July 20, 2015

Monday - Drizzles and then sunshine

An okay day.

We drove to Shinjo yesterday after lunch.  F wanted to check out the roads as he will have to take someone from his office there soon.  It looks bad if the driver doesn’t know the way!

We made good time to Shinjo and even spent a few minutes trying to do some sightseeing and eating at a festival in a park.  However, the temple I could see from the road was blocked off and the route to get there was long.  We did a little bit of shopping at a mall.  There was a farmers shop, which to me would be a hardware store and when we went through it, had some interesting seeds for sale in a rack.  They were for unusual plants.  One of them was actually for rhubarb!  F bought a packet of rhubarb and has promised to plant it at his house.  The seed packet said that it would take 3 years to grow though.  Oh no!

We spent a bit of time in Mosburgers.  They had air-conditioning and free wifi, so can you blame us?  After a bit, F asked about dinner.  The place he wanted to take me most was closed due to the holiday, so he found another place with Japanese food.  Not my favourite, but I was trying to be nice.  The picture he showed me looked like a counter so I asked him if it was really a restaurant.  He said it was.  We drove there…we get near and he starts saying how we’re supposed to park in the pachinko parlour’s parking lot.  Huh?  Okay, maybe the restaurant doesn’t have much parking.  Turns out the “restaurant” is a buy-a-ticket at the door kiosk thing behind the pachinko parlour.  I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.  The door opens and this wave of stale cigarette smoke hits me.  I nearly gag.  He marches in, starts demanding that I tell him what I wanted (a different restaurant) so I ordered almost the same thing he had, ginger pork as it seemed to be the only non deep fried thing on the menu.  

The food is only okay, some of the meat was tough.  I gave him my rice since his stomach was acting up again. He gave me some of his meat.  Gee thanks.  He was upset that I wasn’t more appreciative of his choice of restaurants.  Umm…there was Cocos, Gusto, Marumatsu, McDonalds, or Mosburgers and ANY of them would have been better than that yucky place.  

Then it was off to find a place to stay.  He’d looked that up on line too.  We ended up at a little hotel. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and reasonably comfortable so I’m not going to complain about it.  

Today, we checked out around 10:30 to go to the next exciting restaurant.  Today we went to Rooms.  Now, it was a bit odd, but to be fair, the food was good.  Rooms was a karaoke parlour with a chef.  We got a room for two hours and then ordered some food.  They were having an Okinawa Fair.  I’m not a big fan of goya, but honestly I quite liked the food that I ate.  We had taco rice, goya chanpuru, some scrambled egg/ham/tofu thing, tofu and F had a couple of dishes I skipped, a tempura onion thing and squid ink yakisoba.  We sang a few songs too.  It was kind of fun, but turned out to be quite expensive.  Again, my restaurants would have been cheaper!

We did a little more shopping, but not much, then drove back to the place F has to take people to.  From there, we left Shinjo.  We promptly came back about 30 minutes later as he wanted to check it again.  Argh!

Finally we left and drove off.  We stopped along the Mogami River so that I could buy some postcards and then got back in the car. We also made a brief stop in ex-Fujishima town so that F could get his mother some snack souvenirs.  

We got home around 4 pm.  I immediately checked email and such, then F went to his house to check on his mother.  

When he came back, we relaxed for a bit and then around 7 I suggested going for dinner.  F said he didn’t feel hungry, so I could choose.  I said either Cocos or Gusto because I just wanted grilled chicken.  He picked Gusto so off we went.  We got a table quickly and ordered.  F was able to have some salt lemon noodles that he didn’t mind too much and I had my chicken.  There was rather too much cartilage in mine, but apart from that was fine.  

We got a few groceries for dinner tomorrow night.  I’m planning to make a big salad with a poached chicken breast on it. F said it sounded good to him, although I did offer to do shrimp for him.  

When we came home, I watched Gossip Girl and did a bit of crochet from the couch, then came back to my computer.  I also finished my book tonight, Odd Apocalypse. It wasn’t great, but is better than the one that came after it.  

So, all in all, an okay weekend was had.  I really never need to go back to Shinjo again, but I promise that I am never, ever going to let F take me to another restaurant behind a pachinko parlour!  Come back later and see how my next day is.  Until tomorrow….