May 22, 2022

Sunday - Sunny and warm, still a bit muggy

Today was a good day! I wasn’t sure that it would be, but it turned out to be.

I went to bed very, very late last night, and so I wasn’t too happy when my husband woke me up at 10 am this morning. However, I knew that he was planning to go out this morning as he’d booked a massage for himself. I decided that I’d get up and go out with him.

I got F to drop me off at S-Mall.  He did!  I went in and decided to have breakfast right away. I went to the bakery and had a couple of bready things plus a canned tea. It was quite nice. After that, I did a little shopping. I visited the grocery store and then the hundred yen shop. I went to the music/DVD shop after that and just looked at stuff. When I finished in the store, I had a seat on a bench in the mall and then felt the floor move. Apparently, we had an earthquake while I was there. It wasn’t very big over here as it was on the other side of Japan.

Soon after that, I got a call from F and I went to the door to meet him. He parked the car and I went out to meet him. We talked about where to go or what to do and F suggested going to a restaurant that serves both ramen and curry. I was fine with that and off we went. 

We went into the restaurant and were greeted by a sign saying that it would take 30 minutes to be seated. Yikes. We decided to stay. A family came in just after us and decided to leave. Sorry. See ya again.

We actually were seated fairly quickly and ordered after a few minutes. I had their curry special for the month, a hamburger curry with red wine sauce. F ordered ramen with gyoza.  Then we waited. And waited. They really didn’t seem that busy and honestly, our food didn’t seem like it would take that much time, but it did. It took about an hour before we got food. It was okay. My curry was fine. It wasn’t spectacular though. F said his ramen was terrible though. Oh, dear. 

After lunch, we just went driving. F pulled into a clothing shop that caters to larger people and asked if I’d like to go shopping. I would as it happened. We went in and after trying on a lot of pants, I ended up getting two pairs. They were on sale, the first pair was full price, the second (and cheaper one of course) was half price. I’m having the pants hemmed so F will pick them up after work tomorrow if all goes well.

When we left the shop I was sweating! Trying on clothes is hard work.  I suggested going for a drink and said that Mosburger was close by, so we could go there. 

We went in. I had an oolong tea and F had an orangey shake. It was the special of the month. We spent a bit of time there and just relaxed. 

When we finished we talked about our next idea. We had talked about going for dinner in Sakata. I wanted to drop something off at my friend’s house and F suggested going for dinner at a swanky restaurant there. I wouldn’t mind that!

I suggested getting our groceries for the next couple of days, so we went to the grocery store. I’ve decided to do Gapao rice tomorrow and then some tacos on Tuesday. F said it was okay! I got the ingredients and then a few other necessary things. We also picked up a bento for K, we got her a nice one. 

We came back to the house and unpacked the groceries. I took some of my stuff upstairs and then we headed out again.

We drove to Sakata and went by my friend’s house. I gave her the maple syrup that we picked up for her at Costco. I told her that it was a bit cliche, a Canadian carrying maple syrup! I left her and her daughter with much waving and promises to get together soon. 

F took me to Minosuke in Sakata. It’s a very cool French-style restaurant with a huge koi pond in the middle of the floor. I think this was our third time going there. We could have had their usual set which is really nice, but they had a Japanese beef stew available which is what he talked me into! He had a more expensive fish set than normal and it looked really good too.

Small scallops and shrimp in the glass, a mountain vegetable rolled in prosciutto below. 

Lovely crusty bun and shrimp bisque.

 

Japanese beef cheek stew.
This was amazingly tender. 

Dessert and coffee. I had a chocolate cake with blueberry ice cream.

Some of the fish and a little part of the pond. Yes, this is indoors and yes, the fish are huge!

A hanging decoration. I believe this is a traditional one from Sakata.

After we finished our meal, F asked if I needed to do anything else in Sakata. I asked if we could go to the mall. Their craft department is better than the one in the Mikawa mall and I wanted to check it out. 

While I looked at yarn and other yummy stuff, F wandered around and looked at things. I met up with him after I was done looking. He was in front of some extension cords with many outlets and suggested that we get some. I’m a bit nervous about one cord I’m using at the moment and we might need more outlets for the TV one too. We bought a couple of cords. 

On the way to the car, F said he needed to go to a drugstore, so we drove over to the closest one. We went in and bought a few things. We actually ended up with a lot of things!

After that, we drove back to Tsuruoka. F had hoped to buy gas on the way, but the station was closed. We made it back to Tsuruoka and the first thing we did was buy gas. F always runs it too close in my opinion.

We came back to the house and put some of the shopping away. F set up the rice cooker for tomorrow’s dinner. 

We came upstairs and just had a quiet evening in. It was an exciting day and a much better day than yesterday. I’m almost sad that the weekend is over. 

Tomorrow I might see if I can find the outlet in the room so that I can put my stuff out of the way. I also have to look for my usual “out of the house” glasses as they’ve fallen out of my purse and I don’t know where they are. Oh no! Luckily, I have other pairs. 

Come back later if you like and hear all about my day. Until tomorrow….