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The summer homestay continues! 😆
This time, we had a group of 3 guests - a mother and her two daughters from Nara.
The 4-night 5-day stay had flown by before we knew it!

The older girl was incredibly lively, and her younger sister was even more energetic!
From the moment they arrived, all of them were very friendly and quickly got close to us. 🥰
It was hard to believe we had never met them before!

The older girl had already expressed her reluctance about the stay ending, saying "Only 4 nights left..." from the start, which touched us deeply.

The older girl had a clear goal of going to the Onsens (hot springs) at least 3 times, and she achieved that goal before leaving. For those who may wonder if there are that many Onsens in Sasayama, here are the ones the guests visited: ① Unitopia Sasayama day-trip hot spring, ② Nukumori no Sato in Konda-cho, and ③ Kusayama Onsen.

They also visited places like Unitopia, the Sue no Sato for pottery experience, the Kuromame no Yakata country-style buffet, the Yamamori Circuit in Kusayama, and the Tamba Cotton Ito for spinning experience at Fukusumi. We hope this information is helpful for anyone visiting Sasayama in the future.

For meals, they skillfully balanced eating out and eating at home, as there were some things they couldn't eat due to allergies etc. There were a few times the restaurants were closed by the time they went to eat, but they were able to find alternative options.

At home, they enjoyed activities like picking blackberries, pestering the chickens 😅, making French toast with freshly laid eggs, roasting marshmallows, making jelly, and building a zoo with Lego. But what they got the most into was games - a shopping card game in English, Jenga, and a 3D 4-in-a-row game (which I used to play as a child, and I'm grateful my mom kept it this long). Everyone, including us, hated to lose and kept playing round after round! 😆

Compared to last year's guests, who could do more outdoor activities like harvesting summer vegetables or making crafts at John's workshop with John due to the cooler mornings and evenings, this year's heat was just too intense to be outside for long. So we focused on activities the guests could do comfortably without suffering too much heat.

We were able to have deep conversations with the mother who came with them, and I truly felt that hosting a homestay was the right thing to do. I think our goal should be to have guests stay as long as possible, share many experiences to get to know each other better, so that they would like come back in the future.

Watching the older girl diligently taking care of her sister who is 4 years younger, I was impressed. At 11 years old, she must still have a desire to have her mother's attention all to herself, but she is putting her sister's needs first. It made me reflect on how my own eldest daughter must have felt taking care of her younger siblings. It gave me an even deeper appreciation for my daughter, and other older sons of course, who has helped out so much from a young age. Thank you, dears! 💖

Apparently, the father of this family is also very interested, and he may join them next time. The connections just keep expanding. I'm looking forward to it...🥰