Day 1
After a 35 to 46 second tutorial on how my apartment works the previous occupant and my ride ditched out. It was around 12:30 AM and despite the massively long trip I was restless enough to unpack everything. Afterwards, still restless, I decided at about 2 AM to take a walk outside around my apartment. This is the first time I'd set foot outside an airport, train, or bus station since I landed in Tokyo, suffice to say, it looked like a cross between The Bronx, Harlem, Bulgaria, and anything we've all gleaned from watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. That is however, the one back road I ventured down, which was totally vacant of anylife, cars, people, stray cats or otherwise.
I tried to instill extremely low expectations about my apartment in myself before I left. As a result, my apartment is f'in (this is a family blog afterall) awesome. Not only are the kitchen and bathroom separate entities, but there's also a livingroom, bedroom, and balcony (albeit a first floor one). The hot water feels like the center of the sun (thankyou volcanic island) and the shower is big enough for...well more than one person.
The bedroom isn't so much a "bed" room persay, but more like a matt-room, because everyone sleeps on a 3 inch thick matt layed on the hardwood. Apparently the easiest measurement for a room is by how many of these matts can be layed across it, I have a moderate six matt matt-room, where I will watch matt-lock with laying on my matted hair with Matt Stiles.
Well Saturday came, I have no phone, nor anybody to call locally to show me around, nor do I have voltage adaptors to plug in my computer, which doesn't have working internet yet anyway, so I decide to wander until I find something useful. With that I traverse the mean streets of Tokuyama.
The mean streets of Tokuyama are pretty much shut down on Saturday. There is nothing open. I found a moderate sized supermarket and decided to grab some chow. Which I can store in my refrigerate and freezer unit - provided. Along with a microwave and rice cooker. The kitchen also has two gas burners, but no stove, so nobody gets cupcakes. The first thing I see in the market is beer, I decide I like this market, I picked up a couple of Kirin Beers and toss them in my basket, then on trying to decide if I want a third I look at the price. $2.50 for a can of beer, or 2500 yen for you currency exchange nazi's. I picked up a box of Japanese frosted flakes, because they had snoopy on the box, and Snoopy would never give me food poisoning, and some vegetables, bread, deli meats etc. As a side-note, all deli meats in Japan look like ham, but I like ham so it's ok. I did a double take when these items were wrung up though. Because it came to almost 40 dollars, 40000 yen, as it turns out beer isn't the only expensive item here, everything you can eat or drink is ridiculously expensive, which is the only reason Japanese people are so thin, don't buy into that diet crap. You have to be a millionare to afford to even gain weight here. I decided on day 1 the food budget would have to be kept to a minimum to furnish the beer budget. Big bags of rice, big bags of noodles, and big bags of beer will be the norm from now on.
With food out of the way, I went back home, dropped off my wares and set back out in search of adaptors, how hard can it possibly be to find an electronics store in Japan? What the #&$^! I wandered around literally a thirty block radius, 360 degrees around my apartment and found one electronics store, which didn't have voltage adaptors. But if I were writing a treatise on Japanese culture based on what I did see it would go something like this.
The Japanese are a race of car loving people who have wonderful smiles, but for some reason their hair grows at 6 times the rate of a normal human beings. They have no wish to look "cool" or even reasonable for that matter. They love to sing karaoke, but hate to buy music. Unfortunately they seem technologically inept, and have severe aversions to crowded places and smog.
Based on 6 hours of walking Saturday I did not see a single dirty car, they cherish their cars more than their children, spouses, cameras combined. A small note on Japanese cars, they're very cute, most are about 3 1/2 feet wide, and designed like card board boxes, but they love the things. During this walk I saw 2 hair salons for every other kind of business, with the exception of car dealerships. A lot of people around here ride bikes, and most of the men I saw were riding bright pink or purple bikes with little Wizard of OZ type baskets in the front. They have a ton of Karaoke bars, but no record stores, and I did not see another electronics, computer, or dvd, computer or game store the entire day. Every other Japanese person also happened to be wearing a thin white mask over their mouths, similar to what we'd see housepainters wearing, which I have to say makes me slightly nervouse *cough* birdflu *cough*
Also, I'm not sure how many of you can truly appreciate the degree of helplessness a foreigner faces here. This is not like France, or Italy or any other European country. There are no letters here (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz). Our alphabet does not exist in this country, everything is written in the same stlye as the whorey tattoos every post gen-x long island girl decides to scrawl across the crack of her ass. There are slashes, and boxes, and lines, and circles mashed together like a playschool factory exploded. So suffice to say, nothing was accomplished aside from buying the beer I would later use to help me fall asleep.
