Clear in Sendai, bit rainy here at home.
What a lovely weekend! Really. I wasn't sure what it would be like, but we really had a nice time. Yesterday we had breakfast at Gusto, then drove to Sendai. We took along a thermos of decafe coffee and stopped in our usual place. It was really nice to have good, hot coffee there. Yum.
We found our hotel in Sendai remarkably easily, in fact we got there about half an hour before we thought we would. We checked in. The only little blip was when I was asked for my passport, but when I told the clerk I lived in Japan it was okay. I did offer later to show my Alien Registration card, but she said she didn't need it. Our room was nice. It was a business hotel so not huge or anything, but it had a bit of character!
We dumped our suitcases and then went shopping. We walked over to the area by the station and then gradually made our way back. I hit two bookstores and the import foods shop in the station. Guess what, it didn't have any Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce either. I ended up getting an "Anchovy Sauce" made in Britain, not in Worcester, but I don't know what it'll be like. I got a bit "verklempt" when I saw some white honey in the store. It came from Alberta. I didn't buy it, I don't even like honey, but it was from home.
I did look at textbooks, quite a few of them. There are a lot of good ones out there. I tend to prefer the more British ones. I'm not sure why. Am I such a Brit-snob? YES.
We had a lovely lunch in the Station. In the basement of the Station they have a lot of gourmet restaurants, and a few fast food places too. We had beefsteak and shared an order of beef-tongue. Beef tongue is the speciality of Sendai. The place served all the food with 3 dipping sauces, pesto, Italian and perhaps caesar? My favourite was the pesto. I also had ox-tail soup, probably for the first time since I lived in Scotland--a very long time ago. It was good.
After going to Maruzen books and dropping a lot too much on books and magazines, we did the Starbucks pilgrimage and then walked back to the hotel. Fumihiko was a darling and carried all my books for me. They were so heavy!
We dropped our stuff at the hotel and went out again. This time it was to Forus. First I visited the Body Parts store - Fumihiko's nickname for it (aka The Body Shop) and got more lip moisturizer. I didn't buy anything else. These days I'm really bothered by their perfumes. We continued up to Tower where I bought a couple of country cds and a Eurythmics dvd. Yay me.
We headed over to HMV and I struck gold. They had season 4 of Friends, so I got that. They only had half of season 5 or I'd have got that too. I also got the dvd of Clue, which I remember as being really fun and silly.
We decided to go and eat then, and chose Royal Host. It was close and not too expensive but something happened on the way there. I looked in a new store and realized that it had iPods. And iMacs. And iBooks. In fact, it was an Apple Store! In SENDAI! I made the "We're not worthy" motions outside the door and we went in. I was drooling over everything. I mean everything. They had all kinds of doohickeys for iPods and for computers....software...in multi-languages. Oh my gosh. I could even buy the update for my computer there. I thought I'd have to smuggle it back from Canada, but no! Available in Sendai. I didn't buy anything as I am trying not to spend too much money, but I'm still thinking about it.
We did go to dinner in Royal Host. Our meal was quite nice. We were seated next to a group of foreigners that were quite loud. They weren't speaking in English, in fact I don't really have much idea what language they were speaking in. My guess would be Arabic, but really I'm not sure. It was kind of neat to hear actually.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and spent a quiet evening in, after grabbing a cappucino at the Starbucks in the hotel. The Matrix Reloaded was on and I watched that. Fumihiko had a couple of beers and he got me a grapefruit chu-hi which was nice.
Okay, today, we woke up, had a really nice breakfast in the hotel (included in the room fee), then checked out. We drove to The Mall which was very crowded. I bought a few more magazines, a couple of books, and then a couple of dvds. Well, actually, I bought one and Fumihiko got the other. I got Dead Again (yeah!) and Fumihiko got Cats and Dogs.
We went to Starbucks and got some free coffee as our stamp card had enough points - not decafe though, and a couple of frappuchinos. Yum. I also bought some tea at Lupicia which used to be L'epicier I think. The sales clerk gave me alovely brochure in English about the different teas. I'll study up for my next trip.
We drove back to Tsuruoka, listening to my iPod all the way. Good tunes today. We stopped for a late lunch in Yamagata at Bikkuri Donkey. We also stopped in Sagae for coffee and konnyaku, and cream cheese.
When we got back, we just vegged for a while. Fumihiko watched some weird Japanese TV and I surfed the net and read email. We went out for dinner to Cocos. I read parts of their menu more carefully today and I tried a new dish. It was chicken and vegetable stew. It was in a tomato sauce which is why I hadn't tried it before, but I tried it today. It was good. I just hope I don't have any bad reactions to the sauce.
We bought groceries and then came home. Fumihiko took a bath and now he's in bed sleeping. He's back at work tomorrow. I do feel sorry for the poor guy. He did a lot of driving this weekend, sort of a busman's holiday, but he says he's okay. Before I sat down at the computer again, I got some stuff ready for his breakfast. I don't make breakfast for him, but I tonight I set the coffee pot to come on and set out his rice and chopsticks. He has some fish, but that should stay in the fridge overnight.
A friend of mine left some bad personal news on my comments section yesterday so I took it upon myself to edit the comment. I don't plan to make a habit of that. I felt a bit weird doing it.
Anyway, I'm done. Have a good night!
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