"Mama mia, here I go again..."

Hej! Hvor er du!?

That's Danish for "Hello! How are you?"

I just figured it was about time Dana learned a phrase in Danish, haha!

I don't have any Danish friends and I've never been to Denmark, (even though Dana actually means "from Denmark") but on Sunday I hung out with some new friends from Sweden! Sweden and Denmark are neighbors and "hej" --pronounced just like "hey!" so it's super easy to remember -- is "hello" in Swedish as well.

Aaaanyway...I met Peter and Nellie through Couchsurfers, a Web site I found out about a few months ago and signed up for because it allows me to host travelers from all over the world and therefore make new friends and learn about other cultures, which of course are two of my favorite things. (And whenever I'm traveling, I can use the site to stay somewhere for free!)

So around noon on Sunday, Takenori, Harriet and I picked up my new Swedish friends at Ninohe station and we hung out at the Ninohe festival.

Peter and Nellie are on the left, P.J. is behind me and Harriet is beside me. (Takenori took the picture.) The Swedes haven't been in Japan long enough yet to start doing the peace sign, haha.

After we dropped off their stuff at Jarlath's place, the first thing we did was go on a hunt for food. Festival food booths lined the streets, so it really wasn't hard to find.

Takenori eating takoyaki. :)

While waiting for the parade to start, I spotted this hair salon, and just had to snap a photo...

"Haer saron." Brilliant.

Love that this boy is just chilling out with a butterfly net. :) For some reason, I've seen little boys with nets on the prowl for bugs a lot recently. It always makes me smile.

Then the parade started...

Look who's coming...

Jarlath and Peter helped push this float down the street. The day before, they played the drums on the float. Too bad we missed it!

She stopped playing the flute so she could pose for my picture. :)

I had a nice time with my "couchsurfers" from Sweden. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to sing ABBA songs at karaoke (haha, that was Jarlath's idea), but we did chill out Sunday evening and play some music since Peter is an awesome guitar player. More about that next time.

In other news, only nine days to go until the kickoff of the fall festival in Kuji! Hooray! So there are lots more festival photos and stories coming soon. Stay tuned.

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For my most recent entry in "Keep Shining," click here.