Friday 16th
In case you didn't know, Carly came to Hamamatsu on Friday for a business trip. There was a little bit of uncertainty about her coming to Hamamatsu as her business may not have needed her, but I think they felt sorry for her because she wanted to see her little brother. In the end after thinking she was, then not, then was, she finally came. I was supposed to meet her at the station straight after school, but I had a bit of a problem.... again another bike problem... the tyre had popped and I couldn't get home! In the end I ditched my bike at my 1st host family's house and went to meet Carly by bus. My host mums had organised a concert to go to that night and so Carly came along with us and Fernando to check it out. After the concert we went home and Carly and I watched Chicago on DVD :) (She got it from China). I had been hoping to watch Matrix 2, but each time I downloaded it, it was either 'Star Wars, Lotr or Fight Club'!. We stayed up late watching the movie and then went to bed.

Saturday 17th
Today we had nothing planned whatsoever, but I tried to find some interesting things to do in Hamamatsu. Carly and I ended up checking out Hamamatsu's Castle. The Castle is not huge, but at least I can say we have a castle! We also took some Purikura (The picture stickers) with some friends I saw at the purikura shop. Carly and I, for the first time, got to play the drum machine :D This is where it plays a song and these little face symbols scroll across and mean either, hit the side, hit the middle, hit hardly with both or whatever. It was actually a lot of fun. We still had heaps of time left and so we headed back to the station and watched some concert and wind ensemble bands playing out the front of the station. After a lot of walking and checking out the place, it was time to eat with my family at a Steak House (Asakuma). After that, Carly and I watched another movie, 'Meet Joe Black' (which was really really hard to watch) until late. My host family had planned to take us around the next day somewhere, so we had to get up at 6:30.

Sunday 18th
Well, today was a big day... and a lot of time in the car on windy roads. I felt pretty much fine on the roads (it also doesn't help the driving style of the Japanese) but Carly had to stop for a little while when the roads got really bad. My host dad also got a speeding fine on this road which ended up costing him 16,000 yen (About $213) So after that he kept his cruise control set to the right speed. We headed off, stopping every spot my host dad could, and finally came to our first destination, Tsumago.
Tsumago is a post town which is located on the old Nakasendo (lit. mid-mountain road, was one of the two main official roads from Edo (Now called Tokyo) to Kyoto). In the town it has inns for all the travellers on the long road. After eating lunch, and eating carp (coi) for the first time, we headed off again to Matsumoto (but not without stopping at lots of rest stops). At Matsumoto, we first went off to the Castle. With Carly explaining clear directions to my host dad from the satellite navigation, we ended up going around in circles because my host dad thought he was in another part of the town and didn't believe Carly (who was reading the nav) :). After taking pictures of the castle and checking out all the floors (It is an interesting castle because it has a hidden floor (no windows) to store ammunition and important things, and also has very steep and tall steps in case of enemys coming and it is also partly in a lake). I wanted to go to the Suzuki Method building (for violin) and we did, but it was closing in 15 minutes and my host dad was worrying about time for Carly's train going back and so he said something like 'Just take some pictures out the front and we will go' as he didn't understand what the building was about. We finally got in, with about 15 minutes to check out the museum in there and watch a video the man showed us. The man was suprised that we went to to the castle for so long and didn't come here sooner, but the day wasn't up to me timewise. Anyway, I will go back there another day when I actually have time. We started heading back, but this time using the freeway (which is about 4 hours quicker, but not as interesting). After travelling for a while, we got home to the station at about 8:40 and had tonkatsu for dinner and said goodbye to Carly at 9:20. We had a fun and interesting weekend, and next time I will have to go and visit Carly! Thanks for coming Carly!!