Hello everybody and a happy 父の日！ That is Chichi no nichi, which means fathers day!  Last night me and my host family celebrated a little early with a cake roll, which is my おとおさん(host dad's) favorite treat!  That was just one day of a pretty good week(conversation test aside).  Last week, two international students from another program stayed at my house.  They were really nice, and to welcome them, my host family had a barbecue!  The food was pretty good, chicken, beef, and vegetables grilled then covered in teriyaki sauce.  We even had some watermelon!  Strange how much of a treat that is now, but fruits here are expensive.  After the barbecue, the two students, me, and my host mom all went to a karaoke place!  This place was a little cheaper than the one I went to, so it didn't have nearly good of a selection, but it was still pretty fun.  I really liked the mascots of the place, which were Siamese Cats! Now that it is summer, there have been quite a few festivals going on.  I have gone to the Yosakoi Soran festival and the portable shrine festival.  Both have been quite interesting.  Yosakoi is a type of Japanese dance that blends modern and traditional moves, and different groups perform in a parade at the festival in really cool costumes.  Then at night, the final groups dance off against each other!  I spent about two hours at the festival and saw a few dance groups perform, they were really talented.  Unfortunately, there were so many people that it was hard to get a good view of all the groups.  There were stands lined up on the streets, but I needed tickets for those and I didn't have any.  So I only stayed until about 3:30 and then went home.  I did get to watch the finals on tv that night though.  I even saw the Hokusei Gakuen Daigaku group perform!  One of my BCA group members danced with that group, she was pretty good!  I only got to watch about five groups perform before my host mom switched the TV over to the Korean drama she watches every Sunday.  Oh well.  Then this Saturday, I went to the portable shrine festival, where people parade around in traditional dress carrying, you guessed it, portable shrines!  The shrines can range from small to huge, and are very ornate.  The parade aside, the festival itself was OK.  There were so many people that I could barely move, and I couldn't really see any of the stands well because of it.  Plus, they have a festival game that I really don't like.  They have baby turtles or baby goldfish in a tub of swirling water.  the kid playing has to scoop the fish or turtle out with a net, and if they manage to scoop one, they keep it.  It was pretty sad, considering most people don't know how to properly take care of a goldfish or a baby turtle.  The turtles were especially sad, as the current kept flipping them over and bouncing them around everywhere.  So that was a downer.  However, there were a couple of stands that used fake fish and turtles, and those were much better and had better prizes.  After about an hour, we walked around the beautiful nakajima park, and then spend two to three hours looking for a cat cafe.  Cat cafes are places where you spend ten bucks to play with a bunch of cats while drinking coffee and tea.  Dogs and cats here are very expensive, so this is a much cheaper alternative for animal lovers to spend time with our furry friends!  My host mom is very allergic to animals, so I haven't even petted a cat or dog in over two months, and I severely miss my kitty!  So I really wanted to go to this cafe.  Unfortunately, we never found it.  There are directions on the cat cafe website for it, so we will have to print those out.  Me, Lexi, and Andrew are going to try to go next week.  So that was my weekend.  As for my week, on Wednesday I got to do いけばな(ikebana) or flower arranging.  It was pretty fun.  There is a very specific way to arrange the flowers, and the lady teaching us kept coming over and changing stuff until she thought it was perfect.  The flowers look awesome, though, and are displayed in the front of the international building!  They aren't as good as the flower arranging exhibit pictures I posted last time, but I think they look pretty good for our first time!  And lastly but most importantly, my sweet little niece Remy Ann Niederman was born!!!  I was so excited when I got the text from Daniel that I think I scared some of the locals in the grocery store I was in!  I rushed right home though, and was able to skype them before they went to bed!  I'm the first in my family to see her, but I will probably be the last to meet her, since I don't come home until mid July.  Remy is usually a boys name in English, means oarsman, but apparently it is a popular girls name here. My host mom already calls her remy-chan! Depending on the kanji you use for the name, it can have a variety of meanings.  I am really going to have to restrain myself from buying too much for my nieces and nephew, but is so difficult!  Everything here is so cute and perfect for little kids!  Anyways, I would show you some pictures, but blogspot is being difficult again and won't let me upload my pictures.  I am getting really frustrated about this.  I will try to upload the pictures again soon, maybe blogspot will be a bit more cooperative then.  See ya!