March 28, 2026

Saturday - Warm and sunny

I woke up early again this morning and had to go downstairs. When I got up, F was awake. He went downstairs and then came back to bed for a few minutes. We had a snuggle and he got up and I went back to sleep again!

I snoozed until 10 something, then got up and took a shower. When I finished we lazed for a few minutes and then headed out. F’s been after me for weeks to go back to Sharin at Atsumi Onsen for lunch. I didn’t like it the first time, but the weather today was good and even if I didn’t like the food, I’d enjoy the drive to get there. 

We drove out to Atsumi Onsen and parked, we went in and it was a little crowded, but we got a table. Sadly, as we were a bit late, a lot of dishes were already finished. I had the same thing I had last time, the yakiniku set meal…basically sautéd pork. F had the motsu meal, he didn’t like his, mine was decent and huge! After our meals we paid and then went for ice cream! I had a cone of blueberry mixed with Shonai milk. We took our cones and went to the other side of the rest stop and sat on some chairs and looked at the sea and the coast. It was lovely.

When we finished, I had to go inside and wash my hands. After that, we went upstairs and looked out from their balcony. I can’t remember even being up there before, but it was nice. 

We headed back to Tsuruoka proper a few minutes later but along the shore. However, we got to one point and we couldn’t go any further…a tunnel was closed, so we had to do a retreat and go around. On the way back to Tsuruoka I dozed a bit, but didn’t fall completely asleep. F said that he needed to pick up something for K’s dinner so we went to a grocery store.

F got a few things at the store and then we came back to the house. At the house, I went upstairs and relaxed in front of my computer for a while. F made his mother some dinner and then around 7 pm we went out for our dinner. I’d suggested a few places and F picked Misono. 

Misono was a little busy but we got a table. I ordered the kara-age chicken plate, I didn’t want or order the rice and soup.  It was enough for me. F had ramen but he didn’t like it as usual!

We came back to the house after dinner. I decided that I’d watch a bit of TV so I watched an episode of MobLand and then one of Evil. Both were good, Evil was a bit scary! I went downstairs after the last one and made a bowl of popcorn. I brought it back upstairs and watched the last episode of The Hunting Party season one. It ended on a bit of a cliffhanger so I hope we get the second season sometime soon.  

Anyway, that’s about it for me. It was a pretty good day for a change. It was also nice to be out in the sun. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow…. 

March 27, 2026

Friday - Sunny and warmish

I woke up before my alarm this morning. F had already left, but it was still quite early. I went downstairs and then came back to the room and went back to bed. I watched videos and then snoozed for a bit before getting up earlier than usual. 

I went downstairs again and then came back to our room and sorted my laundry. I took a couple of loads downstairs and did them. I hung them up in my room afterwards. I grabbed breakfast and enjoyed that too. 

In the afternoon I wrote up a postcard for Postcrossing and then after lunch and the news I did a couple more. I’m sending to China, Australia and Germany. I think the German one will arrive first, they usually do. 

I went downstairs to make dinner around 6pm tonight. F hadn’t called yet, he’d said that he’d be late tonight. I washed my dishes and got stuck in on dinner. Tonight I did pasta with a seaweed sauce, sliced chicken, salad and for a nice change, garlic toast. I made the toast and it was very nice. 

After dinner, I did the dishes and then to celebrate my 29 year anniversary of coming to Japan I asked F if he’d like to share a root beer with me. He did and it was nice. We sat in the living room together and had our nice beverage. 

I went upstairs and tried to scan my postcards. However, I had a bit of trouble and had to download some software. I got everything sorted I think and it does seem to work. Yay.

I scanned my cards and then watched two episodes of Elsbeth. I managed to watch the last three episodes today, so I’m glad about that. The last one was rather funny as Elsbeth was in jail with a bunch of people that she’d put away! 

F went to bed rather late tonight, but tomorrow is Saturday. He does have to get up and feed his mother before her Day Service so I’m glad he finally went. 

I have no idea what we’ll get up to tomorrow. I might go and see a movie in the evening by myself, or not. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

March 26, 2026

Thursday - Cloudy and rainy

I woke F up when I went to bed last night and then this morning I woke up before 7 and went downstairs. He said I didn’t wake him, that he wasn’t asleep all night, but I’m not so sure. I usually don’t wake up that early, but maybe K was up and noisy?

I went back to bed and fell asleep again. I got up a couple of hours later and stayed up. I grabbed my breakfast and watched an episode of Elsbeth. When it was over I went downstairs to the kitchen and started making my stew.

