Feeling Crunky.

 Japan, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on Feeling Crunky.
Oct 122007
 

Crunky!

I had a fun evening, and things are slow, so I’ll tell you all about it now, because I have super-fast Ethernet.

I decided to go to Nagoya for dinner. I thought it would be fun to go to the station, which I hear is one of the largest train stations in the world, and find a place to eat.

Well, sometimes things don’t happen the way we expect them to.

I walked to JR Okazaki to catch a train to Nagoya. I went through the wicket, and down to the tracks. As I got to the platform, I sensed something was up, because both the local and the special express were sitting there, waiting for me with open doors, and nobody was running to them.

From what I have gathered so far, this is not normal train behavior in Japan.

The crowd of people at the ticket booth hassling the poor ticket agent should have also triggered my sense of alarm, but it did not. The people sitting on the train cars looking tired, bored, and ready to go to sleep should have also clued me in.

I think the jet lag has made me slightly dumber to miss that one.

So I got in a train car and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Meanwhile someone kept repeating something very polite about police I couldn’t quite understand, and “sorry for making you wait.”

I really need to improve my listening skills.

I did a little thinking, and realized that Something Really Bad must have happened to stop a whole train line, so I bailed for the local student bar on the Yamasa campus, “ZigZag,” again. It’s a nice place to socialize with the other students, and the food is cheap. So is the Guinness. But I skipped the beer again, because I reasoned that if it took me 25 minutes to figure out that the trains weren’t working, beer would not in any way improve my mental acuity.

On the way home, I found a drink called “Qoo.” I would have photographed it, but I didn’t feel like it. I’m not really sure what Qoo is. It seemed like a flat orange soda to me. Then again, it was late and dark, I was thirsty, and it looked cute.

I’m a sucker for cute, so Japan is probably going to get me good.

I stopped by my savior, the local QuickMart, where I found a “Crunky” bar (yes, Crunky) and some milk. Ah, that hit the spot.

And now I will finally pass out for the night.

Crunky bars are good. Kind of like a Nestle Crunch ice cream bar, only with a much cooler name.

Crunky.

My fellow Americans will know why the name Crunky amuses me, if they’re under 50.

Burugaria (is it Bulgaria?) brand blueberry yogurt has also served as a great breakfast and random snack.

Yogurt!

And as a shout-out to my online gaming friend Omi, look what I found!

Inside Joke

I’ll try to go to Nagoya again tomorrow.

Oh, I also found a great laundry detergent. It’s called “Attack! All In.” Just my style of laundry cleaning.

Attack!

I’m all in.

The Bicycle from Hell.

 Japan, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on The Bicycle from Hell.
Oct 122007
 

Today I discovered a few embarrassing, yet very important things.

  1. The 2,000 yen/week bicycle you rent will probably look bad no matter what.
  2. The 2,000 yen helmet you get extra somehow makes you look even worse.
  3. The 2,000 yen/week bicycle rides even worse than you thought a bicycle could.
  4. Using the 2,000 yen/week bicycle means that your posterior will severely dislike you.
  5. It beats walking… sometimes?

The 2,000 yen a week bicycle.

I’m going to lay down on my stomach and sob softly into my pillow. Maybe I’ll be able to sit again tomorrow.

I suppose I could just block the memory. Or just create some better memories and hope they drown out my discomfort.

Other Stuff

I’m thinking about going to Nagoya to have some dinner at the station. I could seriously murder a cow right now and just eat it raw.

My teachers are nice, and they’re proving just how little Japanese I really know. That’s kind of sad. But they’re eager to help me, and I appreciate it. I had six semesters of Japanese in graduate school, but then I made the mistake of not studying much the last 3 years or so.

If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Fast.

More Random Stuff

It gets dark quickly here, because they don’t believe in Daylight Savings Time. I kind of miss that, but then again, when I’m in the U.S., and the sun doesn’t rise until 8 a.m. in October, well, that’s kind of messed-up, too.

My in-room phone has a “Morning Call” feature. (What we call a  “wake-up call” in the U.S.) I have no idea how to turn it off. I can set it for whenever I want to, but I can’t set it to “Never.”

My A/C and I keep having little fights over whether it wants to run or not. You’d think 75F would be cool enough to open the windows. You’d be wrong. Okazaki makes Florida feel like a desert. (It’s very humid here for some reason.) Opening the window only makes it worse.

In spite of it all, I’m having a blast. I’m in an unfamiliar country doing strange things, and nobody has arrested me.

Yet.

FEEL NEWS

 Japan, Travel  Comments Off on FEEL NEWS
Oct 122007
 

This waking up before 6 a.m. thing is something it’s going to take time to get used to. Since my classes don’t start until 12:30 p.m., I have a lot of time to kill in the mornings.

So this morning I decided to head to the local supermarket, named FEEL NEWS… I’m not sure how one “feels” the news, or what it has to do with groceries, and I probably never will. Then again, I shop at a grocery store called Harris-Teeter, and sometimes I shop at Whole Foods. (But I don’t usually eat my foods whole.) So odd naming isn’t just a Japanese thing.

Anyway, it was around 9:30 or so, and I was thinking, “It should be open by now. It’s a supermarket, right?” I mean come on, the local Harris-Teeter is open 24/7. I can’t think of any respectable American grocery store that hasn’t gotten out of bed by 8 a.m.

So I walked in. The doors opened, I went up some stairs, and started walking around. Nobody said a word to me. Then after about 5 minutes, someone finally came and explained to me that the store was still closed.

*Sigh*

I guess that explains all the weird looks I was getting from the employees. It was just weird that nobody said anything to me for a while. Maybe it has something to do with being averse to telling a customer that he has made a rather large mistake? (A rather large mistake like not realizing that the store was still closed?)

I just have one question: if your store is closed, why do the doors open?

So I decided to go to the bookstore down the road. It was 9:45 a.m. by now. The sign on the door said that it opened at 9:30… but all of the windows were shuttered, and the staff was doing inventory on the floor. I didn’t even bother trying to find out if it’s open, because more than likely, it wasn’t.

I gave up and started to head back towards my dorm. On the way to the closed supermarket, I passed what looked like a small office supplies store that I thought was open. But when I came back to it on the way back, it was closed too, with a note scrawled on the door.

I’m sensing a trend.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and by the time classes are over at 3:30, I’ll make it just in time for everything to close.

Or at least for that memo about me to get around to everyone else.

Phone Stuff

I have the Internet, and my Estonian cell phone works.

I’m using the Softbank SIM card more often, because it’s cheaper for US people to call me in Japan than in Estonia… by about 2 orders of magnitude. In a pinch I can call out on the Estonian phone, because I read the fine manual and figured out how to use it. It’s online on the travelsimshop website. It’s a bit pricey to call out, but I can do it if I need to.

Another odd thing I saw during my morning walk– American-style houses sprouting up in new construction. Most of the houses I’ve seen here are very Japanese, very traditional. Not these. They look like something out of a Charlotte suburb.

Oh, I think I’ve almost figured out how to sort my trash. I’ll save that for later.

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