August 23, 2026

 Sunday - Hot and Sunny, muggy

I woke up a bit late this morning and went downstairs. F was in the kitchen getting things ready for K’s brunch. I went back upstairs and went to bed for a bit longer. 

Around 11:15 or so, F came upstairs and asked if I wanted to go for lunch. Since we had to be back around 1pm we needed something fast so I suggested a gyudon place. F was okay with that but wanted to go to Yoshinoya which is across the city! Eye roll. I got up and dressed quickly, then we were on our way. 

While we were driving, F got a call from the installers. They said that they could come now but F told them that 1:00 would be better for us. I was surprised he said that! 

At Yoshinoya we found a table and ordered. F had a simple gyudon, I had kara-age on rice with a salad and miso soup. It was fine, I didn’t mind it. Then we headed back to the house with a quick stop at a drugstore to get some drinks for the installers.

Back at the house I gave F a hand with doing some of the last minute cleaning in the kitchen and living room. I was wearing black pants and ended up knocking down some cobwebs. That wasn’t brilliant! We had to move stuff out of the way as they were going to install a new plug for the air conditioner and do something with the fuse box in the kitchen, so the way had to be clear. 

When they arrived I told F that I was going to go upstairs. It was so hot downstairs and I couldn’t help with anything anyway, so I would rather stay cool and out of the way!

They were done before 3 I think and I went downstairs and put a few things away. F and I sat in the living room for a few minutes and enjoyed the cool air. 

I went back upstairs, F came a bit later and went to bed. He had a nap. I spent time on my computer and then decided that I too would take a nap. F got up around 6 I think to make something for his mother’s dinner, I got up a few minutes later I think. 

When F came back I asked about our dinner and I said a little sheepishly that I didn’t want to have any rice. I would be okay with going to either a family restaurant or a place that had udon. Since I wanted to go to a certain store afterwards, we decided to go to Nagomi. 

We were able to get a table and I had the meat soup with cold udon, F had the tempura-don and udon set. We both were happy with our meals. It was a bit sad for him as he’d left his phone at the house. 

After dinner we drove to PAL. I went to Daiso to look for something I’d seen last week. I wanted to get an oil sprayer. They had a thing that held oil and you could either pour it out, or spray it. It was perfect for my air fryer. Unfortunately I didn’t buy it the first time I saw it and this week it was gone. I guess it didn’t sell as their goods in that section were all moved and changed. F even asked a store clerk but they didn’t have them now. Boo!

I bought a few things and then went out to the car. F drove us over to the grocery store and I went in. I bought a lot of stuff that we needed for meals for the next two days. Hopefully things I bought will be good enough. 

We had to gas up the car after the shopping. F had let it get down to 13km left to drive. He’s supremely silly in my opinion, but I didn’t nag him this time.

We came back to the house and I put away the groceries and then came upstairs again. I decided to watch a movie that I had recorded recently and watched A Big Bold Beautiful Journey with Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. I liked it, but I’m not sure everyone would. It was a little slow but a beautiful looking film. 

I turned off the TV when the movie was over and F went to bed around that time. He’s really tired tonight and does seem to be sleeping now. 

Tomorrow I hope to work on my column and maybe get it close to finishing. It is due September 1st and I’d like it to be done by the coming weekend. 

Come back later if you like and hear about my day. Will I manage not to knock the power out when I cook dinner tomorrow night? Fingers crossed!

Until tomorrow….

August 22, 2026

 Saturday - Hot and Sunny

Today was an interesting day! I woke up at 7:30 this morning. F was still asleep. I got up and went downstairs, then came back to the room. I made a bit of noise coming back upstairs to try to wake F up. I wasn’t sure when he had to get up to get his mother ready to go to her day service. 

He did wake up and he got up to go downstairs. I went back to bed and slept for another couple of hours. When I got up later, I took a shower and then got dressed. F had an idea for our lunch and it was fine. 

We drove over to Tai, the ramen/curry place and both of us had curry. It was a tad expensive but I liked my curry. Over lunch we discussed what we’d like to do and decided that we’d try and go off to get some nashi again. We started off towards Sakata and the area that the fruit is grown and sold. We got there and….it was all sold out! We were just a few minutes too late! Oh dear.

