February 6, 2021

Saturday - Warm and a bit cloudy

I had a great time away. The weather wasn’t so great, but I tried not to let it get me down! Leaving here on Wednesday was more difficult than you’d imagine. F overslept and had to race out of here. I went outside and cleared snow in the parking area. I came back in when I was done and finished getting ready to go to Yamagata.

My taxi was booked for 9:45 to take me to the bus depot. I had everything by the door ready to leave by 9:30. I looked out, and there was a wall. The snowplough had gone by and there was a lot of snow blocking our parking space from the road. I grabbed the shovel and cleared myself a path to the road. As I did that, my taxi arrived. Yikes. 

I put the shovel away, grabbed my stuff, locked the door, and met the taxi. The driver couldn’t even go forward down the road as the snowplough was heading back our way, he had to back up to the corner of our road.

I had a nice trip to Yamagata, left my stuff at the hotel and went out to get lunch. After a nice lunch and a little shopping, I headed back to the hotel and checked in. 

I won’t go into every detail of my trip, but I walked a lot on my first day, had dinner in my hotel room from the grocery store and went to bed.  

On Thursday, it had snowed overnight. It was still snowing when I tried to leave the hotel and go to a movie. In fact, I took a picture of myself covered in snow by the time I got to the train station -it was really coming down. I changed my mind and decided to do some shopping instead. 

Snow-beast or Dementor?

I shopped the station, bought a few little things and then had lunch. I went back to the hotel, spent a little time there too. I did go out for dinner, I walked a couple of blocks to the Big Boy and had a decent meal. 

That night I got a movie card and rewatched a couple of movies. I stayed up very, very late that night too.

In the morning, I woke up when my phone rang. My dear husband called me to wish me a happy birthday. I was happy to hear from him, but went back to sleep a bit after that. I got up a little late that afternoon, got dressed and went out.

I caught a bus to the shopping street in Yamagata city and I went to my tea shop. I spent a bit of money there! It’s tea, I’ll drink it sooner or later. 

Lovely tea!

I planned to go to a movie at 7 pm so I needed an early dinner. I went to a hotel restaurant and had a Yamagata Steak. It came with salad, soup and bread. It was fantastic. After that I had dessert and cake, but that was separate. It really was a lovely meal.  

When I finished eating I paid and left. I walked to the cinema and only got confused and lost once! I found it finally and went to see Love Sarah. It’s a little British film and I loved it. It was sad and happy and funny and about women. 

After the movie, I walked back to the hotel, but went to the grocery store first. I got F something for Valentine’s Day (so don’t tell him, okay?). I went back to the hotel and had a nice evening in. I took a bath and then went to bed.

This morning, F called me to say he was more than halfway to Yamagata. I was nearly packed but still had to eat breakfast and finish things up. 

I checked out just before 11 am and met up with F. He’d parked at the nearby convenience store. We drove to Costco, did a little shopping and then stopped at the mall. I got a few things at the mall and then we tried to find someplace for lunch. We’d left it too late and all the places that we had thought about going to were closed. F found an Italian restaurant so we went there.  We had a good meal there, but the portions were huge. We almost made ourselves sick trying to finish what we got! I had a pasta with shredded chicken and asparagus in a cream cheese sauce. It was good, but huge. F had a curry doria. It was good too, but again, really too big. 

When we finished there, F drove us to a car dealership because there was a strange sound in the car. It took a few minutes, but they checked it out and decided it wasn’t anything too serious. 

We left Yamagata and headed back towards Tsuruoka. I can’t tell you much about the drive back since I slept through it. 

When we got back to the house we unloaded the car and I did most of the put away-ing of the groceries. I took things upstairs too.

After an hour or so, we went out for a late, light dinner. We just went to the Komeda Coffee near the MaxValu, but it was nice. We came back to the house and that was about it. 

It’s too bad that I “lost” Thursday because of snow, but it was nice being able to relax in my hotel room too. 

So that was a rough outline of my trip to Yamagata. I had a good time, I hope you had one reading it!  Come back later if you like and hear about Sunday. Until tomorrow….