April 20, 2014

Sunday - Windy, sunny, cool

A good day.

I woke up this morning, barely, and got up and got dressed.  A little while later, F and I went out to have breakfast.  We went to Grado and had a lovely lunch.  We both had pork roast with a yuzo kosho sauce.  

After lunch, we drove out to Kushibiki to a park/old castle grounds that I had never even heard of before.  It was lovely.  We saw some gorgeous cherry trees in bloom, and walked around.  We visited a graveyard area and it was so peaceful and beautiful that I wouldn't have minded staying longer.  On our way back to the car we passed some small statues that were very interesting and very different to those I usually see in Japan.  Finally we saw a group of Jizo that were wearing lovely new hats and bibs.  They were cheerful rather than sad like they are in most shrines that I've seen. 

Me under the torii

Jizo

Kushibiki drain cover

From Kushibiki we drove on and made a stop at Matsugaoka.  We didn't plan it this way, but there was a craft sale going on there.  We parked and had a look around.  There were many beautiful things that I would have loved to buy, but I have neither the money nor the space for the items.  I know that F would have bought me something if I had asked, but I really didn't need anything.  Sadly we arrived around 3:30 and the sale ended at 4:00 so we didn't have a lot of time to poke around the stalls.  

From Matsugaoka we came home for a bit.  F needed to re-bandage his foot and then we rested for a while.  

We went out for dinner to the Evil Place, the yakiniku buffet.  It wasn't my suggestion, but since F rarely makes requests I don't mind, I went along with it.  It wasn't too bad.  I had this really cool thing while I was there.  It was cooked spaghetti in tin foil.  They'd put onions on the bottom of it, then the spaghetti.  From there, I could and did add cheese and a spaghetti sauce.  I took the foil wrapped package, twisted the top and put it on the grill.  A few minutes later it was steaming and ready to eat.  It was so simple…I think it would make a great camping dinner really! You could bring pre-cooked  pasta and add the sauce at the campsite.  Grill over the fire and there's dinner.  Yum.  

After dinner we made a quick run through the grocery store for tomorrow's dinner.  It'll be a meatless one…we'll have shrimp but no meat since we had too much today!

At home we relaxed.  I made tea and emptied a few more things out of the fridge.  I've been trying to throw out a lot of the expired junk that has accumulated in my fridge over the years.  It is starting to made a difference space-wise. Yay.  

And that's it for me.  It was a good day and totally unexpected!  I hoped it would be this good, but didn't think it could be. Nice to know I'm wrong.  Got to go. Night!