Japan - Day 3

It's bright and early on a Friday morning here in Kitakyushu. For some reason since coming to Japan I've lost my ability to sleep in! Damn time change! I suppose being an early riser isn't such a bad thing...? (I can't believe I just said that!)

Not too too much has happened in the past few days but there have been some adventures. I'm glad to report that my luggage arrived safe and sound yesterday morning. It was carried up by a fragile old man, and I felt bad, but he wouldn't let me take them from him until they was inside. They have excellent customer service here. Everyone is super-friendly all the time! (I wonder if there are anti-depressants in the water haha)

What else? Oh yeah my roommate Lucy arrived about 8:00PM on Wednesday and unlike myself, she was fully escorted to the apartment by another local teacher! I'm still proud of myself for finding this place on my own though haha! One sonic express train, monorail, and a short walk later... Lucy is pretty cool, she's 25 and from Brighton, England. I have to admit - I can't always understand what she saying to me, but I think I get the gist :P

Yesterday Lucy and I ventured into the city and wandered around for a while. We were on a mission to find a restaurant that had a rotating sushi bar but our luck fell short. We ended up settling on some noodle/soup shop in a food court. I'm not sure if it's *all* the foodcourts here or just the one we ended up in, but it's a different kind of experience. Most of the restaurants had a vending machine of sorts outside where you put in your money and I *think* made your order. I think from there you take a ticket up to the counter and they make your food. Luckily the shop we went to was much more simplistic and we just ordered at the counter. And by "order" I mean pointing to a picture of the food we wanted. I had soup with two pieces of shrimp tempura in it. It wasn't too bad actually aside from the fact that the tempura batter retained a lot of heat from the broth and I burnt my mouth a few times.

While in the city we also found a pet store and decided to take a look inside. Aside from the smell it appeared to be a fairly run-of-the-mill pet store. The smell, we discovered, wasn't due to lack of cleanliness, but from the two tamarin monkeys they had for sale. They were very cute! But oh so stinky! The puppies they had there were also adorable, but insanely expensive!!! The cheapest dog I saw was a black lab for 80,000 yen, or approximately $800 Canadian. But the smaller dogs like the chihuahuas ranged from 130,000 to over 300,000 yen! ($1300 - $3000) And the cats they had went for about the same prices! Not exactly as much as the chihuahuas, but still over $1000. They must have been purebread? Still crazy!

Aside from the animals things in Japan aren't as expensive as I was told they'd be. We went grocery shopping yesterday and everything seemed relatively cheap. Coke was about $1.58 for a 1.5L bottle, and steak was about $9.50 for two (not sure the weight). We were also able to find most of the same things we you get back here - Hagen Daaz ice cream, Doritos, etc. (Couldn't find any "normal" brands of chips, but they did have them) One thing that struck me as odd was that rice was kinda pricey! $8.80 for a 2kg bag??? It must have been some specialty rice or something...

So far my journey into Japan hasn't been overly difficult or daunting. No one really speaks English and most of the signs are in Japanese but it's still easy enough to navigate around the city and to find what you're looking for. So far no huge surprises. This afternoon I'm off to Oita to visit Amy and to get acquainted with my future new home town... The train leaves at 12:29 and I best not be late! They leave EXACTLY according to schedule! I might actually learn to be punctual while I'm here :)