Since I hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time with Kuniko over the last week or so, she invited me to join her on a tour of the Amagasaki-Nishinomiya-Itami area to root on her tennis club students.
I kept Kuniko company on the drive there, and while she went into the tennis matches to talk to her students I stayed out in the car and studied and read books. I stayed on my own partly because I was looking for some time to study and partly because of decorum – I didn’t want to create a distraction for Kuniko while she did her job.
The first school was actually pretty close to Hamawaki Junior High in Nishinomiya, so we drove by the place where I used to commute to every day. Definitely æ‡ã‹ã—ã„. It took a long time for the tennis games to wrap up, and then we moved on to two other schools. At the last school we gave two giggling students a ride to their train station, and then we were free.
Since we were near Itami we stopped at Diamond City, a place we had been one time before. It’s kind of similar to an American mall, but all the shops are Japanese. We did find a Hawaiian fast food restaurant in the food court, but we were kind of between meals so we didn’t get anything. I’ll just have to wait until summer.
The last stop was a great one. In Amagasaki there is the last Carrefour in Japan. When Carrefour pulled out of Japan they sold their stores to a big Japanese supermarket company. That company, called Aeon, kept the Carrefour in Futami alive for a while but finally pulled the plug. Apparently this one in Amagasaki is still doing great. It was packed when we were there, and they had all our old favorites. I bought a six pack of Negra Modelo, we got lots of tortillas, a bottle of wine, Cholula hot sauce, and loads of cheese. We went hog wild in Carrefour, and after leaving I think maybe it is sort of a good thing that there isn’t one quite so close anymore.
By the time we got home we were pretty beat, but we persevered and went to catch a late show of Spiderman 3. The place was packed! I’m not sure why Spiderman is so popular in Asia. My review of the movie: not so great. Too Hollywood, I’d say.
We crashed out hard after that – so exhausted. Luckily there is nothing on the agenda for Sunday, so we can rest up.
