December 30, 2017

Saturday - Snowy and cold, blue skies in the afternoon

A good day.

F and I slept in a little this morning but were both up around 9:30 am. We got dressed and went to the grocery store to find his mother something to eat. We got her something and brought it back to the house. While F gave her the food, I shovelled a bit of snow and cleared off the house steps.  

We got in the car and drove off. We realized we’d be a bit late so I called my friend to let her know.  She was running late too, so it was fine. We arrived in Sakata and went to the Senbei Factory. My friend and her children arrived a few minutes later.  

We all did the tour of the factory. It’s actually quite interesting watching the machines and seeing how senbei is made. We watched a bit where a man was doing a lot of quality control and taking broken bits off the conveyor belt. 

After the self-tour, we had lunch in the cafe at the factory. My friend’s son and F tried to play checkers for a bit, but F had never played before. They have just started Postcrossing, so I gave them a few postcards from my collection. We had a great chat and all did a little shopping too. The senbei is very nice there, although I decided some of it tasted quite artificial. I didn’t buy that type.  

The children got a little tired, so we decided to go our separate ways. However, outside, we did a bit of playing in the snow and had a little bit of a snowball fight. No one threw anything too hard or with too much force, so it was very fun!  

After we left, F suggested going to Starbucks, which I was all for. However, when we got there, even though there were spaces in the parking lot, there was a huge line inside. We looked at each other and decided not to stay. 

We went to another coffee shop we knew about and had a lovely cup of coffee. Well, I did.  F had a cafe-au-lait that he said was good. I was going to have that, but with soy milk…sadly they were out of soy. Sigh.  

We left and drove back to Tsuruoka.  We stopped at the Mikawa Mall and bought a few things for dinner. I had earlier suggested an hors-d'oeuvres platter for dinner, so we got a smaller one of those.  We added some bifun noodles, some salad rolls and F got some fish too. We brought it back to the house.

We had a nice dinner together. K told us she had eaten before, but still ate a bit with us.  The things we bought were quite good and they all disappeared.  We even had dessert afterwards, yesterday’s pie with a bit of ice cream.  Nice.

I did the dishes and then came upstairs.  F came up a bit later and we spent most of the night upstairs.  I watched a bit of TV, stuff that I’m usually out for, so it was interesting to stay in and watch.  


I’m not sure at all what we are going to get up to tomorrow. We have ordered sushi for dinner tomorrow night and will have to pick it up. We have plans to go away on the night of the first again so I won’t be blogging then. There is the possibility that I won’t blog tomorrow night, but you know me. I probably will! If I don’t, “Happy New Year!”.  If I do…I’ll end as usual with a friendly, “Until tomorrow….” 

No comments: