# A regional Japanese mall

> Walk somewhere uninteresting sometimes.

We walked to the Aeon Mall in [Motomiya, Morioka](https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=39.68374&mlon=141.12814#map=13/39.68374/141.12814) today. It wasn't far – a couple of kilometres. After a few beautiful weeks, today was a cloudy, forgettable day.

The mall felt very 'regional'; a word Lucy and I use with some affection. To us, it means a place that just _is what it is_. Just a place that people go. No big story. Life, going on. I love that. It's why I travel. To be with people, in their life.

We passed through a tiny, empty park. Not even a park. An open area with some slides. I can't imagine it's ever seen more than a handful of Australians. A regional park. There was nobody there. I should have taken a photo. It would have been melancholy. I don't take photos.

_This_ is being in a place, to me. This is why we stay in a place for months at a time. We learn it. We walk to its regional malls. You know what we got, in this regional Japanese mall? McDonald's. You know what Japanese people eat sometimes? McDonald's. Then we walked back.