Monday, November 24, 2003

The Day of the Outlet Mall Tour

Once again, it's Monday morning (hmm...well, I guess it's after noon now), the house is trashed, and here I sit not cleaning it up. I can do it after a while.

Let's see...where did I leave off...oh yeah, we were going to see "The Matrix - Revolutions". It was ok. Not really my thing, but the boys enjoyed it. I, personally, thought it was better than the 2nd one. That one had about 10 minutes worth of plot in a 2-hour long movie. Ick.

We were up well past midnight Saturday night and then Noodle and I had to get up early to hop on a bus for a tour to an outlet mall near Mt. Fuji 2 hours away from here and a "Viking Lunch" (Japanese for "Big-ass Buffet", I think). The mall was a "Premium" outlet mall with "Premium" prices. We didn't buy much - thank God they allowed only 2 1/2 hours for shopping. It was also a Japanese holiday so the place was packed. The Gap was so crowded that you could hardly even see anything. There really wasn't much there to see anyway. I did buy a corduroy jacket and a red fleece jacket at Talbot's. I was cold.

Tater was making fun of me bacause I live in Japan and drove 2 hours to an outlet mall to buy American Flag Placemats (and coasters!). He just thought that was hilarious. They were really cute and only 260yen apiece. That's a little over $2.

Then we drove 45 minutes to the restaurant:

The lunch was ok. All you can eat & drink in 80 minutes. There was more food there than I could even try. There was a whole counter that we never even saw! Steak, noodles, spaghetti, salmon, ribs, salad, tofu, fried rice, octopus, gyoza, shumai, garlic bread, fried chicken (kara-age)...I can't even remember it all. A huge buffet and a teeny-tiny dessert bar with only 3 things on it - jello, petit-four type cakes, and the smallest slivers of something chocolaty (cheesecake, maybe?). Typical of the (thin) Japanese. The (chubby) Americans were all grumpy about it. But the yummy Mt. Fuji beer made up for it. And helped warm us up when lunch was over and we had to spend the next hour or so wandering around near the restaurant (did I mention it was at the base of Mt. Fuji? Brrr) where there were about 4 "souvenir shops" - a bakery, a meat shop, a flower shop, and a cheese shop. We bought some mikan ("tangerines" for those who don't speak Japanese) and headed back to the bus early. After a few hours stuck in traffic, we finally made it home and the weekend was over. It always makes me a little sad.

Anyway, after I got home and Tater and I were lying in bed, him asking me what all we did that day, he listened and then asked,

"So you were gone 11 hours and all you did was shop for 2 hours and ate lunch for 80 minutes?"

Folks, that's it, in the nutshell.

No comments: