Tivoli Party

Last night Shoko threw a party for about 20 people, most of whom were kids. Some of Tom's friends from australia came, as well as Shun's friends from school. Andee and I watched the presidential debates before the party started, so I was glad to get to see that. At the party I was able to speak a good amount of japanese, and after we ate the kids played goldeneye, mario smash brothers, and a soccer game. Japanese people also really like magic tricks so Andee and I did a few to please the crowd. Shoko also had delicious sushi which was my favoritie. mmmm.

Today Tom, Shoko, Andee, Yamashita-san, Soichiro (Yamashita-san's grandson, everyone calls him So-chan), and I went to kurashiki for some shopping and evening excitement. I had been to kurashiki before so I knew my way around, and bought myself some items. While we were shopping we ran into Sam, Tom's friend who was at the party last night. We shopped for a little while and then said goodbye in the evening to go to Tivoli park, a danish (edit) themed amusement park in Kurashiki. Apparently 10 years ago relations between Kurashiki and Denmark were very good so the park was built. It's sort of a garden/amusement park, with some roller coasters (small), a water rie, ferris wheel, and other rides that could be found in a general park.
The park happened to be having a large dance competition in the evening, so we got to catch some of the dancers performing. As usual, since most people in japan seem to know how to dance, the dancing was quite good, and the music selection was familiar. The park rides were also very fun. There was a "cage battle" game called "HELL BLASTER" where one driver and one shooter get into bumper car type vehicles and shoot high speed balls at each other. There was also a danish themed haunted mansion that wasn't that scary but did provide for a ton of laughs.

I fell asleep in the car on the way home, of course.