February 2, 2008 - Saturday

Clear and sunny in Tsuruoka, no snow in Sendai!

Today was a good day. I got up fairly early, checked email and then showered. When I dressed and came back to the living room I watched today's episode of Criminal Minds. It was good if a bit weird. I never know exactly if I enjoy the show, or just respect it.

Fumihiko and I went out for brunch at Gusto and then he dropped me off at the school. I did a tiny bit of shovelling, and then went into the school and finished my prep. Basically I was done, but I had to do things like move the oil heater around, start the water in the coffee pot, and of course, change my clothes.

My classes went quite well today. I had three, two children's classes, with an adult class in the middle. It's a difficult change to get out of. One moment I'm singing songs about miso soup, then next I'm discussing geography. Very interesting.

After my classes I cleaned up, did my paperwork and got a few things ready for next week when I came back. I unplugged the heater of course and I really hope I turned off the water. Fumihiko picked me up and we did a quick run to our apartment to pick up my stuff. I wanted to get my computer and my suitcase.

We had a quick and delicious dinner at Jiro, then set out on our way. I stuck my new cd in the car player and we enjoyed it for part of the way. Sadly, the middle of the cd started skipping. Ack! Was this a problem with the cd I used, my cd burner, the car stereo or the original cd? Tonight, when I sat down to write this, I listened to my original playlist and it's fine. The songs don't skip, so I know that my original cd is fine. It could be the blank cd I used. I've had it for a while. It was from a brand new package, I hadn't opened it until yesterday, so you just never know. I hope it's not my cd burner.

The drive to Sendai wasn't too bad. We made a stop in Sagae, for coffee and leg stretching, but other than that drove straight into the city. We got a bit lost in the city, but eventually found our way and the hotel. We checked in with no problems.

We dropped our stuff off and then went out. We weren't really hungry, but wanted to look around and see what was still open. It was almost 9 pm so things were closing all around us. We walked to the station and went into the import food store at 8:57 or so. We grabbed a couple of packs of decafe coffee, some tea for my school, and a few other things. Then we paid and had coffee at Starbucks. We bought more decafe coffee there too! Since our Seattle's Best Coffee closed we have no local place to get decafe. I've been drinking a lot of instant decafe. It's okay really, but....

We wandered around the restaurant area, but didn't get inspired. We'll probably come back for cow's tongue (Sendai's speciality) tomorrow at "our place", but didn't feel like it tonight. We walked back towards the hotel and I saw a modern, nice looking yakitori restaurant on the other side of the street so I suggested going there. We could get just a bit of yakitori, they wouldn't mind if we didn't have tons of food. That's what we did. We had some interesting stuff. Most of it was chicken, but we did have some lovely filet beef on skewers. Yum. I liked tskune with ume inside. That was a very interesting taste.

After we left the restaurant we came right back to the hotel. We had a quiet evening in the room, and are now winding down for the day. I'm yawning up a storm, so I really should get some sleep soon.

That's it for me. Night night!

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