I had a very relaxed weekend. Yesterday I traveled to Osaka for my first violin lesson with my new violin teacher! We spoke English during the lesson, which helped me to better understand her critiques and comments. When she played her violin to demonstrate to me how to improve my playing, her playing was incredible. I am very grateful to my violin teacher from my high school days for recommending this teacher in Osaka. I will have a lesson once a month here, which is less frequent than my number of monthly lessons in the U.S., but I will try to work hard each month so I can learn the most with my new teacher. It takes about two hours to get from my host family's home in Kobe to my teacher's home in Osaka, but the lesson was totally worth it, and now I feel as though I have a new mastery of the subway and some other train lines in Osaka.

Today I spent most of the day at home, but I did go on two walks. In the morning I took the family dogs for a walk with Okaasan, and in the afternoon I met up with a friend and we walked to a nearby park. I had a very interesting conversation with my friend about relationships between men and women in Japan. We discussed how a Japanese man shows his devotion for his wife in different ways than does a man from the United States. I have heard many stories from other exchange students about their host fathers' actions at the dinner table. When their host fathers want more rice, they simply hand their bowl to the host mother without saying anything, the host mother refills the bowl with rice, hands it back to the host father, who doesn't say anything and commences eating. I told my friend that in the U.S., if the husband did not get additional rice himself, he would at least thank his wife for bringing it to him. My friend replied that Japanese husbands may not always show their appreciation by saying thank you, but he believes that Japanese husbands do love their wives very much and that their appreciation and emotions manifest themselves in other ways. He said that Japanese husbands always try to protect their wives and children when the need arises, and when Japanese women find themselves in difficult situations, their husbands will not try to avoid the situations or run away, but will stick by the women and help them solve the problem. My friend said that this demonstrates their love and devotion to their wives as opposed to frequent hugs, kisses, and saying thank you.