Another trip to the mall

Last weekend Luke and I headed back to the mall for a couple of things. He needed more shirts to go under his suit shirts and I needed more T-shirts to go with my track suit and wear with everything else.

We hit the hardware store first, looking for camping gear (I have decided that is what I want to do for my birthday next week. Luke has a 5 day weekend off of work.) and possibly cooking stuff(I need to make some cheesecakes for some people since Luke talked up the awesomeness of my cheesecakes!). We did find some camping stuff, not sure of the brand and quality but at least we know they have it. And they did have quite a selection of cooking stuff, baking stuff etc. Our local grocery store has a very small section and an empty peg for the spring form pans. The hardware store had plenty so I got two 4 inch pans (all I have seen is the 4 inch pans in Japan). So with all my cheesecake baking things in hand, and a few tupperware containers to keep them in, and a small hotplate that Luke found, to do tepenyake(like we did with the Mayor) in our living room we headed to the checkout.

Near the checkout we found a bin of Disney children's DVDs, mostly dubbed over in Japanese but we did find Fantasia in its original English, for less that 500 yen. So needless to say we now have several of those (Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Three Caballeros, Dumbo), to help us learn Japanese and to help our future children become bilingual.

After the hardware store we were getting a little peco peco (hungry, or peckish in Japanese) so Luke took me to an Italian restaurant that he had been to before I arrived. That's right, Italian food in Japan. The outside looked like a castle and you can't see out of any of the windows, they are all stained glass.

Fancy chairs all around. We ate in the turret. You can just see the stained glass in the background.

When you look at the menu you can choose from three variations of multi-course meals. And then you choose the entree. Ours came with salads and rolls, soft and wonderful rolls with butter. I tell Luke how when I was a kid I refused to put butter on my bread and now I can't imagine it any other way!

Luke gets the same thing as last time, spaghetti with bacon and tomatoes.

I get spaghetti with bacon, shrimp and peperoncino (not to be confused with pepperoncini which is what I was hoping for...).

Then it was off to the mall to get some clothes and a backpack for me so I can help carry groceries.

Live music in the mall, just like last time. It might be a weekend thing since we have only been here on Saturdays we are not sure.

We look for a backpack first because Luke's is already full from the trip to the hardware store. I finally found one in this cool shop that had second hand clothes (for first hand prices mind you). Here are a few things we also found in that store:

A plethera of Boy Scouts of America shirts and others with patches on them.

Hunting vests, not for hunting but for actually wearing. Authentic, even has the pocket for the pheasant!

Here is my stellar new backpack! It is my homage to Iowa, the pattern is white and blue stripes just like old overalls (which you can also find to wear here for outrageous prices! Farmer is in apparently!)

Then we went downstairs to find some shirts for hopefully reasonable prices. I found some great ones in a discount bin which were marked 498 yen (but ended up being 250 yen at the register!)

Boy love girl, variety is the spice of life, love makes the world go round, spicery

Golden beach, return to paradise

sixty seventh doughnut!

Don't worry Mom, the Japanese don't know what it means either, we are not the only ones!

Then Luke and I decided that to build a wardrobe here we couldn't do it all at once, so everytime we go shopping at the mall we were going to get ourselves one thing to add to our wardrobe that was "Japanese".

Luke gets a man-purse! It's really not girly, it has a clasp so it can be clipped to your beltloop, or you can put your belt through the back or there is a strap so you can wear it across your chest. Now don't judge too soon! Most men in Japan have something like this just out of necessity. We have to carry an obscene amount of change here and you can't just put it in your pocket. The lowest amount on a paper bill is 1000 yen (like $10) and everything under that is change! So yeah he got a man-purse and I make him carry all the change!

I got an awesome new watch! Very Japanese!