Monday - Cloudy and cool
Today was an odd day. F didn’t feel well in the morning and took the day off work. He spent most of the day in bed, sleeping or playing with his computer. I sat in the room at my desk on my computer for the most part.
I went downstairs to start dinner. I ended up changing around my dinner plans but it worked rather well. We had bought a few things at Costco that we don’t often have, so I had to prepare them for dinner. I also tried a new thing for us, Sea Asparagus, so if you have any recipes for me to try, please let me know! We had blueberries for dessert, baby leaf lettuce with radishes and mini-tomatoes and sea asparagus, plus some oven-baked chicken with a yuzu-pepper coating. It was pretty nice. F and his mother had rice with theirs, I didn’t.
F manned up today and helped me by washing the dishes. I had a bit of a whine with him today and told him that I am feeling a bit of a kitchen skivvy these days. I prepare dinner, set the table, clear the table and often do all of the dishes afterwards and no one lifts a finger to help me. He wasn’t too happy with me at the time but did help tonight. It doesn’t have to be a ton of help, someone getting up and bringing me the table’s dirty dishes to the kitchen door would be huge…anything so I don’t have to take my slippers off all the time. Or even blooming ASKING if I need help. They just sit there and wait to be served.
After dishes, I changed a bit and F and I went off to the onsen. He had a bath, I sat in the lobby. I didn’t do any crochet or reading tonight. Sigh.
We went and had a coffee at Komeda coffee and then bought a few groceries at the shop nearby. We got a few things and came back to the house.
I watched a little bit of TV and had some tea. F played with his computer until he went to bed. He’s complaining about feeling bad again. Sigh. I feel bad for him, I do, but I don’t know how to help him.
That’s it for today. Now, a few words about my time in Yamagata!
On Wednesday I went down by bus. I got F to order a taxi for me the day before. It came on time and I was at the station in lots of time. The bus ride itself was pleasant. The bus was nearly empty and so I snoozed and listened to podcasts.
In Yamagata, I made my way over to my hotel hoping they’d let me leave my suitcase there. They did, and they also let me check in a bit early. Yay them!
I checked in, rested for a bit and then went out in search of shopping and maybe lunch. I found some lunch and did a little bit of the other, so that was good. I came back to the hotel around 8:30 or so and got a movie card. I watched The Equalizer 2 and thought it was okay. I had dinner in my room, I’d gone to a nearby grocery store and picked up a few yummy things.
On Thursday, I caught a bus to Sendai and went shopping and tea drinking in Sendai. I had earlier thought of going to have lunch in Ikea but changed my mind. I had lunch in a Big Boy in a department store. It was nice. I didn’t buy a lot of anything except tea, but I did find some foreign foods that I got. I was tired so I came back to Yamagata a bit early and came by train. The train was very crowded at first, but I managed to get a seat after a few stops. Unfortunately, it was in the priority seating, but it looked like I was the oldest person around and there were no other candidates for the seat. There were a few other spots on the priority seating open too.
Back in Yamagata, I came back to my hotel via a convenience store. I bought myself some dinner there, ate it in my room. I went downstairs to the lounge and had a few of their nice beverages and read my book. I didn’t want to put it down, so I went back to my room, ran myself a nice warm bath and finished my book in the bath. Love doing that and I never get to do it where I live. It was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and I adored it.
On Friday morning I checked out of my hotel and walked myself and my bags over to my next hotel. It was really hot (around 28 or so) and it was quite far. I don’t know why I didn’t take a taxi! I couldn’t check in yet, but I left my bags at the desk and took myself off to see a movie.
I went to see Joker and I really didn’t like it. I don’t like the type of films that it was riffing off anyway, so I wasn’t surprised. I did like Joaquin Phoenix in the role, just didn’t like the character at all.
After the movie I did a little window shopping/looking for lunch and then checked into the hotel. I stayed there for a while waiting for F.
Poor F was supposed to drive to Yamagata after his work. That was hard enough, but the problem was he had driven someone to Yamagata on Friday. He had to take them back to our area, finish work and then pick up his clothes at his house and come and join me. He got back to Yamagata city sometime around 10 pm.
We went out for a quick dinner at a Yatai (old style food stalls) near the hotel. He picked the Shonai Fish stall. I was quite annoyed. We live in Shonai, why on earth couldn’t he have picked another type of food. I had stomach problems for the entire trip, so when F said he wanted sashimi made sure he knew that I wouldn’t be having any. He ordered himself a huge sashimi plate that ran around 1500 yen. I had a cooked fish (hokke) that he got to eat about half of. I wasn’t too thrilled with him, to be honest.
We went back to the hotel and ended up going to sleep. It took a while, but we did sleep.
On Saturday, we had breakfast in the hotel and then went out. We drove to a nearby city with a big mall and did a little shopping. F was looking for a jacket for himself…he’s trying to replace one that he had before I met him and wanted an unlined all-season jacket…Autumn is not the time to shop for that! After a few shops, we did find him something that he liked in H & M so he got that. We had lunch at a bread buffet Italian restaurant. It was very nice and I was surprised that it was! We also went to see a movie, Peppermint with Jennifer Garner. It was terrible too, but we didn’t have to pay for it as our stamp cards were full. Hurray. I love Jennifer Garner, but the movie wasn’t good.
We drove back to the hotel and even though I suggested finding a good place along the way, F drove by any interesting place or turned the wrong way or whatever. I wasn’t impressed.
In the hotel room dropping off stuff I told him that there was no way I was going back to the Yatai place. I didn’t want convenience store food either.
We went walking down the road and by chance found a place down a side road. It was a yakitori-ya and turned out to be very good! We had a very nice dinner there! Yay.
We came back to the hotel, F rushed off to take a bath and I started to set up for bed. I was leaning over the bed when I noticed that there was a bloodstain on F’s pillow. The bed had been freshly made by the maid that day so it wasn’t from him from the night before. When F came back, I told him and he complained to the front desk. They did switch the pillow out for him, but yuck. It was visible too, I don’t know how the cleaning staff missed it.
We had breakfast the next morning and then checked out. Although we planned a Costco run later on, I suggested doing something else for a while. We went to the Prefectural Museum and spent a couple of hours there. It was quite nice really. The museum needs a bit of updating, but the exhibits were all about how Yamagata came to be geographically. I know I saw them before and was bored, but this time I was quite interested.
After the museum and a short walk we took around the castle grounds, we drove out to Costco. We did a bit of shopping, but nothing like we normally do, since we were just there two weeks ago.
F didn’t want to leave for Tsuruoka yet, so I suggested shopping at a hundred yen shop we passed earlier. We did that and I got a few cool things for the house.
For dinner, I suggested going back to the food court at the Tendo Mall. It was close to the way we were going back so not a big deal to make a detour. We did that too. F had some noodle thing that he wasn’t too keen on, I had a steak with rice that I really did like.
We drove back to Tsuruoka, hit up a grocery store for a few essentials and then came back to the house. We had a fairly quiet evening. F wasn’t feeling well by then and was talking about taking Monday off if he didn’t feel better in the morning. And the rest you know.
Are you still with me? It was a fun 5 days off for me, I would do it more often if I had the money for it!
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