January 9, 2016

Saturday - Cold but mostly clear

A good day.  C’est incroyable!

I got up at 8:30 this morning and a couple of minutes later made the executive decision to go back to bed.  I slept for an hour.  My alarm was ringing and I heard F come back to the apartment. He had been to the doctor’s office and had a shot and some medicine and was starting to feel better.   Yay.

I made some tea and we relaxed for a bit and ate senbei.  Then, we discussed our lunch plans.  I said we could eat at home, but in the end we decided to go to F’s Farmer’s Restaurant Aan, that he likes so much.  We went and had a nice meal.  

After that, F said he’d like to go to the Oyama Bird Park.  I said that would be great, but I needed a ladies room first!  We took care of that, and drove out to Oyama.  It was a little wet on the ground at first, but we made it over to the walkways by the lake.  The birds were making a huge racket, but it was cool to be there.  I told F that I wanted to try climbing up the hill but didn’t expect him to go because his ankle was bothering him.  Of course, he decided to come too.  We took it fairly easy and climbed up the steps to the top of the hill.  There wasn’t much view up there, but there was a little shrine.  We took a few pictures to celebrate making it up there.

F at the shrine.  

Selfie alert!

We also drove around to another side of the nature park and did some walking around there.  The views were great, and there was a sign saying that it was one of the best views in Japan!

What am I looking at? The Oyama area.

Very nice view

We came back to Tsuruoka for a bit after this and had a drink at McDonalds.  It was nice to drink and chat for a bit.  I told F that I had been thinking about having okonomiyaki and asked if we could have some this weekend, any day.  He suggested today and at Mikawa.  That way, we’d have dinner before seeing the movie at the mall.  That was fine with me.

We drove over to Mikawa and went to Dohtonbori for Okonomiyaki.  We had a couple of kinds plus drink bar.  It was fun making our own food, when most of the work is already done for us!

Seoul Okonomiyaki

My cooking skilz!

I decorated it too!

After dinner, we did a bit of window shopping (and wine glass shopping!) at Nitori and then went to Don Quixote for a bit of fun shopping. F got a few things and we got a little bit of food.  We each got a yogurt that billed itself as “Canadian Maple Yogurt”.  It was almost expired so it was cheap.  It was just the maple syrup that was Canadian, the yogurt was Japanese.  

We drove over to the mall, bought our tickets and popcorn and went to see Bridge of Spies.  We both really liked it.  I really loved the fact that it was a “grown-up” movie. You had to pay attention to what was going on, but it was smart and funny too.   Tom Hanks was great as always, but Mark Rylance was quite amazing as the Russian spy.  

When the movie was over, we drove home.  We were a bit peckish, so we finished up the guacamole and ate a bunch of the chips with it.  We’ve watched a bit of TV and are getting a bit tired.  

I’m not sure what we’ll get up to tomorrow, but I hope it is nearly as good as today!  Come back later and find out.  Until tomorrow….