My weekend

Woke up late on Saturday, and since it was raining decided to go shopping to stay inside. I bought a towel cover for my surfboard and a guidebook for Japanese birds. In the evening, Ayako and I went to a restaurant strip that has about 6 ramen restuarants and 5 other Japanese restaurants. We went to the ramen restaurant with the shortest line and it was still a 10-minute wait. Here's a couple of pictures from that place:
After dinner, we saw a number of dance performances by teams from all over Japan. It was part of a dance festival that is held in Hamamatsu every year and had about 100 teams participating. It's the 6th year of the event and teams range in size from 6 to 100 people and can do anything as long as they dance and use a musical instrument. It was great seeing lots of members of teams walking around downtown in their costumes.

I also recently heard that Hamamatsu is one of four venues for the 2006 World Basketball Championships that 's being held in Japan starting in August. I'm surprised that Hamamatsu is big enough to be one of the sites but then again, the smaller town next to us was one of the sites for the 2002 World Cup.

On Sunday, I played soccer in a 2 friendly games against some high school teams. Our team was made up of foreigners (most of whom were much better than I am). We gotten beaten by the high school "B" and "C" team though. It was very windy and a bit cold, so I was surprised when I realized that I got a bit of a sunburn during the day... a good reminder that I'm living much further south than I have before and that the UV rays are stronger here.