This morning I got up at 6 AM in Morro Bay and hit the road by 6:30 to drive the 150 miles back to the Ventura homestead.  Then Sean and I went out to breakfast; we walked a mile down to the Golden Egg Café, ate, and walked home again.  Then we got in the car and drove 70 more miles into Los Angeles to the Japanese American National Museum, where I’d arranged to meet my good friend Pat.  We had lunch at Mr. Ramen in Little Tokyo, browsed at Kinokuniya (a very cool Japanese bookstore), and then Pat and I checked out the Hello Kitty exhibition which I’d seen once before and wrote about in Day 74.  Sean opted to hang out at a coffee shop this time.

Afterwards, we walked with Pat to Union Station, where she was catching the train back to San Bernardino.  By then it was 3:45 PM, and Sean had tickets for the L.A. Galaxy soccer game at 7 PM.  So we did some food shopping at Marukai Market, ate some take-out sushi, hung out in the open plaza area at the Weller Court Shopping Center, and read our books until it was time to go to the game.  Normally, I am not a huge sports fan and I don’t particularly enjoy being at a crowded sporting event.  But Sean did go with me to the Hello Kitty exhibition the first time, so it was only fair that I go with him to the soccer game tonight.

He did buy me a cool L.A. Galaxy t-shirt, though.  Because if there was one thing he saw at the Hello Kitty exhibition and totally understood, it was the Sanrio philosophy:  “Small gift, big smile.”