Liz Has A Late Start

I think I was sick yesterday since I went to bed with a burning forehead/body and couldn’t get up this morning. Yay for the ability to sleep-in. Once I finally dragged my butt out of bed it was almost 1 in the afternoon and I could barely eat. I blame the beauty of Yuri On Ice keeping me up. (I’m all good now, no worries friends.) Fret not, Miao-chan was there to share in my strange morning and my seat, resulting in our mini-photo shoot. Trust me, there are wayyy more pictures than this. After I got myself together it was about 3 o’clock and time for me to head to okaa-san’s cool store, which she’d texted me not to go to between 12-1 because of lunch break. Ha, no worries there.

I made it to the store alright and ended up with like 8 pairs of chopsticks . . . and a stamp. Nope, not addicted at all. The woman at the register recognized me, partly because we’d met on Monday when okaa-san and I stopped at her store to use the toilet and partly because okaa-san had told her I was coming. Only what I had though was a ‘Liz is going to drop in’ message was a phone call with okaa-san telling the store woman to be on the lookout for me because she was worried I would get lost and I’m a mess and oh my god that’s so sweet but I was so embarrassed?! Luckily the store lady thought it was cute. Glad one of us did.

Afterwords I maneuvered myself to the shopping area around Kiyomizu-dera (out of sheer memory – so proud of myself) to buy some gifts and dink around so I was already out. Back at it in the Ghibli store, more pottery places and getting all those free samples. It was a good time.

Came home to some lovely ikayaki (fried squid), which I’d asked about ages ago and lo and behold, okaa-san delivers yet again. It was really good but I could only eat 1 squid. Til tomorrow, then. Also ended up trying amazake, which is sweet sake and honestly looks/tastes like rice pudding. It was thick with not-fully-mushed rice, and you couldn’t taste any alcohol. Pairs nicely with oatmeal cookies.

Last thing of the night was the music special, which flips through all the hot songs from now and then. PPAP’s Piko Taro made his lovely appearance with a special Christmas version, but neither I nor okaa-san understood it. Oh well. The cute part was that we were literally watching this special for hours waiting for his butt to appear. When he finally did come up okaa-san was on the phone, but when I called her name and told her he was up, woah. I swear her face lit up, big smile cracked and she could not get rid of the person on the other end of the line fast enough. I love how much we both love PPAP (she mentions it like every other day, and if there’s an acronym with any P or p-rhyming sound in it, like TPP, she immediately thinks it’s PPAP and freaks out).