Day 98 in Japan - Sam's Last Saturday

As Sam will start work next Saturday, and he will work from 10 am to 6 pm, today was his last Japanese lesson with me and Kojima-sensei. It was a confusing lesson, as we got interrupted halfway through to evaluate a pamphlet to help foreigners to live in Akashi made by a local elementary school. The pamphlet turned out to be pretty difficult to read, and we spent most of the rest of the lesson poring over the complicated words to pick up a few new cultural points (e.g. we learned that we may have been accidentally insulting people's cooking by now replacing the lids on any food we eat when we are done).

After the lesson and lunch at a chain restaurant called Sukiya (who made a decent gyudon, but I wouldn't replace my lid, if you know what I mean), we wanted to get back to Okubo to get our shopping done fairly quickly in order to fit in an afternoon nap. We went to the cheapish home wares shop Nitori and got ANOTHER futon. And another chair. We can now seat 4 people and sleep 5 - ready for Mum and Dad to visit next week! The Christmas decorations had just hit the shelves in Nitori, so of course we had to take a photo for evidence.

Japanese Christmas decorations in October.

Then we carted our purchases home - we took turns lugging the double futon the 45 minutes to home. When we got back, we had a big spring clean in the rain. Set up new bed, kotatsu properly set up (no futon, so instead used doonas to make it comfy - like sitting inside a teddy bear), and then enjoyed the spoils of our cleaning.

Are these pumpkins or melons? Either way, it's not
normal to see them growing off the ground, right?

Sam carrying the futon (1)

Sam carrying the futon (2)

Cool abandoned house that we found on the walk
home - it's some sort of official building, but we can't
read enough kanji to figure out what it is.

Missed Halloween parties last night and tonight, because we didn't have costumes, and really wanted a down weekend to just hang around and rest. I think we are both pretty happy with this decision right now (but may regret it when we start to see the photos of the parties appearing on Facebook). Watched Sherlock (brilliant show!) and I replied lots to kids English journals. Went shopping at 8 pm on a Saturday night, which was really awesome. Actually not being facetious - it was grand to just do boring and banal things with the time on my hands to appreciate doing them.

Food Highlight of the Day: 8 pm Saturday night purchase - white and dark chocolate sweets which were actually quite light. It was like one thinly piped dark chocolate layer, then a thinly piped white chocolate layer, then dark, then white. Can't believe we are still finding so much new chocolate to try!