A Busy Day

 It's only 4:30 in the afternoon, but it feels like a very long day, and I haven't even started dinner yet.

Everything started out alright! I was up at 5 am, made breakfast and an obento.

Managed to clean some of the kitchen and wash the dishes. Christopher made lunch yesterday: homemade gyoza, Japanese dumplings made by wrapping thin wheat wrappers around a savoury filling; he used minced pork, cabbage and garlic chives. To go with them, he made ramen. It was very nice, and I was grateful to him for doing that, but he really needs to learn to wash up as he cooks!

Yesterday's lunch

By the time I had sorted out most of the kitchen, it was time to get ready to go.

Today's plan was so simple, there's no way it could go wrong!

David, Hannah and I were going to drive to the city where Hannah is living and where Mikey is moving to. 

Hannah wanted to go to her apartment to wash her cardigan, it needs a gentle wash and my machine doesn't have that setting, her does. After that, Hannah and I were going to a large shopping mall, and David was to meet Mikey. 

We were then to meet up and come back home. See, a very simple plan!

We left here at 7:30; it takes between an hour to an hour and a half to get to the city. 

The first snag was that the roads were very busy. Considering today was a Sunday and the weather was rather miserable, that was surprising.

David wanted to put gas, so he went to where he thought a cheap gas station was, but he drove past two and couldn't remember if the gas station he wanted to use was further down the road or not. We had been driving for about 20 minutes by this time.

Hannah then piped up from the back seat, Mom, I forgot my key!

We had to turn round and go back home to get her key! One good thing was we could take Christopher to work!

We finally got to the city at 9:30, one hour later than we had planned!

The drive to the city is along a river road. The views of the mountains in the distance, with clouds hanging over them, were spectacular. I took a few photos, but I only have a phone camera. When I see these sights, I wish I could buy and learn how to use a proper camera.

Beautiful views.

Because we were so late getting to Hannah's apartment, we decided that she should just go in and put her cardigan in the machine, and we could pick it up later.

She came out a few minutes later saying that she could smell burning in her room, but nothing was on or even plugged in. I went to check, just to make sure, but I couldn't smell anything or see anything that might be burning. 

We finally made it to the mall. David dropped us off and went to find Mikey.

Just a quick question, why is it in these malls the stores I want to visit are always at the opposite ends of the mall, making me walk for ages?

Hannah wanted to check out the bookstore, she wanted a 3 year diary. I had a look round but there were only about a dozen English books! 

I then wanted to go to Kaldi, which was not only at the other end of the mall from the bookstore but also on a different floor, a coffee store, that sells imported food. A lot of nice things at very nice prices, I passed on buying anything!

By this time both Hannah and I were tired and wanted to go home. But we had problems contecting to either David or Mikey.

I called Mikey but he texted back that he couldn't talk on the phone because there were too many police. That had me puzzeled, why would there be too many police in the store he was in and why couldn't he talk. Hannah called David but the call wouldn't go through.

After try numerous times David finally called and we could meet up to go home.

I found out later that Mikey had been driving when I called and that was why he couldn't answer, I thought he was still in the shop with David.

I went into my favorite store, Daiso, to pick up a couple of things, we then went back to Hannah's apartment to pick up her cardigan, then we headed home.

The drive was nice until we got to this road.

This road scares me and I'm not driving, it's narrow and very rough! The side we are on in places has  steep drops to another road and residental areas, the opposite side is also steep and goes down to the river flood plain.

As we were coming off this road I noticed all these massive cranes, I think there were 9 in all.

So many cranes!

Hannah did a quick search to see what was being built, I was hoping for another shopping mall, turned out to be a beer factory, Asahi Beer company!

I'm off to make dinner, chicken pie for tonight!