last thursday hiroyuki and i went to diamond city with a friend. we had a great time, and i found out that hiro loves spaghetti! i was surprised. i know he likes udon, which we usually 'cut' into bite-sized pieces for him, but i couldn't cut the spaghetti and he was wolfing it down. cool.

we wandered around the shopping center, looking for american omiyage and drooling over chocolates and ice cream. we also had a drink at starbucks but hiro was getting cranky so we finally left after five hours of window-shopping. it was fun speaking english and hanging out with someone with similar opinions about japan that i have.

on friday hiro and i stayed home all day. that usually happens on a friday. mondays i have to escape (spending the weekend eating salad greens isn't all that much fun for a meat-eater such a myself...), tuesdays i teach, wednesdays is lady's day at movie theaters (although i don't see a movie every week) and thursdays used to be my japanese lesson and a trip to diamond city. nothing's left for friday.

on saturday yoshi had his karaoke lesson (please don't ask...) we went along because i wanted to go to the shopping ceter at kashihama for dinner. there's an italian buffet that isn't half bad, and if you go there before five, you have have the dinner buffet for the lunch price. actually, we went there two weeks ago and saw some foreigners. i think they were russian (but hey, my knowledge of slavic languages is very weak) from the way they were talking. well, we saw them again on saturday. they must live nearby and like to take advatage of the lunchtime/dinner buffet!

sunday we went to a new restaurant yoshi found. he told me it was called 'neko' (cat) so of course i wanted to go. we had a lovely fresh lunch, i ordered oyako-don and yoshi had udon. of course, hiro wanted a lot of yoshi's lunch! the restaurant had free range chickens so while yoshi was paying the bill i took hiro over to look at the chickens. they also had a goat! very cute.

the restaurant is near munakata taisha. after lunch we drove over there and bought a charm for a safe pregnancy. it was actually quite busy, and when we went there we saw a line of people being blessed! i think it was for school and upcoming exams, but i could be wrong...

yesterday it rained and rained, so we went to costco of course. hiro wasn't happy though and we had to leave sooner than i wanted to. i really really REALLY want some vanilla soft-serve ice cream!!