The program I'm looking into, Ojiya Study Abroad, offers both host families or guest houses for you to stay in. Now the question is which one do you want to stay in.
If you stay with a host family, you will get to experience what real family life is like in Japan and will also learn more Japanese by being around it constantly. Most exchange experiences are amazing and while I don't know any people who have been exchange students in Japan there are tons of videos on youtube. Also, when my mom was a kid her family always hosted multiple exchange students from all over the world, including many from Japan. They learned a lot of English and had a ton of fun with my mom's family and all the other exchange students. I recently talked to a Japanese exchange student at my college and she highly recommended staying with a host family.
The other option is staying in a guest house with other foreign students. With this you will have to cook your own meals and experience what life in a house full of young people is like. You will also probably not learn as much Japanese because you will have English speaking people to talk to where you are living. In a lot of ways I think this would be a gentler way to start living in a foreign country but the downside is you also won't learn as much.
For me personally I believe I will be staying in a guest house for a couple reasons, the main one being I have food allergies. My food allergies are major enough that it would have to change the way my host family cooked and I wouldn't want to burden them with that. I already know how to cook, so making all my own meals won't be a big deal for me. My food options in Japan are going to be pretty different than my hippie town so I have been trying my best to simulate what will be available in Japan and am now looking into online stores that will ship to Japan if I need anything.
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