I am writing this particular entry on Tuesday night, I landed on friday - This morning I discovered...the voltage here is the same as the USA. Bear in mind Sunday and Monday were consumed with the same quest to find adapter I didn't need. Welcome to my world.
I tried to instill extremely low expectations about my apartment in myself before I left. As a result, my apartment is f'in (this is a family blog afterall) awesome. Not only are the kitchen and bathroom separate entities, but there's also a livingroom, bedroom, and balcony (albeit a first floor one). The hot water feels like the center of the sun (thankyou volcanic island) and the shower is big enough for...well more than one person.
The bedroom isn't so much a "bed" room persay, but more like a matt-room, because everyone sleeps on a 3 inch thick matt layed on the hardwood. Apparently the easiest measurement for a room is by how many of these matts can be layed across it, I have a moderate six matt matt-room, where I will watch matt-lock with laying on my matted hair with Matt Stiles.
Well Saturday came, I have no phone, nor anybody to call locally to show me around, nor do I have voltage adaptors to plug in my computer, which doesn't have working internet yet anyway, so I decide to wander until I find something useful. With that I traverse the mean streets of Tokuyama.
The mean streets of Tokuyama are pretty much shut down on Saturday. There is nothing open. I found a moderate sized supermarket and decided to grab some chow. Which I can store in my refrigerate and freezer unit - provided. Along with a microwave and rice cooker. The kitchen also has two gas burners, but no stove, so nobody gets cupcakes. The first thing I see in the market is beer, I decide I like this market, I picked up a couple of Kirin Beers and toss them in my basket, then on trying to decide if I want a third I look at the price. $2.50 for a can of beer, or 2500 yen for you currency exchange nazi's. I picked up a box of Japanese frosted flakes, because they had snoopy on the box, and Snoopy would never give me food poisoning, and some vegetables, bread, deli meats etc. As a side-note, all deli meats in Japan look like ham, but I like ham so it's ok. I did a double take when these items were wrung up though. Because it came to almost 40 dollars, 40000 yen, as it turns out beer isn't the only expensive item here, everything you can eat or drink is ridiculously expensive, which is the only reason Japanese people are so thin, don't buy into that diet crap. You have to be a millionare to afford to even gain weight here. I decided on day 1 the food budget would have to be kept to a minimum to furnish the beer budget. Big bags of rice, big bags of noodles, and big bags of beer will be the norm from now on.
With food out of the way, I went back home, dropped off my wares and set back out in search of adaptors, how hard can it possibly be to find an electronics store in Japan? What the #&$^! I wandered around literally a thirty block radius, 360 degrees around my apartment and found one electronics store, which didn't have voltage adaptors. But if I were writing a treatise on Japanese culture based on what I did see it would go something like this.
The Japanese are a race of car loving people who have wonderful smiles, but for some reason their hair grows at 6 times the rate of a normal human beings. They have no wish to look "cool" or even reasonable for that matter. They love to sing karaoke, but hate to buy music. Unfortunately they seem technologically inept, and have severe aversions to crowded places and smog.
Based on 6 hours of walking Saturday I did not see a single dirty car, they cherish their cars more than their children, spouses, cameras combined. A small note on Japanese cars, they're very cute, most are about 3 1/2 feet wide, and designed like card board boxes, but they love the things. During this walk I saw 2 hair salons for every other kind of business, with the exception of car dealerships. A lot of people around here ride bikes, and most of the men I saw were riding bright pink or purple bikes with little Wizard of OZ type baskets in the front. They have a ton of Karaoke bars, but no record stores, and I did not see another electronics, computer, or dvd, computer or game store the entire day. Every other Japanese person also happened to be wearing a thin white mask over their mouths, similar to what we'd see housepainters wearing, which I have to say makes me slightly nervouse *cough* birdflu *cough*
Also, I'm not sure how many of you can truly appreciate the degree of helplessness a foreigner faces here. This is not like France, or Italy or any other European country. There are no letters here (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz). Our alphabet does not exist in this country, everything is written in the same stlye as the whorey tattoos every post gen-x long island girl decides to scrawl across the crack of her ass. There are slashes, and boxes, and lines, and circles mashed together like a playschool factory exploded. So suffice to say, nothing was accomplished aside from buying the beer I would later use to help me fall asleep.
I am writing this particular entry on Tuesday night, I landed on friday - This morning I discovered...the voltage here is the same as the USA. Bear in mind Sunday and Monday were consumed with the same quest to find adapter I didn't need. Welcome to my world.
posted by Just1Wheat at
4:26 AM
