Hidemi's Rambling No.396

As the place I live in has been closed by snow lying about nine feet and I tend to feel claustrophobia more often, I went down to the nearest snow-free city by bullet train for the first time. It’s a regional city far from the Tokyo metropolitan area where I used to live. It has a cool shopping mall right above the train station, inside and around which there are numerous stylish restaurants and shops, including my favorites such as Starbucks and McDonald’s. I also found Gusto and Royal Host, which are Japanese major restaurant chains. With a fifteen-minute bus ride from the station, the city even has an enormous shopping mall that includes Costco. That mall is so gigantic that I felt as if I was in U.S. Costco there is far better than the one in Tokyo area that I used to shop at, with more space and less shoppers. It was so comfortable to shop around. People in the city are nicer than those who live in the metropolitan area, too. Urban coolness and convenience combined with a rural relaxing atmosphere makes the city an unbeatable place. It precisely turned out to be an ideal city for me. I felt excited to see a splendid place like this exist in Japan. The problem is, I need to pay the expensive bullet train fare each time to go there because the local train takes too much time and stops running too often due to snow. No matter how well I manage my money, a visit once a month is the maximum I can afford. It’s so hard for me to wait until next month to go to such a wonderful city I finally came across…