Japan Day 5: Another lazy rainy day
Scott had to go back to work today so Susan and had a lazy morning and then decided to go out and run some errands. First off, we needed to go to the post office so that we could get some money, the ATMs are in the post offices here. So we got ready and headed out. Of course, being the moron that I am, I realized when we got to the post office that I had forgot my wallet which meant that I couldn’t get any money from the ATM and that Susan was going to have to buy me lunch (I love it when a plan comes together, I kid, I kid) which was going to be our next stop. The ATM machines here are funny, there are little cartoon animals that come on the screen and stuff, the japanese have lots of little cute things like that, there are little cutsie animals all over the place.
So after getting some money we headed off to find ourselves some lunch. We went to a little place that was nice and cheap and right across the street from the 100 yen store which was going to be our next stop. I got some fried chicken plate which was yummy. One odd thing that I have noticed about Japan is that you are never brought the bill to your table, you always pay up at the front. So Susan and I enjoyed our food, especially the gyo-za (potstickers) which Susan and I are both huge fans of.
The next stop was the one hundred yen store, think of it as a dollar store in the US. I was kind of excited about this because I thought I might see some funny things and probably find some good Engrish, I wasn’t disappointed.
Here are some of the funny/weird things I found. Click for bigger.
They had a large selection of bags, here are two excellent examples of Engrish.
Fruit type condoms anyone? You can’t clearly see it in the picture but the thing directly to the right of the object being held is what we think is a metal Q-tip like device or what the japanese call “ear cleaning stick”. I tried getting a picture but the flash drowned it out.
Some more Engrish
When we were checking out from the 100 yen store something cool happened. At many places in Japan when you are checking out the cash registers are kind of like slot machines or something. Susan ended up winning two or three hundred yen worth of stuff from the store, we had a hard time understanding the woman who was explaining to us what she had won. Pretty cool though, it’s fun to just randomly win stuff.
When we left the dollar store the mini pizza car from day 4 was out in the parking lot and I had to take another picture of it, this way you can see it in relation to other cars. Keep in mind that the car behind in the picture would be considered tiny in the US.
After the 100 yen store we headed back to their place real quick so that I could get my wallet and we could drop off the stuff we bought. We then headed off to the base so that Susan could go do her cheerleading stuff (she is the cheerleading coach) and I could check out the base, get some money from the ATM, hopefully get a memory card for my camera and check out Scotty’s school. After being in Japan for almost a week it was strange seeing so many white people in one place again. I hit the ATM got myself some more cash, checked out the base stores and stuff. Didn’t get a new memory card for my camera though. They wanted like 80 bucks for a one gig card and that seemed really high to me, when we got back I check Amazon and it is high, they have one gig cards for half that price so I am going to wait a bit and see if I can’t find one cheaper. I did find out something cool today, through the base you can send a box worth of stuff back to the states for eight bucks regardless of weight. I am not sure how big the box is but I think I am going to be sending some stuff home that way.
After checking out the base and stuff Susan handed me over to Scott and went to do her cheerleading stuff. I got to see Scott interacting with his kids which was a hoot seeing how Scotty is insane. Here he is in his classroom.
Scott was staying a bit late to help some kids who weren’t quite getting the calculus lesson. Pretty funny to see Scott in action. He is still his same insanse self but you can tell he is a good teacher and that the kids love him.
After that Scott gave me a quick tour around the base, ufortunately it was raining, in fact it had been raining all day and continued to rain all night, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there and we didn’t watch the fighter jets taking off and stuff. Hopefully we will get a chance to do that later.
Scott and I decided to do a bit more grocery shopping. Funny thing is, when Scott and I go grocery shopping we don’t seem to buy anything other than beer and alcohol. We did get a little cheese and some ice this time though. There are just so many different Japanese beers to try and flavors of Chuhai that it is hard to resist.
I did think to take some pictures of the strange and cool things they have at a Japanese grocery store though.
Octopus tentacle anyone? Pretty cheap too, they are only about 250 yen so around two bucks.
They have some amazing beef in Japan, here is a picture of the meat section.
And here is a close up of some awesome beef, check out that marbling.
Here you can get some prepared meals for you, we didn’t get any but they sure look yummy.
Just a general shot of the store, doesn’t really look any different than a US one.
And now we get to some of the weird stuff you can find. In the middle of this picture is a bag of little dried up fish.
I probably find this the most disgusting. It’s a bag of what appears to be little dried up octopuses, they feel disgusting, very rubbery, and they just look terribly wrong.
After doing our shopping we headed back to Scott’s and enjoyed some of the beverages we just bought. After awhile we got hungry and decided to go out and get ourselves some food. We went to a place in which Scott and Susan have an awesome story. The first time they were there they were encouraged by the staff to order the squid, so they did. The squid was taken live out of the fish tank, the head cut off and the body cut up and little pieces and then handed to them to eat. The tentacles were still flopping around, the squid was changing colors like crazy. They couldn’t handle eating it like that, not with it changing colors and flopping around so they asked for the head and tentacle part to be taken away. As the sever was taking it away the tentacles wrapped around the guys hand. Needless to say, I didn’t order the squid. We did have a very nice dinner though and the place was very cool. I snapped a few pictures of the inside of the place, check it out.
This is where we sat, in fact, those are our three plates. You can see the giant fishtank behind the dude.
This is the area behind us.
After dinner we just went back to their place, had a few more Chuhais and went to bed. Hopefully it doesn’t rain all day tomorrow like it did today.
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