Today we visited Maeda, a colleague of Dennis, his wife and son Soushi. They all live near Hioshi station in the region of Yokohama. When we were heading to the station we discovered we forgot the present we wanted to give (chocolate letter from Sinterklaas). So we were a little later than we planned. Luckily they did not mind. We met with Maeda at the station. There was a big globe in front of the station and Maeda told us it was some sort of monument for a university. The house was a short walk but the road was very steep and we had to take some stairs. The house was very nice and after the introductions they showed us that they had a nice view of mount Fuji, it was indeed very nice! Soon we began our lunch and we got to see some Japanese food we had never seen before. This kind of food is usually prepared for New Year and is called osechi ryori. Every food-item seems to have a meaning, which we of course did not know. The only thing we recognized was the lotus root that was for a good future, but for the rest we didn't know what they meant. It all tasted amazing though and was very nice. After the lunch we got a tour of the house and played with little Soushi who seems to want to destroy everything he could find and put it in his mouth. It was very funny how he found us very interesting to look at and we had a great laugh because he found Dennis kind of scary and wanted to cry when he came near him. He seems to like Michelle though... He was a very active guy and was very fun to watch and play with.

We left some time after and walked back to the station where we entered some stores. We found a second hand game store and a great store with office supplies where we found a multiple color pen were you can choose your own colors! Great for studying Japanese. Afterwards we went home and made ourselves some gyudon.