Isezaki & Yamashita Park

This morning at 6:30am, we walked Dylan to Kannai Station where he took a train to Atsugi for his first of two long days of training and presentations. The trip to Atsugi is about 1.5 hours, so it will be nice on Wednesday when he is finished with training and starts working in Yokohama (20 min commute). We walked north from our apartment to Odiri Park, a long pedestrian park/walkway that extends along the subway line. After seeing Dylan off, Connor and I had the whole day ahead of us and no concrete plans, other than the morning and afternoon nap.

In the morning we walked back up to Isesaki Mall, where we stopped and looked in some shops and visited the pet store with a glass case of extremely cute puppies and kittens that charmed Connor with big eyes and high energy bouncing and jumping. The other thing that really stole his attention was the arcade on the corner with its many game machines sporting colorful prizes and silly music:



On the way home, we stopped at the supermarket for water, coffee and to try to track down hand soap for our bathroom. The hand soap thing turned out to be complicated by the fact that I couldn't read any of the containers in the household aisle. I spent about ten minutes deliberating over which pump container looked most like hand soap, guessing that the least expensive pump should win, feeling confident that it would be hand soap instead of face wash or lotion. My confidence was shattered at the register when the clerk picked up the pump and started telling me something very insistently in Japanese. She was pointing back at the aisle and it seemed she was trying to warn me of something. Of course I had no idea what she was saying, and just had to smile and shrug. On the walk home, I was dying to see what was in the pump. Well, it appears to actually be hand soap, not sure what the fuss was about!

In the afternoon we walked past the ball park and Chinatown to Yamashita Park along the harbor. The closer we go to the harbor, the more fancy and touristy it seemed. It was neat to see this part of the city, and kind of reassuring to find the familiarity of a Patagonia store and Starbucks, but it also made me glad to be living in an apartment in more of a real neighborhood. The park is rectangular and runs along the harbor on one side and the neighboring street on the other with its hotels, museums, restaurants and shops. It provides a nice view north of the Yokohama skyline, including the gigantic ferris wheel that I hope we get to ride on!