I did all the prep work today and it took a while! I peeled and chopped up potatoes and then parboiled them. I did the carrots too. After that, I sliced an onion and a half and left them for a bit. I sautéd the ground pork and on the second batch I did, I added the onions and the mushrooms. When it was all softened/cooked I added it all to the slow cooker and added some consommé and seasonings, turned it to high and left it alone.

I washed the dishes and went upstairs for a few minutes to rest. Then, I came back downstairs and made my lunch. I brought it back up to the room and watched another episode of Elsbeth while I ate. I followed that with the US news as well.

F called after 5 and I went downstairs later and started getting dinner ready. The stew was basically finished, but I added some peas to it. 

Dinner was nice, we had rice and stew and salad. I had seconds, F and K didn’t. Sigh. It’s too bad for them!

I did the dishes afterwards and listened to my movie podcasts. When I finished, I let F know that I was done and would be ready to go shopping soon after.

F and I drove to the grocery store and then we went shopping. I needed a few things for lunch and dinner tomorrow. F picked up a few things too. We checked out and went back to the car. F wanted to pop into the drugstore too, so on the way back we did that too. F got some drinks and we got some snacks as well.

We came back to the house and came upstairs. I decided I had enough time to watch another episode of Elsbeth so I did that! I’m trying to get it all done before the end of the month when it leaves my streaming service. 

F went to bed after I started watching The Rainmaker. It was a good episode really. I think I might like this show, we’ll see how it goes.

And that’s about it for my day. It was an okay day.

Tomorrow I’ll probably do some laundry and relax a bit. I had hoped to go to a movie but I think I’ll wait until next week. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

March 25, 2026

Wednesday - Sunny and warm

I woke up this morning around 8:30 when my alarm went off. F was still in bed at the time. He got up after I did. Only thing is that I went back to bed for a bit, he got up to cook for his mother.

I got up about an hour later, dressed and then had my breakfast. I was eating it upstairs when F came up to say that the guy was here for the internet.  Okay then.  I went downstairs and basically, F was alone with a box in the living room. They may have done the install, but they don’t help with the set up.

F had a bit of trouble with plugging in wires and such, and couldn’t get the box open at first, but finally got it all set up. He got quite angry at me a couple of times as he doesn’t like it when I speak English to him when he’s reading in Japanese. I tried to ignore it but he was not very nice for a while.

When he got it set up, it was time to connect our phones and my computer. They got done fairly easily….whew! I went upstairs and did my Fire Stick and my printer. That was a bit more complicated as my printer has been acting up lately. I think I did it. 

It was around 1:30 at this time so I asked F what he wanted to do. He suggested lunch at a gyudon shop. I wasn’t too happy about that, but agreed to go. F picked Tsukiya, so off we went. He made a quick stop at a bank first and then we went to the restaurant. F had a gyudon with raw egg and soup, I had the chicken curry. It was curry, Japanese style with a grilled chicken leg on it. I was really pleased! It was delicious. The curry was decent and the chicken was so soft that I could cut it with my spoon!

After lunch I suggested a coffee at Doutor so we drove over to the mall and went in. We had coffee and it was nice…mine was an iced decaf latte. F didn’t talk too much as usual. When we finished our drinks we picked up a few things at the grocery store and then came back to the house. 

I went upstairs and F stayed downstairs. I watched the news and then another episode of Matlock.

Finally, dinner was ready a bit after 7 pm. I went downstairs and this time F didn’t need any help getting things together. There was funny thing happen though. I asked F to change the channel on the TV to the Japan News. He couldn’t. He did get the TV on, but couldn’t do anything else with the TV remote. I suggested the batteries were dead so went upstairs to get new ones. They didn’t work. F tried some old batteries to see if they’d work. No. When we were just about to give up, I noticed that there was a box of masks sitting in front of the TV. F moved it and the remote worked again! Yay!

F had made us a nabe for dinner and I have to say it was pretty good! A lot of times I complain about his nabe, but tonight I didn’t complain. I liked it. What I liked best was that he did the dishes too! Yay. 

I still had to do the garbage up so I kind of worked around F and got it done. It’s a pain because K keeps “helping” with her stuff and putting it places it doesn’t belong at all. Sigh. Still, it got done. I put it in the genkan for F to take out later. 

I went upstairs and relaxed for a bit. I even watched the last episode of season two of Matlock. Whew! One more show finished before the deadline. I have a couple more that I’d really like to watch but I’m not sure if I’ll have time. 

