rain, rain, go away!

So, this week, because of a shift swap that I had done, I only had one day off. Today was it. And guess what? It's raining again. I think everyday I have off, it rains. Roughly everyday at least. But anyway, I braved the elements and headed into the downtown area of Oomori to check out a couple of places. The first place, which I checked out on my way home last night(after it was closed), was Oomori Bell Port. It's mostly an office building, but it has a bunch of restaurants inside also. It seems that they might also put on concerts there too, I'm not too sure about that, but there was an area that looked like it could be some kind of performance area. As far as the shops and restaurants went, it was a bit of a letdown, not too much going on really, but the architecture was really cool, see
:

So, I just walked around there for a bit, and then I made my way across the street to the Ito Yokado. (notice the large "7&i" logo on the top of the building. 7-11 and Ito Yokado have merged here) I've heard alot about this place, I've been to a few of them before around other stations, but this was the first time to see the one in my hometown here, I just could never find it before. Well, I was impressed. It's really just you're typical department/grocery store, like Fred Meyer's, or something like that, but what seperated it from other Ito Yokodo's I've been to in Japan is that this place was really spacious. It's set up on 3 floors, but you've got room to walk around, and not run into people. While I was there, I stopped by the food court, and came across something I've never seen before, a "Colonel's." "What is that?" you ask? Well, apparently it's not a KFC. But it sure seems like it. They seemed to have maybe some more wraps and sandwich deallys than maybe you're normal KFC, but not really. The one real difference I noticed was that the fries were different. Instead of the wedge style you find at KFC, they had the criss-cross style at Colonel's. I had a chicken sandwich and it was good, but I really couldn't figure out why it was not a KFC really.... kinda curious....