Ah! I forgot!! On Monday night after Kyoto, before Yoshimi-chan’s Erhu (Chinese violin) lesson, we did purikura!!! Don’t we look cute as kitty-cats?! When Yoshimi showed her boyfriend Koro-chan the pictures, he asked “why are you pretending to be cats?”. Because it’s cute!!! Nyaaaaa! (Japanese cat sound. Equivalent of “meow”). I’m not sure why my name is a mix of katakana and hiragana… my bad!

Tuesday, April 5, the day after I went to Kyoto with Yoshimi-chan and her Mom, I went to a Hamamatsu Rotary meeting. My co-workers and I had all donated money for the Japanese earthquake/tsunami relief cause, and the owner, Ted, graciously doubled our efforts. Around the same time I coincidentally was forwarded an e-mail from Ikedo-san (the GSE coordinator at Hamamatsu Rotary) saying that the Hamamatsu Rotary was also seeking donations for Japanese aide relief. Ted being a rotarian himself, thought that they would put our Chapala money to good use. I let Ikedo-san know about our donation, and it was arranged that I would attend the Tuesday lunch meeting. I ate proper obento for lunch, and after some amount of Rotary business, I presented the Hamamatsu Rotary club with a $250 check. Here we are, holding the check and a Chapala menu.

After the meeting, I walked from the Hamamatsu grand hotel to the station, a good 15-20 minute brisk walk. I took the shinkansen to Shizuoka, where I met up with Mai and we went cherry blossom viewing. The blossoms in Shizuoka had finally started blooming! We went to a park called 船越公園 (I don’t know the English pronunciation). Here we are on front of a particularly fine cherry tree

And this is a stunning view of Mount Fuji from Shizuoka! (you saw it from the other side in my Kawaguchiko post):

After walking all around the park, Mai and I wanted to go to onsen (because I love it, and so does she!). We decided to go to a relatively cheap onsen, which only cost about $7.00. The onsen itself was really neat, with several different indoor onsen, and not only a big outdoor onsen, but they had these tiled seats you could sit in, and hot water was flowing from the top of the seat, near the shoulders, and drained downwards. It was a really comfy way to sit and be a the perfect temperature. The downside of the cheap onsen is that they didn’t have as many amenities. The didn’t even have conditioner (called “rinse”, in Japan). They had “rinse in shampoo”, which is 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner, but it’s just not the same. I need some serious conditioner, or I can’t even brush my hair without ripping half of it out. After the onsen, I went back to Hamamatsu, catching the train with like 10 seconds to spare. What did Yoshimi and I eat that night? I think we had Chinese the night before, so was it the really yummy ramen shop? There is seriously delicious ramen shop near Yoshimi’s house that we went to at some point…