A Three Day Weekend

We just finished a three day weekend and boy was it fun. Although nothing drastically out of the ordinary, it was simply a great end to one week and a perfect beginning to another. We have found ourselves enjoying classic movies as of late so we took the extra time to knock out a few more. We watched Cleopatra, Psycho, and Lifeboat. All three were good, however Cleopatra was insanely long (Joe fell asleep for about an hour and a half in the middle). Joe loved Psycho and the conversation that followed the movie was worth the fright for Kellyn. Lifeboat was interesting but maybe not a movie we would run out and buy for our personal collection. The rest of the weekend was spent lounging around, sleeping in, going grocery shopping, experimenting with new foods, trying to make Kellyn's computer run better, exploring Nakajima Koen, and playing poker. The last two were the most fun.

Nakajima Koen (park) is quite near our house. In fact, when we get off the subway we are on the edge of the park. While we have walked through a small section of the park we have never fully explored it until this weekend. Within the park lies the Sapporo Concert Hall, a museum of literature, a place to rent rowboats, a Shinto shrine, a beautiful hotel, and of coarse the park itself. While walking through the park an older woman stopped us and had us take a huge handful of chestnuts from a bag. She spoke no English and either didn't care or ignored us when we said we didn't speak much Japanese. She kept talking and talking to us in Japanese and then wanted us to respond. All we could do was hold onto our chestnuts and laugh. Eventually, she gave up and we walked in the opposite direction. Thanks for the chestnust! Apparently, the park was built when the Olympics blew through Sapporo. We say, "Well done city of Sapporo. It's a beautiful park."



Now for the poker. Kellyn has never played poker before but we had a deck of cards and it was about time that we start playing with them. Joe had a basic knowledge of the game and brought up some directions for Kellyn to glace at if needed during the first few rounds. Well turns out Kellyn is a natural poker shark. The current score: 3 to 0. For our second game we decided to make it a little more interesting. We bought some of our favorite snacks and used them as our chips. Butter-Bread sticks were worth 1, white chocolate filled pretzles were worth 5, and milk chocolate covered almonds were worth 10. Kellyn won that game with a four Kings, but she shared her winnings with her teacher, husband, and greatest fan.