Horrendous rain in Sendai, humid and hot here.
Today was great. We woke up early in Sendai and went for breakfast. It was okay, but we had to keep asking the staff for plates. When we first got there breakfast still had another 30 minutes to go, so it wasn't unreasonable to expect plates!
After breakfast we went back up to the room and I watched a bit on Larry King Live about Peter Jennings. He died last week. I had no idea he was in his 60's. I'm quite saddened by his death as he was a Canadian and one that many people respected.
We had to check out at 11, so I did that. Then, we did something cool. We separated. Fumihiko drove to The Mall to park. They have free parking you see. I went shopping by myself. I visited the Virgin Mega Store, then the little foreign foods store in the station. While I was there I started to feel unwell.
I rushed to a washroom and it was a good thing that I did. I'll leave it at that!
I went to the other bookstore and got quite wet on the way. I was looking at books when Fumihiko came and met me. He got wet too! When we left the building we bought umbrellas at a hundred yen shop. It was a good thing too as it was still raining hard.
We caught a subway to The Mall and went for coffee. Then, we looked at more books. I bought a couple more, and Fumihiko got one too. When we finished and decided to leave the mall it was raining torrentially. I suggested going for our late lunch and we found a place. The rain was awful. It looked like it was ark building time. We went to Milky Way. It's a steak restaurant with a soup and salad bar. That was nice. We had a leisurely lunch and finally the rain let up a bit.
We got on the highway and soon hit a traffic jam. It's the end of Obon and many people were heading back home from Sendai. However, when we hit the Yamagata turn-off it got much better. Not many people went to Sendai from Yamagata-ken I guess!
When we were driving to our apartment in Tsuruoka we noticed there was a festival going on. We checked it out and it was kind of cool. Fumihiko told me it was a festival where people put paper lanterns in the river and float them downstream to remember people who have died.
When we got home we decided to go and check it out. We biked over to the river and watched the lanterns. They were very pretty, but there weren't all that many. Then we biked over to the park and looked at the stalls there. There really wasn't much going on, so we came home.
I was worried that Fumihiko was going to stay home for the night so I made him take me grocery shopping. We went, I got some stuff and then we came home and ate. We had yakitori, chicken from the store and some crispbreads with cream cheese on them. Yum. Good stuff.
We watched ER too, which was really sad as it was about Carter's baby being born. It was a stillbirth. Fumihiko was nearly crying on the couch. It was quite tragic.
Wow! What a day. That's enough for me I think. Catch me tomorrow, eh? Night.
