More of Melissa

Melissa feeding the koi at Zuiho Hotel, Akiu.

It's been several weeks since my sister Melissa has moved to Sendai.  It seems that she's gotten the hang of things.  She goes to work and walks to the mall by herself.  Over the past few weeks, Aaron and I have taken around to do some different things.

Out of everything, she's enjoyed the shopping the most.  Ever since she got here, she'd been talking about a store called Cecil McBee.  I never heard of it, but she saw someone coming out of the Parco department store with a bag and was determined to find the store.  Aaron and I searched through the Parco directory all written in Japanese until we finally found it listed under 4th floor.  We took her up there and she had a heyday.  She and her roommate Olivia spent I-don't-even-know-how-long in that store.  Aaron and I walked around the entire floor, perused several different shops, and came back and still ended up waiting forever for them to get out.  Finally, she bought a wallet and a bag for herself.  It was her birthday, so I guess it was a nice birthday present to herself.  She was super happy after that.

After Cecil McBee, we had some purikura fun.  We made two different sets of purikura.  It was an adventure and probably my favorite part of the day because it requires some sort of creativity.  I don't know if Olivia enjoyed it, but I know Melissa loved it.

We took her to Don Quijote.  Another field day in there.  We spent several hours there as she went through EVERYTHING.  Groceries, shoes, and especially cosmetics.  It wasn't a total waste of time for me and Aaron either.  We found a set of pretty good hangers for cheap.  Something we really needed.

Finally, since it was her birthday, we took her out to dinner.  It took us a long time to find a place we really wanted to go to.  We specifically wanted to take her to eat some okonomiyaki.  The problem was that the best okonomiyaki shop that I knew of was very far away and we were without a car.  So we had to find a different place nearby.  We ended up going to Kita-Sendai, the only place I knew of.  It wasn't as good as the other place I wanted, but Melissa and Olivia seemed to both enjoy it.  We did too!  It was good.

Recently Melissa expressed a desire to try an onsen and to check out some temples.  Aaron was feeling burnt out from work, so he took the day off yesterday.  We decided to make a trip to Akiu onsen and we wanted to check out the Jogi temple.  Well, halfway there it began to rain really hard so we decided to scrap the trip to the temple, which was very far away.  Instead, we went straight to Akiu.  When we got there, it was miraculously sunny.  The clouds didn't reach that part of Sendai.  We went into the Zuiho Onsen.  There Melissa and I went into the women's side and Aaron went into the men's side.

When it was time to undress, Melissa didn't realize that we had to get naked.  She adjusted pretty well to the environment but commented that it was wasn't prepared for this much sisterly bonding.  I didn't care, haha.  I had no problem walking around naked.  We washed off and went straight outside to the outdoor baths.  It was pretty nice and relaxing.  But Melissa was disappointed it wasn't a wild pond out in the mountains with steam and monkeys.  She said it was basically a naked jacuzzi.  Which it pretty much is.  After about 20 minutes, Melissa was bored.  So we left.


Aaron still took another 30 minutes in his side, so we had some time to spare waiting for him.  I went to get some ice cream from a vending machine.  When I came back, an old man had given Melissa a bowl of fish food to feed the koi in the fish ponds.  Sad to say, it was probably her favorite part of the onsen.

Afterwards, we did more shopping.  We took her to Birthday bakery in Kuriu.  She liked it there, the bread was good, and it's a cute shop too.  After that, we took her to Seria.  She loved Daiso (the dollar store), so I thought she would like Seria (another dollar store) more.  I do anyway.  I think their stuff is cuter and better quality than Daiso.  I was right.  She spent a good amount of time looking at all the cute stuff.  Aaron and I bought some stuff too.  I found a measuring cup that measured actual cups.  And some measuring spoons.

Finally, we ate some dinner.  Melissa had been nagging forever about wanting some tonkatsu and miso soup.  The only place I knew of off the top of my head that served that stuff was Kadoya in Ayashi.  So we headed there.  She liked the ambiance.  Definitely the nicest atmosphere of all the restaurants we've taken her.  And finally, she was satisfied with her dinner.  She loved the tonkatsu.  She said the miso soup was too fishy and so was the sashimi.  Luckily, she's not a big eater so that tonkatsu was a enough for her.

We're getting the hang of what places to take her too and what kind of food she'll like, so she's been enjoying our outings a lot more now.  That's the good thing.  The bad thing is that Sendai is not a really busy city, so we're running out of shopping places to take her too!  We still have to take her to a temple though.  We'll see if she appreciates that when we come to it... Overall, I think when she goes back to AZ, she'll realize she enjoyed Japan! ;)