March 22, 2010

Monday - Light rain, then sunny.

A good weekend. Saturday was a good day. I had to go to the school and classes were fine. After work, F picked me up and we had dinner at Hana and then hit the road. We drove to Yamagata city that night.

We stayed in a new for us hotel, the Toyoko-Inn. I was quite impressed. We had a double room and the price was very reasonable. We had a double bed, very nice new room with all the usual amenities. We even got a free breakfast the next morning. It wasn't really my style of food, but on the other hand it wasn't too bad either. The room was on the smallish size, it is a business hotel after all, but good value.

On Sunday, we got up, had our free breakfast and then visited Toys "R" Us for a quick run through. Sadly that's all we did. I couldn't find anything that I wanted for my school. We hit the road again and drove to Sendai.

We ended up in The Mall in Sendai. We decided to see if we could get tickets to the evening's showing of Avatar in 3D. We could! Woot. We bought tickets, and then had lunch at Capricchosa. After that, we drove downtown and checked into our hotel.

After a bit of down time, we walked to the Apple store, where F picked up the piece of equipment that he needed to connect to the internet with his new computer. Hurray. There's talk that I may be able to use it too. Woot! We hit the HMV nearby. I wanted to see if there were any new DVDS. There weren't really any new ones but while we were browsing, F asked me a question about movies. He wanted to know who was the friend of Clint Eastwood's that had died recently because he wanted to see a film of his. It wasn't until F mentioned salad dressing that I realized he meant Paul Newman! We searched out a computer and got the listing of movies available. We ended up buying The Sting, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Because HMV had a special deal on, we also got Casino Royale, which has nothing to do with Paul Newman, but made me happy!

We walked back to the station, where we had a lovely dinner at our favourite gyutan restaurant, then did a quick shop at the import food store. After that, we went to the hotel, dumped our stuff and took our car out. We drove back to The Mall and went to see Avatar again. I liked it much more this time. The effects were great, but this time, the Na'vi dialogue wasn't subtitled in English, so it was a good thing I had seen it before. I enjoyed it.

After the movie, we drove back to the hotel and had a quiet evening in. We each took a bath and did a bit of reading.

In the morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel. It was really crowded in the restaurant. I'm not a big fan of the hotel's breakfast and today was an example of why. The buffet gets too crowded and it's nearly impossible to get to the food. The hot western style food is in the same corner as the drinks and there's a real traffic jam. They were nearly out of bread when we got there, and plates and cups were in short supply.

I washed my hair after breakfast by leaning over our bath. I also got a bit of a shock when the bath tilted when I used the edge to help me get up. Yikes.

F decided that he wanted to go to the BIG mall then, so that's what we did. He used his GPS system to help get there. The only problem is that he doesn't really listen to it. It tells him to turn in 300 meters, he'll turn in 200. We end up in the middle of nowhere and I get frustrated with him because it takes forever to get anywhere! We finally did get to the mall, did find parking and went in. We decided to see Sherlock Holmes. For me it was a repeat, but I enjoyed it the first time. Then, passing by a poster I noticed that the Sandra Bullock film was playing. Darn. We could have gone to see it.

After the movie, we finally went to Starbucks for my Assam Black Tea Latte, then found a place and had dinner. We had shabu-shabu and it was quite nice. Then, we hit the road. I slept most of the way back to Yamagata Prefecture, but I managed to stay awake after that.

Back in Tsuruoka, I set up my school's heater, then we did a bit of grocery shopping. Then, home. Whew! What a weekend. It was good, but not expected. I had really just wanted to relax, but on the other hand, we did have a good time.

Night night!