December 7, 2015

Monday - Sunny and cool, windy

A good day.  A good weekend!

I’m back from Sendai tonight.  I spent two nights on the other side of the country and really enjoyed myself.  I had a nice hotel room, convenient for the bus, train station and shopping and saw my friends, did a little shopping and ate some great food.  What’s not to like?

I arrived in Sendai around 5 pm on Saturday, so I had a little while to go shopping before meeting up with friends for dinner.  I found a lovely little bakery and earmarked it as a place to have breakfast some day.  

I spent some of Saturday evening with an ex-student from my first couple of years in Japan and another foreign lady that both of us were meeting for the first time.  We were at a grilled chicken place near the station and we had a fun time.  The food was amazing and the conversation was lively and rarely stopped.  

The Aer Building decorated for Christmas just across from my hotel.
In fact, you can just see the hotel in the left corner of the picture.

After dinner, I went back to my hotel and attempted to take a bath in the public bath.  When I got there, the attendant told me it was full and I shouldn’t go in.  I was quite disappointed, because I wasn’t sure if I could go the next night or not.  I ended up taking a bath in my room which was fine really.

On Sunday I woke up with a bit of a hangover.  Or something like that.  I’d indulged myself in a few treats that I haven’t had lately so between that and the two drinks I had a bit of nausea.  However, I had to get moving so I took a quick shower and then went for a light breakfast. 

Breakfast was okay, and I started to feel better when I had some healthy food in me.  I met up with another member from AFWJ and we went off to the ETJ Expo.

We spent most of the day there and it was great.  We talked to women about our organization, had some nice snacks, met up with a couple of other members and networked a little.  

We were given a ride back to the downtown area by a local member and then my friend and I went back to our hotel.  We thought about seeing a film, so decided to check out the nearby theatre. We discovered that Finding Vivian Maier was playing and we just had enough time to have dinner first and then see the movie.  We bought our tickets and then went off and had some very yummy Indian food at Namaskar.

I sent this picture to F to let him know what he was missing!
 I'm sooo mean :-)

The documentary was very interesting and I really enjoyed it, we both did.  I had a very hard time keeping my eyes open, but it was because I was tired, not because I was bored.  

After the film, we went for a long walk through the covered malls.  Along the way we discovered an open Kaldi Coffee Farm and were able to get a few yummy supplies for the holiday season.

Me on Jozenji-Dori during the Pagent of Starlight

Taking a selfie from the other direction!

Yummy Christmas/New Years goodies from Kaldi Coffee Farm

We walked back to the hotel and went to our  rooms, after deciding to meet for a relaxed breakfast in the morning.  I changed into my pajamas and decided to try the bath again.  This time I was successful and was able to have a nice relaxing bath in the hotel.  Yay me.

I was a bit smarter last night and didn’t eat as many bad-for-me snacks and only had one drink, so was fine this morning when I got up!

I repacked my suitcase, watched House, and then went downstairs and checked out.  I met my friend and we had a lovely breakfast in the French bakery I had seen earlier on.  After that, we went our separate ways.

I did a lot of shopping today.  I bought a lot of tea, postcards and a couple of calendars for overseas relatives.  I didn’t buy any books, but I have too many unread ones at the moment.  I also bought a couple of cds to listen to.  I went a bit over my budget, but not by an insane amount!

I caught the bus back to Tsuruoka and F was waiting for me at the bus station.  Yay!  He picked me up and we had a nice dinner at Coco’s and then bought a few groceries.  I’m going to be cooking a lot of Japanese food in the next couple of days, which really surprises me!  

No idea what I’m going to get up to tomorrow, so come on back a bit later and find out!  Until tomorrow….