I went downstairs around 10:30 and took a shower. That was about the time F came upstairs! I had a nice shower and then I came back to the room. I watched tonight’s episode of The Irrational which was about robberies of antiquities. It was a pretty good one really. There’s one more episode of this show I believe before it is finished. 

Since midnight I’ve been watching some YouTube and getting ready for going to bed. 

Tomorrow I had hoped to go to a movie, but scheduled stew-making for myself so I can’t do both. There’s either Friday or next week, so you never know. 

I’m glad that we have internet and that it went reasonably smoothly but I do wish that F wouldn’t get so upset at things like this. 

So, that’s it. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….

March 24, 2026

Tuesday - Sunny and cool

I woke up before my alarm this morning. I made my usual trip downstairs and then went back to sleep for a bit! I woke up when F texted me to see if I was okay with the internet set up people coming tomorrow morning instead of the afternoon. I texted him back and said no because he wouldn’t be there! So, he’s going to take the whole day off work instead of just the afternoon. I’m glad, he can deal with the workers instead of me. I usually get stuck with it and his mother and it isn’t pretty I tell you!

I got up and dressed, grabbed my breakfast and came upstairs to eat. I checked my schedule for TV and noticed that a new show starts on Thursday so I set up the DVR. Then I realized that it had started last week and I hadn’t seen the first episode. I found it on streaming, The Rainmaker and watched it. That made a nice change.  Also, I got another letter from my bestie and so I decided to answer her. I wrote her quite a long letter and did that today. 

I went downstairs to get my lunch and then when I ate, I watched an episode of Matlock over lunch and thought it was very interesting. All sorts of goings on there. 

F called to say he was on his way back to the house. I let him know that we had to get groceries later on.  I went downstairs quite soon to get started on dinner.

Tonight I made chicken drumsticks, salad, steamed spicy cabbage and there was rice too. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be enough food as both K and F had extra rice and things from the kitchen. Sigh. I had planned to make a dessert if anyone was interested, but I decided not to bother. 

I got started on the dishes early, washed them and put them all away. I listened to parts of 3 podcasts tonight, one on books, one on the Canadian news and another on movies. 

I changed and a little later F and I went out to the grocery store. I wanted to mail my letter on the way to the store….I had suggested we go into the parking of the new drugstore and I’d walk my letter across the street. F didn’t understand and overshot the entrance. He said that there was a car too close to him behind him, but I think he was just making excuses as usual. 

We did our shopping at the store, F is going to cook dinner tomorrow night, so we got food for that and also for Thursday night.

We came back to the house, put away the groceries and this time when I came upstairs I decided to watch another episode of Matlock. I’m getting closer to the end!

Resident Alien was the last show of the night. F went off to bed at the beginning of the show. He’s really tired and has to get up and make breakfast for himself and his mother tomorrow. I get to make my own. Yay. 

So, that was my day. I stayed up a bit late as usual, but will try to get to bed soonish. 

Hopefully I’ll have internet tomorrow night and will be able to post my update. If not, don’t worry too much about it, I’ll get back on line as soon as I can. Come back later if you like and find out what happens!  Until tomorrow….

March 23, 2026

Monday - Sunny with rain in the late afternoon

I woke up just before my alarm went off this morning. I had received a text from F and the chime on my phone woke me up! Oh well. I got up, went downstairs, came back upstairs and then sorted my laundry. I went back to bed for a snooze and then got up a while later. I overslept a bit.

I took my laundry downstairs after I woke up and did a couple of loads today. I have soggy clothes all over my bedroom now!

I had a quiet day really. I did my usual Monday things like backing up my computer and changing out the towels downstairs.

I had lunch but had a strange thing happen. I couldn’t find my bread. I’m sure that I bought a bag yesterday, but I could not find it in my room. I looked downstairs in case it was left in the kitchen, but I couldn’t find it there either. Luckily I had some bread in the freezer so I used that for lunch.

While I ate lunch I watched an episode of Elsbeth and enjoyed it as usual. I’ve got about 6 left. I hope I can finish it before the end of the month.

Around 5 pm I went downstairs to wash my day’s dishes and made a sad discovery. We didn’t have any hot water. It seemed that F hadn’t refilled the kerosene in the water heater for a long time. I can’t do it because the heater intake valve is high up and I can’t lift up the kerosene tanks. Sigh. 

F called me after 5 pm to say he was on his way back. He stopped at a grocery store to pick up something for his mother’s dinner and lunch. He also got me a bag of bread, which I appreciated very much. 

I changed into clothes for going out and waited for F to get back. When he did, I told him about the water heater and asked him to put some in later. He changed his clothes and then we left. I think he might have given his mother her bento. He did have to get her up to do that. 

