Noodling Around Okazaki on a Sunday

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Oct 212007
 

Today was nice.

I woke up at 8, was freezing to death, cranked up the heat (once I figured out how), then went back to sleep until 10 a.m. (Which is exceedingly late for me.)

I goofed around for most of the day, played on the computer a bit, did laundry, and then I went to the local Aeon mall.

Going to the mall was interesting. It was about a 25 minute hike to get there, and when I got there, it felt like a smaller-scale version of a U.S. mall. As if everything had been shrunk a bit.

It felt very crowded, and un-U.S.-mall-like. American malls generally have more space devoted to wide corridors that are easy to traverse without having to get to close to the other shoppers. Land isn’t as plentiful here, so I understand that you can’t get such a luxury and still keep prices reasonable.

I found a Sports Authority, and it had Chunichi Dragons hats, which were expensive at 2,400 yen, but I wanted a hat. They weren’t the good wool hats, they were the cheaper ones with the plastic mesh back.  I got my hat anyway, and now I am Mr. Baseball, too. (But I lack Tom Selleck’s mustache powers.)

Then it was back down route 248 (the main drag in this section of Okazaki) to stop off at the Seiyu. It was one of those, grocery store on the first floor, lumber on the second floor, clothes on the third floor sort of stores. It was kind of confusing, but at least I have a place I can buy groceries where nobody knows that I wandered in accidentally when they were closed. 

I wandered some more and found a kaitenzushi place, which is Japanese for conveyor belt sushi. I snagged some tasty deep-fried nuggets… of what I don’t know, but it was good. Chicken, maybe? Pork? Either way, it was good.

Then I found my Holy Grail: ootoro, my favorite cut of tuna. It’s the fattiest cut, and it goes down like butter.

It’s also 600 yen a plate, so I could only have one plate. I had a few more plates of other stuff, like egg sushi. But it was no ootoro.

I am now ruined for sushi.

I decided to skip Denny’s again, because my rule is one restaurant a day to keep the costs down. After first dinner, I went to the QuickMart for second dinner, because sushi doesn’t fill me up. Convenience store food here is good. Then I listened to a little ESPN, did a little antivirus scanning, and now I’m heading to bed.

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.

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