I am.. Peter MacWhinnie.

Good morning, good morning. This post is late, quite a bit late. You see, I got sick from supper last night and really didn’t feel like writing when we got back to the apartment. So. Here’s what we did yesterday..

We started off the day in much the same way we have been. We had eggs, sausage, rice, and miso soup again. Always a good breakfast. The first thing we did was go to the 100 yen ($1) store and buy some small gifts for people back in Maine. After we went over to Steven’s school where there was a rice field next to the parking lot. You see, yesterday was the first day we were able to see the mountains around Namioka, so we went into the rice field to get a picture of them.

After getting back from the 100 yen store and taking pictures of the mountains, we did a few small things in the apartment and headed down to the train station.

We took a train into Hirosaki city where we had lunch at a restaurant in the 8th floor of Ito Yokado (a rather tall building). We also took pictures of the surrounding mountains and the cityscape from the hallway outside of the restaurant.

After going to lunch, we went on a 100 yen bus, where I proceeded to pay at the wrong time (wasn’t that big of a deal, just sort of embarrassing). We took said bus to Hirosaki Castle. There isn’t much left of the castle, only one tower and a few gates. However, the park around it was absolutely beautiful. People were preparing for the upcoming cherry blossom festival. The cherry tree’s have been predicted to blossom [starting] next week, so we’re going to miss it. However, there was one tree in full blossom, and one that was close so it wasn’t entirely disappointing.

After going to the park we tried to walk to the big pagota in the area. That didn’t happen. We got lost and ended up going in a circle. So we took the 100 yen bus back to the train station. (I actually paid at the right time this time around, heh.) We had 20 minutes before the train would arrive, so we went to Mister Donut. While there I had my 4th and 5th cup of coffee. We then took the train back to Aomori.

Once back we had a few hours of downtime before we drove into Aomori-shi. We picked up Mio and went to an electronics store to get mum a flash drive so she can take all of the pictures from Steven home with her. After going to the store, we went over to a sushi bar. The sushi bar was an interesting experience. In the past I’ve gotten sick from sushi, and unfortunately this time wasn’t an exception. Some of the sushi was delicious (salmon and tuna are awesome), but after trying some squid I almost threw up. After that I lost my appetite.

After supper we took Mio back to her apartment and then headed back to Steven’s apartment. Once back we watched some T.V. and walked over to the convenience store to pick me up some food. I knew I had to eat more, even if I wasn’t particularly hungry or I’d be incredibly hungry the next morning.

I will try to post pictures in a few minutes, we’re just finishing up breakfast. Unfortunately I can’t get pictures off of my camera at the moment, I have no batteries for it. We’ll be going to an electronics store to get more. (And about the title, drug stores in Japan all seem to have crazy names. One is mega drug, one is happy drug, and I know I am forgetting another one.)