I asked F if we could go into Sakata and go to the Foreign import store. Dear that he is, he said yet. We arrived there and parked. We went in and I looked for my favourite tea. I found it and….it was on sale! Yay! I had planned to buy two boxes, but I got three instead. We also picked up some more gnocchi sauce (they have a cheese one that is nice) and F tried to buy something but I wouldn’t let him. He’d bought it a couple of years ago and never used it! He can try the old bottle to see if he’ll use it.

We also bought a few things at the Muji store. I mostly bought nuts, F got some things for adding to rice to make it taste good, and we also got some cakes for later on tonight. 

We drove back to Tsuruoka and did a quick stop at a bank machine for F, then headed to the house. We worked on the living room for a few minutes. I washed one of the glasses for later and one of my litre jugs for tea. Then, I went upstairs to relax and cool down for a bit. 

K’s Care Manager was supposed to come at 5pm but for some reason she came at 4:45. Not sure why!  I served us some iced Assam Tea and some of the cake we bought earlier. We chatted for a few minutes but there haven’t been any changes so she left after planning next month’s visit. Honestly, it annoys me a lot! She keeps trying to come on Sunday. We already have to waste our Saturdays being back in time for K to get back from Day Service, why not come on Saturdays? But she can’t. Or won’t. She can come on a weekday but F is at work and I’m not having a meeting with her by myself. She’s nice enough, but we don’t speak the same language. 

Anyway, I cleaned up most of the glasses and then went upstairs again to have some tea and cool down more. F came up a bit later and took a nap. He was out!

I actually woke F up after 7 pm and suggested that he make his mother some dinner. She usually eats before or around 7 pm so it was already late for her. He went downstairs and made her something.

He came upstairs to the room after 8 pm and I asked about our dinner. F wanted ideas of where to go, so I suggested China House. F liked that idea. We drove off and for some reason F picked the long way to get there. When we arrived at the restaurant, the guy was bringing in the flags and they’d already turned the sign over. However, F said the guy signalled to him that it was okay for us to go in. Yay.

We went in and ordered. I had the mapo-dofu set meal again and F had chahan or fried rice. Mine was excellent.

When we finished our meal we paid and left. We didn’t dawdle as they had done us a favour by letting us in. We drove to MaxValu and did a bit of shopping. I got some bready stuff and F picked up some fish for K’s breakfast. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to go out tomorrow as the new Air Conditioner will be installed tomorrow. They’ve given us a window between 1pm and 3pm so we don’t know if we’ll have time for lunch before or not!

We came back to the house and put way the groceries then came upstairs. I watched some YouTube and then FBI at 11pm. After it finished I’ve been working on my end of day things again. 

I’ll be back tomorrow night if all goes well, and it should! Come back later if you like and hear all about my Sunday. Until tomorrow….

August 21, 2026

Friday - Hot and sunny, muggy

I woke up when F was getting ready for work this morning but I closed my eyes and pretended I was still asleep…and then I was! I woke up for real when my alarm went off. I went downstairs and then came back up to the room. 

I sorted my laundry and then went back to bed for a couple of hours. I watched some videos and fell asleep on them too. I did drag myself out of bed quite a bit before I headed downstairs again. I took my laundry and started the first load. After that I went into the kitchen and grabbed my yogurt for breakfast too. I brought it upstairs to eat.

I did two loads of laundry today and they are hanging up in our room to benefit from the air conditioner! I watched a few videos on Facebook and then read a little more of my book. I’m enjoying it. 

I went downstairs before 3pm to make my lunch. I did my usual open face sandwiches and salad. I brought everything upstairs and decided to watch Matlock today. It was fine. I’m still not a fan of the crossing and double-crossing that seems to be going on. 

F called me after 5:30 to say he was on his way. I got dressed to go downstairs and then closer to 6pm I went downstairs.

Today I did the dishes and to be honest, I didn’t boost the water temperature quite as high as I usually do. It helped me a bit, but it was still so hot in the kitchen. I’m hoping that this will be the last time for me to be so hot in the kitchen.

Tonight I made gnocchi with a bought cheese sauce. I fried half of the gnocchi after I cooked it for a different taste. Last time F liked it better, today he didn’t notice much difference! So, we had gnocchi with cheese sauce, salad and bacon that I had sautéd. It was all very nice I thought.

Today F and I made dessert. We had kaki-gori at the house and it was very nice! I had a Blue Hawaii one, F had lemon and K also had Blue Hawaii. 

