Sunday we had all day to relax. This is a fairly unusual event around our house, so we slept in until about 10:30 in the morning, and then took a long shower and took our time getting up and around. It was a very nice contrast to our usual 4:45 a.m. wakeup time.
I had this strange urge to go to the park and do something mildly athletic, so I talked Kuniko into joining me and we went to Akashi to visit Toys R Us. We bought a couple of cheap badminton rackets, and then we went out to the park near the station and spent about an hour playing badminton, without a net. Kuniko used to be a member of the badminton back when she was in school. I haven’t played in many years, so we were both pretty rusty. It was fun to play, though, and lots of people walking by watched us out of curiousity.
We had a snack at the station and then headed home. For dinner we made homemade gyoza and nikuman, and they turned out really good. It was worth the garlic breath the rest of the night. It’s been a little while since we’ve made either of the dishes, but the were looking pretty professional. We had some leftover nikuman, so we brought them over to Kuniko’s folks place later in the evening as omiyage.
They were doing really well, and we sat and hung out with them for a while. We couldn’t stay long, though – everyone was really tired from the long weekend. On our way home we made an almost traditional stop at Ito Yokado to do some Christmas shopping and to see Yasu. Yasu and his mother are going to come over on Friday, so we talked a little about the details, and Kuniko and I spoke in hushed tones to avoid blowing garlic breath all over the place.
We capped off the evening with a hot bath, and then hit the sack. We’ve both got tough schedules ahead. Kuniko has to work for almost three weeks straight without a holiday, and I’ve got some heavy class schedules coming up.
