Aug
31
4th day, early morning. My other roommate, Henrik, informs me that the wired connection for unregistered laptops is supposed to work without signing any extra papers until the 16th of September. That is good news. I proceed to spend the following hour writing the blog entry for Saturday. Have you noticed the growing inconsistency in my usage of verb tenses? I have. Do I care? Absolutely not. Anyhow, once done with the uninspired blogging we decide to go for a walk in order to find ourselves some breakfast. Convenience stores seem to be pretty scarce in the area surrounding the seminar houses so we have to walk a while in the sun (Achievement unlocked: Outdoor Sauna) to reach the shopping area surrounding Makino station.
Breakfast Sushi
We entered a 100-yen shop / Supermarket combo, bought some notebooks, after which I was able to get what I had been pining for for a while: a sushi lunch box. For breakfast. IT’S CANDY FOR BREAKFAST! We couldn’t really find a good place to eat and I didn’t expect the sushi to hold its own against 30 degrees for too long so we stopped at a shadowy spot in the corner of a street right in front of someone’s house to enjoy our meals. Stupid foreigners.
Sushi breakfast feat. Littipeukku
I’m too sexy for my bike
On our way back to the seminar house we met Chris and decided to go bicycle hunting. Getting directions from a Japanese policeman-looking old man was relatively easy, but the walk to the actual bike shop was exhausting. As expected, finding bikes that would be big enough for over the norm gaijins was impossible so we settled for a compromise: As long as our knees don’t hit the handlebar too often, everything is cool. Second-hand bikes were priced at ¥6500 (except one that was “prettier” and cost ¥7000. Yep, never understood that one, either) and the store gave us a receipt that would give us ¥500 back if we returned the bikes after the semester. Talk about a good business. Never mind the relative discomfort brought by a ridiculously small bike, the way back to the seminar house was much more enjoyable than walking about 45 minutes in the sun.
Kuzuha mall: Running with pigeons
Starvation, starvation, starvation is here!
New discovery tours were organized in the afternoon, this time to Kuzuha mall, a shopping center only one train station away from the Katahoko campus. The mall offered very little worth mentioning, if it isn’t that I was finally able to eat some Takoyaki (Small octopus dumplings that are edible but provide no good reason to actually order them again). Another favorite pass-time of mine at Kuzuha was to try and spot the weirdest engrish phrases I could find. There was that one t-shirt that had something so blatantly ridiculous written on it that I already forgot what it was. However, the babies’ clothing store called “Starvations” should probably be added as the dictionary entry for macabre. Due to a lack of interest, the rest of the evening will be described in words followed by arrows: Train > Hirakata station > Dinner > Home > Beer from vending machine > -No mom, I’m not an alcoholic > Sleep
-Antti