I had to do the dishes after dinner. I was soaked by the time I finished. I came upstairs and changed almost all of my clothes. I watched a few videos and then I decided that I’d watch a movie for my column.

Tonight I decided to watch Fighting with My Family. It’s another Florence Pugh film and she plays a wrestler from England who goes to the US and becomes a champion in the WWE. It was quite a good movie and as usual, Pugh is great in it!

F came upstairs at the very end of the film and basically went to bed soon afterwards. I watched a few videos and got started on my end of day stuff. I’ll be able to get myself to bed soon.

This is going to be an interesting weekend. Tomorrow K is off to her Day Service place and then at 5 pm we are supposed to have a meeting with her Care Manager. Then, on Sunday, we are supposed to be getting a new air conditioner for the living room. Of course we have no idea what time they will come for our installation so it is hard to make plans for the day. I hope it is sometime when F is around!

Anyway, that’s about it for me. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

August 20, 2026

Thursday - Muggy, hot and then rainy at night

I woke up this morning a few minutes before my alarm went off. I got up a little later and then went downstairs. I came back to the room and then did my usual snooze and video watch thing. I did get up a little earlier than usual, but I didn’t go downstairs for a while. 

When I was downstairs I got my yogurt out of the fridge, grabbed the scales and made for the stairs. However, K was suddenly in the kitchen. She garbled something at me that I didn’t understand. She was pointing at the carton of yogurt. Later I assumed that she thought I was being greedy and taking a whole carton of yogurt with me. The carton holds 400 grammes of yogurt and I had 100 grammes every day this week so far. Today, was the last bit of the yogurt and I eat it and the cereal out of the carton. I mean, why not?

I went upstairs to eat and watch some YouTube. I did actually find time to go back and fill in some info in the part of the column I wrote yesterday. I corrected spellings and put in dates and such. 

I went downstairs later, around 2:45 to get my lunch. When I got back to the room I decided to watch the last episode of Evil. However, later on I discovered that there is one more season of Evil, but my channel doesn’t have it. Oh dear. I hope the channel will stream it sometime. 

After lunch I watched the news and then changed my clothes fairly early. F called but I wasn’t able to talk to him for some reason. I might have hit the hang up button by mistake?  

I went downstairs a little early today and started on dinner. As usual it was hot in the kitchen so I started sweating and basically didn’t stop. Today I made chicken drumsticks, cucumber pickle, steamed okra, and served them with a salad and some macaroni salad. It turned out well. I forgot to give K and F their mini tomatoes until after the meal. Dinner was good!

I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. I was soaking wet when I finished. I let F know that I was going to go upstairs to change and then he came upstairs too. I waited until he went back downstairs and then I changed everything!

We drove to the Mina shopping area and went in. Yes, F came in again. I shopped for practical things, more or less, F got a bunch of snack things. I did pick up a cylinder of salt & vinegar Chip Star chips. I haven’t tried them yet, I hope they are good. Japan does try to do sour flavours, but usually their vinegar isn’t strong enough. 

We came back to the house and put away the groceries. We came upstairs after that. I opened the parcel I received today and even started one of the books. Another foreign wife in my group was rehoming some books and I asked for a few. One was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which is a book I loved as a kid. I’ve already read a couple of chapters tonight. 

I watched tonight’s episode of The Rookie. It felt like one that was the end of a season, but it is on next week so I was wrong. 

F went to bed and appears to be sleeping. I’m glad as lately he hasn’t slept well. He didn’t wake up when I came to bed last night, which I’m happy about. He often wakes up and then can’t get back to sleep. 

Anyway, that’s about it for my day. Tomorrow I have an exciting day of laundry and cooking planned. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

August 19, 2026

Wednesday - Hot and Sunny

I had a quiet, usual morning today. I woke up, went downstairs and then went back to bed for a snooze. I got messages from F and I noticed that my videos were repeating so I woke up a little earlier than usual and got up. I went downstairs after I got dressed. K had gone out with her daughter. 

I came back to the room and tried to go online. I discovered that there was no wifi. Sigh. I went back downstairs to check that it wasn’t just a location problem. It wasn’t. I sent F a text to let him know and to check if he had paid the last bill. He hadn’t. 

