Tuesday Evening - Getting Busy (in the literal sense) - Boring Post about Sunday to Monday Morning

Hey, I only have a little bit of time here so I'll just jot down what I can and continue on tomorrow morning.

Sunday afternoon I was exploring the food sections of the department stores here in Umeda. I bought a miniature waffle folded over some mousse for about 85 cents. They packaged it in a big white box, decorated it with stickers and taped an ice pack around it to keep it cool. I had to get out of range of sight before just pulling everything apart and eating it, but it was very kind of them.

I know the towel sidestory thinned out long ago, but I spent most of Sunday still searching. I was thrown about by numerous tricky directions and false claims, and ended up leaving Umeda towelless. I did, however, make another find of something else that had been high up on my list. In the Hankyu train station I came across a shop called "Sushi Express" that sells a wide variety of sushi-to-go, most importantly the coveted California Roll! It was half the price and twice as good as back home, reducing back home's sushi to some incalculable fraction.

So I took the train up to Juso station around where my roommate had pointed out the discount store that he said would sell towels. I found laundry detergent outside and was immediately drawn in. I proceeded up and down the aisles and was able to pick up a number of goods that I had been planning on tracking down. In fact, I was so delighted that I completely forgot what I had gone in there for. That is, until I turned down the last aisle.

There it was: the perfect towel. At 950 yen it was well within my price range and its texture soft, but not too soft, just as a towel should be. It's blue and large enough that it will make a fine toga, should the occasion ever come up.

So with my new towel, I rushed home to try it out. Now that I was officialy able to shower more than once a day, I threw on my jogging clothes and went for some cardiovascular exercise for my first time since I left home. I just looked over this paragraph and found numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes, I haven't been rereading much so I apologize since this is probably a regular occurence.

Anyway, as far as exploring a neighbourhood goes, jogging is probably the best method aside from a bike. Actually, jogging can be better in some ways because it allows you to freely go in and out of shops and blend into a crowd if need be. My main goal was to find out what Magic Bird was. Since the night I arrived I'd been trying to figure this out and my roommate somehow didn't know.

Magic Bird was a big, flashy illuminated building that had the look of a giant casino, right on the other side of the train tracks from the back of my apartment. I could see the words "Magic Bird" flashing all night long if I looked out back and can't understand why my roommates weren't at all curious. It looked fairly suspcious and I had a few theories as to what it could be...

I jogged under the tracks (there's a tunnel) and checked it out... In the first corner of the building that I had come to, it looked like some kind of Japanese diner. They were serving alcohol and the only customers were an old couple. The next corner down appeared to be a souvenir shop. I saw that they were selling women's clothing items and children's toys.

Suddenly, a big gang of people on motorcycles spun around the corner and a parking attendant waved them into an underground parking area on the other side of the building. This was getting weird. Then I found a window which made it blatently obvious... Pachinko!

Pachinko is an immensely popular form of gambling here that seems to be everywhere. I haven't yet gone into a Pachinko Parlour but it looks like it's some kind of slot machine game full of addicted looking Asian drones. The kind of gambling that sucks the life out of people. I'd like to give it a try sometime.

I was surprised to find a Starbucks with a saxophonist playing outside (my roommate says he's there in the corner every night and is just practicing) -- this really didn't seem like it fit in the neighbourhood. I found the bar called Friendly's that Zoe had mentioned the other day. I found a 100-yen shop that is three storeys and actually has some pretty good junk (mass-produced goods from China can come here more cheaply so I guess the products are better), and I found a music store/video rental shop that still rents everything in VHS! These developments all make my neighbourhood far more exciting.

Next, Will and I watched an VHS from the bad collection we have at home, an old movie called K2 about some guys who climb the infamous Himalayan mountain and I'd say you've probably figured out the entire plot with just its mention. He then cycled over to the 99 yen food shop, and I joined him on foot, running alongside. It's good to run again.

This shop has only food and everything is 99 yen (99 cents CDN) which I find bizarre. They have pastries, milk, noodles, chips, juice, and everything in the store is the exact same price. Seeing as these are all very general goods I'd think that you'd be either over- or underpaying for just about anything.

This post has gone way too long for Sunday, when basically nothing happened.

I think that Monday morning brought me my first full night's sleep since a couple days before I left Halifax. I had my Nova orientation starting at 1pm so I went out for breakfast at the European cafe at my train station that serves fresh orange juice.

Japanese restaurants are really into catering people eating alone since that's what most customers seem to be doing. It seems rare to see big tables in restaurants or cafes and a lot of places have bar-type seating all along the outside and even in the middle. The McDonald's in JR Station has a big standing section. By this I mean they have a high counter and people just go there and eat standing up while facing a wall. I laughed when I first saw it but was there at lunch time and it was immensely popular among the businesspeople.

When I got back home after breakfast I was mortified to realize that I had left my key in my shorts from the previous night's jogging escapade. I rang the buzzer but Will wasn't there. I needed to get back in before going to orietnation - I had forms to fill out and a suit to wear. I really, really didn't know what to do, actually. I really need to get a key copied so I can hide it somewhere clever. Luckily, though, Will showed up, he had been getting something from the local 7/11 and let me back into the apartment.

I put on my suit and headed down to Namba. It's almost 11:30pm and I have to go home now since I have a long day of training again tomorrow, but my next post involves Orientation (Monday) and my first day of Training (Tuesday) which is much more exciting than the long waste of everyone's time that I just typed out.

Ryan