{"id":7,"date":"2007-10-12T11:09:24","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T16:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=7"},"modified":"2014-08-18T17:16:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T22:16:00","slug":"feel-news-huh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=7","title":{"rendered":"FEEL NEWS"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

*Sigh*<\/p>\n

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?)<\/p>\n

I just have one question: if your store is closed, why do the doors open?<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/em> was open. But when I came back to it on the way back, it was closed too, with a note scrawled on the door.<\/p>\n

I’m sensing a trend.<\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

Or at least for that memo <\/span>about me <\/span>to get around to everyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Phone Stuff<\/h3>\n

I have the Internet, and my Estonian cell phone works.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, I think I’ve almost figured out how to sort my trash. I’ll save that for later.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[894,827,100,147,97,895,96],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-travel","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2007","tag-okazaki","tag-sim-card","tag-softbank-sim-card","tag-travel","tag-travelsimshop","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1519,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}