Stuff & Lake Town

Been a pretty slow beginning to the year. Seriously not much happening at all ever it feels like.  We had 節分 the other night and MJ threw some beans (really some snack ball things) and that was it.  I’ve been really super busy at work the past few days and I was glad to have today off.  The weather wasn’t great but I had to get out of the house for a bit so we loaded up and hopped on the 武蔵野線 over to 越谷レイクタウン to check it out for the first time.

Man, that place was massive!  It’s only just over 30 mins from our place (including the walk to the station) but doubt I will ever go there again on a weekend.  Outside the station is pretty sparse and there were only a few people around but inside Lake Town there were tons of people everywhere!  So many people…  There are three sections+ in the mall and we kinda concentrated on the first two; Kaze and Mori. We made it around the first two (of three) floors of Kaze and then made it around most of the second and third (of four) in Mori in about three hours only looking at a few of the hundreds of stores and one snack break in the food court.  Oh my god, the food court… like every other crazy-ass food court I’ve been to here at a shopping center (Kawasaki) it’s an incredible pain in the ass to find a table. Anyway, I was pretty beat after about the halfway point but the break for snacks picked me up a bit though I was pretty ready to go home when I saw the crowds. I think it was especially because I wasn’t really shopping for anything in particular and had no intention of buying anything anyway. I did find one store (can’t recall exactly) that sold shoes in my size so that’s something to remember next time I go shoe shopping, I won’t have to go to America!  Oh well, it was kinda cool to see at least, and now I know not to go on the weekend.

In other news, I finished the first episode of the Back to the Future game last night with the wife, think the second one is coming out this month and I’m excited to check that out.  Super Bowl is tomorrow and, of course I’ve taken the day off to stay home and watch it, rooting for the Packers (still bitter after SB XL). Tonight I might play some games or watch the BECK Blu-ray the wife and I picked up on Thursday.  I don’t really expect it to be great but I’ve been wanting to see it since it came out last year but it came out around May and MJ was still too little (and dependant on his mom’s boob) to leave him with someone to go out and watch a movie just me and the wife.  I’m excited to check it out, read all the comics, saw the anime and now to complete it all with the movie! Think that’s about it, it’ll be real nice having two days off in-a-row here and I’ll get it  again Thursday-Friday!  Thursday I think I’ll be on daddy duty while the wife heads to her office for a meeting so maybe we’ll do something fun and then Friday is 建国記念日 so we’re gonna try and do most of our regular traditions for that day (maybe minus カラオケ?) so stay tuned for all that!

プチ京都

Off the top, a quick shout-out to the boy who celebrated his 8-month birthday on Saturday and here’s him rockin’ a sweet “Seahawks-inspired” t-shirt: Also a shout-out to Casey and Apoc for their kids’  1 year b-days recently!

Anyway, today we took a trip with the wife’s cousin and her kids up the tracks to 川越, known colloquially as “小江戸” because of some of its shared history with Edo and because of some of its other historic buildings and because it’s a good marketing plan. I wasn’t really feeling the whole trip to begin with, it was the second Sunday morning that I had to head out of the house and not get to watch college football… why can’t we do stuff in the afternoon? We got on a bus at the station and it was stupid crowded.  I was stuck with the stroller so I stood against the wall bent over under the low, low ceiling… things weren’t looking up.  I also don’t really care for the whole temple thing so much.  It’s not terrible, just not really my thing. Eventually I just said “fuck it” and tried to enjoy myself the best I could. We walked around a temple for a bit and I tried to get some decent pictures but the overcast sky made it tough to get any kind of decent landscape shots of the garden.  At least none that I liked. It was a nice place and with it being Sunday there were MANY people enjoying the leaves and what not. Anyway, not too much to say about the whole trip, we had some ramen and some sweet potato onigiri and walked around the town. That was about it.  Here’s some other pictures:

I’m pretty beat, little sleep the past two days and back to work again tomorrow… F.