The Terminal

We slept in big time this morning and didn’t get rolling until around 11 o’clock or so. Our plan was to catch a movie in Ibaraki, the next big town northwest of Osaka. It was my first time to go there, and to add an element of danger, Kuniko mentioned that her students often go shopping there on weekends.

Kuniko led me through the streets of Ibaraki to a big shopping plaza, and there we went upstairs to buy tickets to “The Terminal”, a new (in Japan) Tom Hanks/Spielberg movie. As we waited in the long line, it was getting close to getting sold out, with the next movie almost five hours later. We really wanted to see it, but we didn’t want to have to kill that much time in a shopping center. We went down to the wire, and we ended up getting tickets in the front row.

Since we had about an hour to kill before the movie we went to the nearby food plaza and had Korean food. We signed up for a table, and then I led Kuniko over to play one of those crazy “whack-a-mole” games where you hit the little things that pop up in an attempt to get a higher score than your opponent. As usual, Kuniko won.

When we went back to the Korean place the our name was already crossed out and they were seating the next people. We made ourselves visible, and they seated us right away.

For lunch we had three different dishes – some meat and vegetables cooked over a big iron plate on your table, a Korean pastry made from cheese and potatoes, and we split a big bowl of Bibinba. We barely made it out of there we were so full – but it was delicious.

We went back to catch the movie, and boy was that screen big. I got used to it after a while, but it was pretty tough at first. The movie itself was pretty good – I really enjoyed the story and even though it was a tough to believe in Tom Hanks’ Eastern European accent, eventually you got used to it. I especially enjoyed the parts early in the show where they had miscommunication problems, probably because they hit so close to home.

After the show we did a little shopping and had a cup of coffee together. We also split a piece of cake aptly titled, “Chocolate Explosion”. It tasted better than it sounds.

Kuniko and I parted ways on the platform of Shin-Osaka station, and I rode the crowded train back through Kobe all the way home. The trains are busy lately because of the Luminarie light show in Kobe. Kuniko and I made an appointment to see it together on Wednesday night.


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