Well my second day of classes was great. We are doing stuff that is review for me, but seeing as I forgot a lot of it it is very useful. We went to a tea ceremony today at Kenrokuen. It was in the middle of a beautiful garden. From the brochure: "According to ancient Chinese tradition, there are six different sublime qualities to which a garden can aspire. Grouped in their traditional complementary pairs, these are spaciousness and seclusion, artifice and antiquity, running water and broad views. As might be imagined, it is difficult enough to find a garden that is blessed with any three or four of these desirable attributes, let alone five, or even more rarely, all six. Yet that is the case here, where, as the name "Kenrokuen" indicates, we can find these qualities perfectly combined(ken-), all six (-roku-) of them, in one garden (-en). . . Kenrokuen is naturally one of the three most famous landscape gardenin Japan."

I think that we are going to Kaiten Sushi tonight for dinner. That is where they put the sushi on a conveyor belt and you pick off the sushi that looks good as it goes past. They have a kaiten sushi place in Maryland but I don't know if there are any other places in the US that have them. I ate at a Kaiten Sushi place in Osaka and it was a lot of fun.

Last night as I was getting ready for bed (I was already in my pajamas and had taken a bath) I heard the sounds of drums and flutes coming through the window. It was a beautiful haunting melody. Then my host mother started calling my name. I went downstairs and she rushed me into the car and we went to watch the taiko drum practice. There is a festival in our town, Tsubata, on September 15 and the high school students were practicing the drums and flute. I was wearing my pajamas and was a little embarrassed. My host mother convinced me to play the Taiko drums though. I'm sure you can imagine what a sight that was, playing drums in my pajamas in the middle of the night.