May 5, 2011

Thursday - Sunny and gorgeous.

A nice Golden Week holiday.

We left Tsuruoka for Yamagata on Tuesday in the early afternoon and made great time. We were there in a couple of hours, too early actually to check into our hotel. We went to a mall and relaxed for a while before going back and checking in.

I’m not going to give you a detailed day by day run through of what we did, but we had a great time. F’s yakitori shop, the one he wanted to visit was closed for the holiday but we went to an Indian/Italian/Spanish fusion place that was terrible instead. Not good at all. I’ve never had bad Indian food before.

We spent a lot of the evening in our hotel room. We watched a bit of TV, I crocheted and then read my book. I’m over halfway through the book now and I went through 2 and a half balls of yarn so I did a lot of crochet too. Yay for that.

We found the Starbucks in S-Pal in the station and visited there a couple of times. It was nice. I had tea once and the other time a non-coffee frappuchino.

On Wednesday, F took us to Mount Zao where we went up a ropeway and watched people skiing and snowboarding. There was still too much snow to do much walking around, but it was a lovely trip and the mountains were gorgeous. We had a so-so lunch in the mountains and then found the Ashi-yu or foot bath. We bathed our feet for a while and when I took mine out the skin was peeling off them. Yuck.

In the evening F tried to take me to a restaurant that he’d researched. I wasn’t sure, but thought I might as well try it. We couldn’t find it. We tried another one, which turned out to be a very popular Italian buffet restaurant. We couldn’t get in for an hour, so we went back to the hotel, called the first restaurant and walked there from the hotel. It was gorgeous. It was expensive. They had goldfish in water in the floor! We ordered a few dishes, and the waiter split the servings for us with panache. We had salad, pizza, steak and chicken, plus a couple of drinks each. The grand total was about 6000 yen, a bit expensive, but the food was exquisite. F is already talking about going back there.

Back in the hotel we ordered the Video on Demand and watched a couple of films. I suggested Whip Hand with Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore and it was a good, fun film. We also watched Cop Out with Bruce Willis and it wasn’t that good. F went to sleep on it and I wished I could!

Today, we got up and had breakfast in the hotel (meh—skimpy but free) and then F said he wanted to go to a Science Museum that was close by and free today. We checked out, and then drove over. We found the museum and went in. It was okay. Some of the things were quite interesting, but it wasn’t as good as the science museum in Sendai we visited a few years ago. We got tickets to watch a movie/presentation on the Hayabusa unmanned spacecraft. It was in 3D but it was really boring. It was completely in Japanese and I was tired so I kept falling asleep. I didn’t really want to go in and watch it, but F kind of insisted.

I asked that we visit a Yamaya in Yamagata. I wanted to see if they had more selection than the ones in our area. I asked F about 5 times over the trip to stop in at one (that we passed all the time) but it wasn’t until today that he did it. They had most of the same stuff, with a little bit extra. I didn’t buy too much, F bought some things.

We had lunch at an amazing yakiniku shop. I was really surprised at how good it was. It was a little old fashioned from the outside, but the meat was amazingly good.

F then wanted to drive up a mountain and see the volcanic lake, so he programmed the GPS and took us halfway up a mountain. We stopped when he thought it was the wrong way and came down. He asked for directions and then set off again. We found out from someone that the road to the volcanic lake wasn’t open yet so we gave up.

We set off for home around 6 and made really good time home. The other side of the road was very backed up, the traffic was moving at a crawl, but we were flying (almost literally.)

We unpacked the car and then had a rest. After that, we went out for dinner to Cocos, bought groceries and had a quiet night in. Yay. The end.

It really was a nice holiday. I did a fair bit of biting my tongue, but I’m sure F did about me too. I was quite sick for the first day especially, then F caught a bit of my cold. He’s not as sick as I was, but not healthy as usual.

That’s it for me. Night!