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Originally Posted by Columbine
Actually, I'm a bit baffled. You're going on a host stay mediated by some kind of school/uni right? And the host, I assume, already knows something about you, and probably you're not their first foreign host?
See, I was at a place last year where this was an option (about 1/2 the students did that) and the people I knew who took this, who had tattoo's and piercings, generally didn't have a huge problem. There was pretty much a non-committal 'Eh, but that's what young people DO, isn't it?" attitude. In fact I can only think of one student who had initial problems, but he was a BIG burly shaven-head type guy with a lot of tattoo's down his arms and back and his japanese wasn't good so he had a hard time explaining that he was maori and what the tattoo's were really all about. It did get smoothed out in the end though.
A lot of them did make attempts to make their tatt's and whatnots more subtle, especially if there was company around, but generally after a while it was just accepted as part and parcel. It's not like piercings amongst college students are really that much of a rarity in Japan anymore either. Well, maybe in other areas. My city might have been unusually liberal, I don't know.
As for the food thing, allergies were generally accepted without much fuss, it's things like lent that the host family's found really hard to get their head's around.
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It's good to hear this. =) And I'm going to Kyoto city too, so hopefully what you say will work out. Where were you last year?
But no, even though I'm going through a school, the school told all of us that we won't find out about our host family and they won't find out about us until mid-August, and we arrive in September. I think that might be common with exchange programs.