February 9, 2020

Sunday - Snowy and Cold in Tsuruoka

I’ve had a pretty great trip away. I went to Niigata on Wednesday and stayed at a hotel near the station. On the first night, I didn’t do too much, just a tour of the bookstore and a look for someplace to eat, but basically ended up buying some food and taking back to the hotel. It was rather nice.

Thursday I got up at a reasonable time and had breakfast near the hotel. Then, I took the Loop Bus around the tourist sites and went to my favourite place, the Saito Villa. I wanted to see the garden, but with all of the snow, it was closed! I did tour the house though, and even had some coffee and cake, while looking at the garden out the window, so that was something! I caught the bus again and this time went to the Pier Bandai and walked over to the Niigata Bandaijima Museum of Art to see their exhibit on Tartan. It was really good. I was quite tickled to see some posters and records of The Bay City Rollers on display!

View out the window of the Villa

They wouldn't let us walk in the
garden. Maybe wise, but sad too!

Five hundred yen worth of happiness!

I caught a regular bus back to the station as I didn’t want to walk all the way back to Pier Bandai. It was freezing then.  I couldn’t get Google Maps to work properly, so I missed the first bus, but did have an interaction with another person waiting for the bus, so that was nice! 

I went back to the station, relaxed and warmed up for a while, then went to Lovela for coffee and a bit of shopping. It was really scary walking there as I had worn my shoes and there was ice everywhere. I saw one person fall, so I was a tad nervous. I dumped my shopping in the hotel and then went to Royal Host for dinner. I thought F didn’t like it and I do, so decided to go there. It was good!

F joined me at the hotel on Friday afternoon. I let the hotel know, and paid the difference of course between a single and a double. 

We did a little shopping at Lupicia, my tea shop. It’s a bit hard to find as it is across the bridge in Niigata. I would have had to take a bus to get there on my own. We also had lunch in the department store.

We came back to the hotel and F checked in. He was able to park the car too. Yay! He called the Mexican restaurant we like and made a reservation for 8 pm, so we wandered over to the restaurant. We spent some time in the bookstore. I looked at books but didn’t buy anything. I wanted to, but my to-be-read pile is shocking so refrained.

We had amazing Mexican food at the restaurant and really enjoyed ourselves. They make real tortilla chips there and homemade salsa. Just yum!

After we ate, we waddled back to the station area and grabbed a take-out drink from the brand new Starbucks opposite the station. It just opened that day, and we squeaked in just before they closed, hence the take-out.

We had a fun evening of watching movies on the free movie channel from the hotel. We watched a couple we’d already seen, Lady Bird and Rocketman. Really loved Lady Bird again!

On Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and went to find another cinema! We found the mall it was in and then went to see Jojo Rabbit. Of course, because we’re country bumpkins and this was the big city, the cinema was nearly full and we didn’t buy our tickets early!  We got “couples seats” in the back row which were like couches. I liked it a lot, F thought they didn’t have enough padding in the seats. Jojo Rabbit was really good and we both enjoyed it. F got one of the main actresses mixed up with someone else and was trying to explain, but he confused me for ages!  

We went to our next hotel and checked in. We had a tiny little room that was so hot it wasn’t good. We relaxed for a bit and then went out for dinner. I found a place on Google Maps but when we got there, they were full. So was the next place we tried. I found another Google suggestion and got F to reserve it for us. He did, thankfully. All they had left was counter space, but it was so cold out I didn’t care!  We got there and it was a really interesting restaurant. It was an Indian/Italian fusion place!  We both had curry for dinner. F had Butter Chicken with rice and I had a keema curry with mushrooms in a creamy sauce with naan.  We’d made both our meals into “sets” and had salad, appetizers, soup, dessert and a drink with them. The food was amazing. I had found the place earlier on Google, but F wanted to take me to some crappy looking Japanese place that I refused to go to!  

We went back to the hotel and then we both took baths in the onsen in the hotel. They were on separate floors, men got the 10th floor with a rotenburo, women got the 2nd floor with none. Boo!

After our baths, we went to the restaurant for their “free” noodles that they have. As you might expect, F complained about them!

Back in the room, I did a little crochet and watched The Blacklist, then went to bed fairly early. I was tired!

Today, we got up for breakfast at the hotel.  It was okay, but I wasn’t too impressed with the bread. It wasn’t that great.

We checked out and went over to the Niigata City of Art Museum. We went to see an exhibit that just opened of Yayoi Kusama’s work and other artists that had gone to America to study.  It was interesting and quite fun.  We were both surprised to see people taking pictures of the art…F asked afterwards and it was okay apparently, as long as they didn’t use flash! That was a new one on us.

We had a drink in the museum and I visited the gift shop.  Then, we left and went to the Kameda Mall.  

I told F that I really just wanted to a) look at the yarn in the craft area and b) buy some tea in the Import store.  Oh, and c) have lunch somewhere!  That was what we did. I looked at yarn but didn’t buy, I did buy tea and a couple of other things in the import store.  We had lunch in the food court. I had steak from Pepper Lunch that was okay, and F had fish from a Japanese style restaurant that he complained about. Same old, same old.

We left the mall around 4:30 I think and got back to Tsuruoka somewhere around 6:30. K was still up and looked fine. F had asked his sister to check in on her and she had.  The house was fine, but our rooms upstairs were freezing. The heater said it was 0 degrees when we turned it on.  Yikes.  

F and I went out for dinner to Gusto and then picked up some groceries for tomorrow night. He’s going to make a nabe, so I hope he doesn’t get too tired at work tomorrow.  I did suggest that I make the soup, so we’ll see how that works out. 

We came back to the house around 10 pm. I watched a bit of TV and F went to bed.  I’ve been working on getting the room warmed up. It’s not bad right now.  

Anyway, it is late and I’ve written a novel. I have to get up soon so that I can Facebook the Academy Awards. It’s my tradition, I just hope things go well this year.  

I’ll be back later if all goes well! Until tomorrow….