F and I drove over to Tacto, the concert hall. We showed our aquarium member cards at the door and went in. We got seats about halfway back from the stage area and I was sitting out in the aisle. I had a really good view, I’m not sure if F did or not. I made a quick trip to the washroom before the concert.

It started promptly at 7:00 and was…odd. The first few numbers were more impressions of jellyfish or something. It was okay, but I wasn’t really enjoying it until I realized that it was the impression thing. The concert ended on time at 8:00pm and then F and I just left. 

I suggested Gusto for dinner as they have brought back their 4 item dinner. It’s a decent deal, you can have 4 dishes from a fixed menu, plus drink bar and their soup are included. F had curry and rice, shrimp and oysters, fried mackerel and rice and I can’t remember his other dish. I had the regular hamburger with gravy, small fries, a steamed chicken salad, and a bowl of kara-age. It was good.  I had been really hungry so I needed a lot of food!

We left Gusto and went to the gas station. F bought some kerosene and then we went back to the house. At the house, he filled up the water heater’s kerosene tank, his mother’s kerosene tank for her heater and I filled up our tank upstairs. I brought down my towel and took a shower. 

When I came back upstairs I asked F to make some rice for dinner tomorrow night and he said he would. He went downstairs and he said he set up the rice cooker. I’m glad! I watched Saturday’s episode of The Hunting Party. It was….okay. I’m still not sure about the show. It’s a low rent Criminal Minds in my opinion. 

After midnight I turned off the TV and got into my end of day things. 

Tomorrow I’ll be back to my usual cooking thing. I’m not terribly happy about that! Oh, I should say that we will be changing internet providers on Wednesday so it is possible that I won’t be able to connect for a while. F is going to be around to “help” but I’m the only one with a working computer here so it’ll probably fall on me to figure it out. Sigh. Last time we changed providers it wasn’t a happy thing, it isn’t this time either as I’m not wanting this. Oh well. I hope my husband knows what he is doing!

Well, that’s it for tonight. Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow…. 

March 22, 2026

 Sunday - Muggy and warmish

I woke up rather late this morning when my alarm went off. F was still in bed which did surprise me. I went downstairs and then went back to bed for a bit. 

I got out of bed around 11, dressed and just waited to see what F wanted to do. When I woke up the second time, F had disappeared. When I had to make a trip downstairs an hour later I saw F by himself in the living room. We talked about what to do and decided we’d go to an Indian Restaurant for lunch. Yay!

We drove off a few minutes later and ended up at the Indian Restaurant. I had the chicken curry and F had the saag keema curry. I had mine at a spice level of 4 so F changed his to make it hotter. I liked mine that hot, he didn’t like his as much. Sorry, I’ve been building up a resistance to heat, he hasn’t. I had to have a second naan to finish my curry but I couldn’t quite finish it. After our meal, when we were sitting in the car again, we decided to go back to the house and sleep!

I changed my clothes back into my pyjamas and went to bed. F also came to bed but didn’t take off his outdoor clothes. Yuck!  We fell asleep…I ended up sleeping for 3 hours. I got up around 6 pm and went down and checked on F. We talked about grocery shopping and off we went. We also decided to get bentos for dinner tonight…except F had already made rice so he didn’t want to get bentos, he wanted to buy stuff without rice. Sigh. 

He got fish for his mother and himself, I got subuta and picked up some onion rings. I got stuff for K’s breakfast and lunch tomorrow, then dinner on Tuesday. We came back to the house and F immediately started making dinner for himself and his mother. I put the groceries away and then waited until F got out of my way. Honestly, after I heated up my food, I grabbed a little rice and plated my food. I took it upstairs to eat. I couldn’t face sitting in the living room with the TV blaring and F yelling at his mother so I just chilled upstairs.

After I finished I went downstairs and washed my dishes and chatted with F. We realized that we forgot to pick up a couple of things for the house earlier, so we went out again! We just popped over to the drugstore on the far side of the park and picked up some tissues for K, low sodium soy sauce for us and some TP for the house. 

We unpacked at the house and then I went upstairs. I decided to watch a couple of shows and do a little loom knitting. First up I watched an episode of Matlock, then Evil and to change the mood, I watched The Studio. It was quite a good night. 

F headed off to bed after he took a shower and I turned off the TV after midnight. I’ve just been doing my usual night-time stuff. 

Tomorrow night we’re planning to go to a concert so I won’t be cooking dinner. I’m glad for my extended holiday from cooking and cleaning up afterwards. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….