International Friendship Festival and Kendo Lessons in Himeji City

This weekend was filled with fun. I ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in Sannomiya (the downtown center of Kobe) on Friday night with Joey, Garrity, and Kenken. Joey is from Maui, Garrity is another U of I student, and Kenken is from Wakayama prefecture (about an hour from Kobe by train) here in Japan. His real name is Norihito, but he has this adorable knickname Kenken.

On Saturday morning I returned to Sannomiya to buy myself some socks. Half the pairs of socks I brought from home have holes in them, so I bought about six new pairs.

In the afternoon I went over to Kevin (my fellow foreign exchange student)'s host family's house and attended a dinner party there. His host mother is Peruvian, and I enjoy speaking Spanish with her. I met her friend Cati, who is from La Repùblica Dominicana, so I was able to speak a little Spanish with Cati as well. I also met one of Mr. Okamura (Kevin's host father)'s younger coworkers, Yusuke. We all enjoyed a delicious dinner composed primarily of Peruvian dishes. There was fried meat, roast chicken (I got to carve one, Kevin taught me how), and a special sauce that had a name in Quechua, so I'm having trouble remembering the name now. We also ate two cakes, one cake with whipped vanilla frosting and covered in fruit that the Okamura family bought at a store, and an apple cake that I made with Okaasan at home and brought over as a gift.

Today I went to Himeji city. It is well-known for Himeji Castle, and even though I could see the castle from where I spent the day, I did not have time to go see it. But I will return soon to visit the castle, and in the meantime, I enjoyed myself immensely today in Himeji. I went to an International Friendship Festival with my Japanese pen-pal friend Saki and Maddy, another exchange student from Konan University. We saw dances from many different cultures, such as hula dance and hip hop, we ate food from various countries such as Malaysian friend banana balls and Brazilian sweet cake, and Maddy and I received a kendo (the way of the sword) lesson from this nice high school boy who studies kendo in Himeji city. He and his father, who is a kendo master, did some demonstrations at the fair. Maddy and I learned the kendo moves with foam swords so we wouldn't do any damage to ourselves. I now have a certificate confirming my completion of a "play sport" course in kendo!