And to be honest, it's all really a crapshoot -- you don't know where your going to end up during one of those homestay things.
During my trip I was with a really friendly, passionate, and unusually entertaining family. They were rich, and lived in a great neighborhood (Takefu, Fukui) untainted by wordly things.
My friend, on the other hand, was stuck with a really bizarre family -- a kind of rude, "surfer" like dad, normal mom, and a mentally handicapped kid. Not that there is anything wrong with that sort of thing, but he didn't speak any English -- where as our host brothers and sisters were pretty well spoken. By the end of the trip he was pretty turned off by the whole Japan experience.
My 'schpeal'
To the OP:
What was it that you expected going into it? Did you have any preconceived ideas of what Japan was like?