Day 18: Kimono Culture and Etiquette

My host mom made a spider man lunch today for たっくん:

 Breakfast:

 Really yummy pudding dessert:

The visuals from my show and tell in class. This semester the topic was 「私の出身地」（"My hometown"）:

Here are the lyrics to the song our class and A class are going to preform together at the talent show this weekend. Everyone is going on a trip to Oonuma, and after dinner there is an HIF talent show. They lyrics are a lot darker than the song sounds.

I didn't have an onigiri today, and forgot to take a picture of my lunch from the cafeteria, but I had this healthy looking tea after class. It just tasted like extra bitter tea.

I went to a Kimono Culture and Etiquette class today. We learned about different types of kimonos and when people wear them. women usually wear elaborate kimonos on their twentieth birthday, and wedding day. Men traditionally wore them on their twentieth birthdays as well, but now usually prefer to wear a nice suit. People often wear yukattas (which are less fancy) to festivals throughout the year, to various cultural events, or just because they prefer to.

 We learned how to put on yukattas:

And got to put on the wedding kimono (without wrapping it up). It was pretty heavy.

 More pictures:

I saw a ladybug larvae outside:

And before taking the tram to city hall, I got this coffee flavored creampuff from 7-11. It was delicious.

This is where I usually wait at city hall. The center part of the first floor is usually just open space, but because an election is coming up it is being used and is blocked off by these grey walls:

We had okonomiyaki for dinner. It's kind of like a lettuce-filled pancake with okonomiyaki sauce, mayo, and fishy flakes. It's pretty fantastic.

Because I didn't have much homework, I watched some TV with my host brothers after dinner. I don't know what this show is, but it seems to just be about puppies and kittens. There was one segment where they hid a bunch of treats and timed how long it took a puppy to find them all. In another segment, they set up a tiny boxing ring with a cat toy in the middle and added punching sounds every time the kitten hit the toy: