Saturday: Things didn't go as planned

Last week, From Up on Poppy Hill had the "wide" US release.  I checked at the time, but it wasn't playing anywhere in Hawaii.  That was resolved this week, as I discovered this morning when I checked.  Conveniently, it was playing at the theater that's right next to my standard Saturday sushi place.  Therefore, I came up with the wonderful plan:

1. Eat sushi.
2. Watch movie.
3. Get groceries, maybe?

This was a nice idea, but it turns out that 2pm on Saturday is a busy time at the sushi place.  I waited for my turn until ten minutes before the movie started, then gave up, as I didn't think I'd have enough time to eat my sushi comfortably.

So, $10 later, I had an acceptable theater hot dog:

I was hoping for a pretzel.

And a drink. Still, I was able to catch the movie:

I agree with myself from a year ago: "The goal of a cartoon shouldn't be to create a world of special effects that allows a lion to dance and sing and look realistic.  The goal should be to tell a good story with the help of beautiful pictures."  Ghibli does this again.  Beautiful art:

And a good story with a large number of quick one line jokes thrown in to keep what could be a somewhat depressing movie light and moving.  Another wonderful Ghibli movie that won't have nearly as many viewers as it deserves.  Even at my showing, there were less than a dozen people.

Plus, there's a tanuki in this room.

Then, afterwards, I was able to get a seat at the sushi place with no waiting.  Hooray!

Obligatory sushi picture.

I also discovered today that Safeway has removed the bottom rack on their carts.  This became obvious when I put a big case of water on it, heard a squeak as the bottles hit the floor, and then pushed my cart away leaving the water behind.  No idea why this happened, or even when.  I'm sure they had them last time I was there.

• Interesting.  I don't think totally banning GMO things is really the best strategy, but it does make sense to make sure that everything is properly labeled.  At this point, I don't understand why the government doesn't put QR-code things on all products that trace everything back to exact origins (such as the farms that raised the animals in the meat case, etc).  Well, ok, obviously the reason is that it would cost money, and a lot of people have financial interests in not being honest.  Still, it would be nice.
• I don't think this company makes the sushi machine at the sushi place.
• Red panda vs. sandwich.
• I did the same thing when this came up in my RSS feeds.