeuchi

I proved this as I gained 17 pounds since I came here. Most of our traditional foods include eating rice with chopsticks two or three times a day. One of my positive food experiences here would be Wendy’s. I was surprised by this since we have McDonald’s, but they do not have the same quality of hamburgers or french fries. What surprised me was how rice is cooked in the U.S. You have instant rice here and it does not even look like rice before boiling, because we wash it one by one and boil it with a rice cooker which takes almost an hour to cook. I was also surprised because American foods are more colorful than ours and have a stronger taste. I really like pumpkin pies, which made me happy to eat at Thanksgiving. However, I do not like gravy. The first time I saw it, I had no idea what it was.

I think I am missing my Japanese school lunch because it was great and cost only five dollars.Then they have some kind of noodles, daily menus such as donbuli. Donbuli is a dish with a lot of rice, taco rice or smoked fish with miso soup, crepes, flan, carry rice. We also bring lunch boxes to school. What I would like to try to eat is meat pie. It is my host mother’s favorite and it always looks nice.