He said he’d try and take some time off work and call the company. I decided that since I couldn’t watch YouTube and I couldn’t watch anything on streaming, I’d work on my column. I did get quite a bit written, but I wasn’t able to fact/detail check as I wrote so I’ll have to spend some time doing that. However, I’m quite happy with myself that I did do some writing. 

F showed up around 1:30 I think. He called the internet company, found out how to pay, and then we had to go and actually pay the bill. We went to a conbini and he took care of that. Then, we went for a late for him/early for me lunch. 

We went over to Gusto and checked out their lunch menu. We both ended up having the same thing. We had their 3 mushroom pasta with salad, drink bar and the daily soup. It was nice. We were in the restaurant for a while, enjoying the air conditioner and the drink bar. 

When we left the restaurant we were on our way home, but F wanted to check out a bakery we like. We went, but there was a customer ahead of us. It’s so small that we have to wait until the other people leave! We only got one thing, a spinach and cheese scone type thing. (It was great, we ate it around 11pm.) Then, I suggested going to a drug store as I needed to pick up something. We got a few things there, including ice cream for dessert tonight.

We got back to the house, F reset the wifi and in a few minutes it worked! Yay. I got about an hour to relax before I had to go downstairs to cook dinner. I chilled and watched the news that I recorded earlier. 

I headed downstairs to the kitchen. As we had dessert and it was so hot, I decided that I was going to take things easy in the kitchen tonight. We had some macaroni salad, salad, cucumber pickle, mini-tomatoes, and sautéd pork. We also had the ice cream from earlier too. It was very nice. 

After dinner I did the dishes and put things away. I was soaked when I finished. It was so hot in the kitchen tonight and honestly, I was miserable. When I finished the dishes I had to do up the garbage to get it ready to go out tomorrow morning. Happily, F gave me a hand with the stuff in K’s room and some of her garbage in the living room. 

Afterwards I headed upstairs, turned on the AC and just relaxed. Around 10:30 I took a shower and then came upstairs to watch Grey’s Anatomy. It was its usual wacky self, some doctor stuff, some patient stuff. 

And that’s about it for my day. It was a strange day but a good one for the most part. Tomorrow I think F should be back to work, hopefully for the whole day and I’ll be working on my column and doing dinner as well. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my Thursday. Until tomorrow….

August 18, 2026

Tuesday - Hot and Sunny

I woke up this morning after my alarm went off. I got up and went downstairs, then came back to the room. I sorted out my laundry and put the basket aside for later. Then, snoozeville!

I got up later and noticed that F had sent me a message, asking if I’d like to go to the electric shop later on. I said sure. We had a long chat about it and he decided that he’d try and take time off later on. 

I started my laundry, and ended up doing two loads today. I hung them up in my room so they could get dry from the air conditioner. I had my breakfast and later on my lunch too. Because F phoned me and said that he was on his way back to the house, I had a hurried lunch and didn’t get to watch anything today. 

When he came back, he was rather grouchy. I’m not sure why. I was finished lunch and was dressed for going out. He said that he thought I would have cooked dinner for his mother. It was barely 4 pm. We had talked about going out after his usual work day and then I would have cooked for his mother.  However he didn’t come up with any plan for our dinner. If he’d said that he’d take me out for dinner (which is what I thought he’d meant originally) I might have cooked for her, but at 3:00 the kitchen was really hot and it was way too early for dinner.

Anyway, we got in the car and drove to the electric shop. F looked at air conditioners and then decided to buy one. He talked to the guy and they set up a delivery and installation for Sunday. Yay.

I bought some ink for my printer as I’ve not been able to get any this year. It’s really needing it. 

We left the shop and came back to the house. I had to immediately go upstairs and change so that I could cook dinner. 

Tonight I did coro-coro steak, steamed broccoli, potato salad, salad and rice. It was quite nice really. 

I did the dishes afterwards and then went upstairs to change. We went to the grocery store and bought groceries of course! We got a few things for dinners and breakfasts…it was expensive as we had to buy rice and F wanted his adult beverages.

At the house I put away the groceries and then came upstairs to relax. At 11pm I watched Law & Order and then some music videos before turning off the TV. 

And that’s about it. I’ve spent the last couple of hours watching YouTube and working on my usual end of day things. I didn’t get any of my column written today, hopefully I can make a bit of a start tomorrow. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….