Simple, Quiet, Relaxing

Eri and I went on an actual date today.

Whenever we have special time like this we often do the same things; run errands, have brunch at Flat White, do a little shopping at Tapio. We always have a great time doing those things, but today Eri suggested we do something different.

Our first stop was the Sendai Agricultural Gardening Center. We'd been there once before. It's kinda like a farmer's market combined with a garden park. It's simple, quiet, and relaxing - a great place to just walk around and smell flowers.

They have a cafe. Eri got a fig parfait. She gave me a couple of bites and man I love Fig Newtons but this was next level figgy goodness. I got a chestnut gelato.

We just walked around smelling flowers.

And taking a few pictures.

The autumn theme they had going on was dinosaurs and other animals fashioned out of dried sheaves from the local rice harvest.

They were pretty fantastic. Eri and I just kept saying how much the boys would love them.

But today was just for us. At least for a few hours.

Auntie Grace babysat today. About once a month she generously comes over and plays with Kenzo and Osamu and they love it. Today she spoiled them with early Lego Christmas presents. Eri and I are spoiled by the time we have to go out and just be a couple.

After enjoying flowers and extinct reptiles made from rice farming detritus, I proposed a yakiniku lunch and Eri was all in. Nothing fancy. Just a lunchtime barbecue place we like on Route 4 which happens to be on the way home. One of those places that you can smell when stopped at a light and wish you were at.

The boys napped and Eri sewed while I went on a good long afternoon walk. Eri gets orders for handmade bags via her growing online business, so she had work to do.

When I got back it was time to do Sunday afternoon playing in the street. There's almost always at least one neighbor kid who joins us. I love that our street is filled with kids about the same age as the boys.

Comments

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I absolutely should not be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep. But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

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