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The Lunch Place

A couple of Saturdays ago I was having my morning coffee and looking out the window and I saw our neighbor from down the street Mogi-san coming up to our door. He and his wife are a nice retired couple who often cut the weeds along the entire length of our street, including in front of our house. 

He rang the bell and the boys ran to the door to say hi. They're kinda like dogs in that respect. They love deliveries and anyone who shows up for any reason. They were especially excited to see Mogi-san since they know him as the nice old guy down the street.

Apparently he and his wife just bought a new car and they got tickets to some big Honda event at one of the convention centers over by the Sendai Port. He said it was sort of aimed at families with kids and his grandkids were busy that day so he thought of us because he was pretty sure the boys love cars, which of course is an absolutely reasonable and correct assumption.

We had no idea what to expect, so we were pleasantly surprised with what a great event it turned out to be, and super kid friendly. We spent the entire morning playing. The boys loved it - race cars, motorcycles, games. We all got pretty tired out.



They had this booth where kids could color their own car and then have it scanned so a 3D digital version appears on a screen and races against other kids' cars. Kenzo wrote "poop" on his in Japanese so nobody in the area would be under the impression that he doesn't excel at high end mischief. The boys' cars raced against each other and Osamu won.










We had a hard time getting the boys to leave, especially Osamu. His catchphrase is, "It's too fast. I don't want to go home." Luckily he loves the lunch place. Not any specific lunch place, but if you tell him we're going to "the lunch place" he is satisfied with wherever we go. He has certain favorites, of course, like the sushi place by our house, but today we weren't near our house and we were all tired and hungry so we hit up a Japanese diner kinda restaurant by the convention center. Kenzo ate two whole tamagoyaki by himself. He's starting to be more expensive to go out with. 


The boys and I spent the evening playing the memory game on the hot carpet while mama cooked dinner. Osamu is getting pretty good at it. He's starting to understand that picking the exact same cards as the person before you is not a winning strategy.


I won 5 out of the 6 games we played. Kenzo finally got the best of me on the last one because I wasn't paying attention. Plus he does have a really good memory. Osamu lost every time but still enjoyed declaring "I'm the winner" each time, which annoyed Kenzo and delighted me.

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