Hello! In a few months time I will be visiting Japan as part of a study abroad program with my uni/college. This includes a two week home stay with a host family, and I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity. I grew up as an expat so I’m not worried at all about culturally adapting, but language wise I struggle to hold a full conversation (although I can understand majority of what the speaker is saying). I’ve been self taught for about two years and taking this college class for a few months so I’m still a relative beginner. We have to write a message to our prospective host family that gets to read these and put forward preferences of who they would like to match with. I’m not really sure what would be an appropriate way to open it that would be polite and friendly without sounding either to casual nor too stiff (for instance some of the textbook formal phrases rarely get used in practice by native speakers and are only reserved for specific circumstances). When I Google there are all these things like ‘thank you for choosing me’, yet as they have not chosen us yet that would be too presumptuous and I am trying to avoid that. It would be in Japanese as well just to clarify. If anyone could give me any pointers I would be most grateful, thank you!! 🙂
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In that case, I would just stick to introducing yourself. Talk about your family (if you have siblings maybe), where you grew up, what your interests/hobbies are.
You can start the letter with an osewa ni narimasu, that still works sort of as an all-purpose politeness thing even if they haven’t “picked” yet. And a yoroshiku onegaishimasu at the end. Right before that, you could add something like “please consider me” (kentou) or “I’d be really happy if you would choose me” or something like that if you want, but I feel like that’s an optional thing.