[journal] I've gone grocery shopping and found myself in noodle heaven; I grabbed the catchier looking ones. (The following pictures were taken with my camera, but I didn't bring my usb cable, so now I'm going to use my new phone I bought, which incidently deserves and will get its own post, to take pictures. The one problem is that I ate all the dried stuff and left the squishy stuff still in the bag as you will soon see).
When I got to the snacks section I saw this 3-combo set and recognized 1 out of 3 things (the dried cuttlefish) and decided to be brave and eat whatever the other two are even though one of them looked soft and squishy. I have yet to command enough courage to open it.
This is what I had for lunch yesterday. I bought it at the supermarket too. It was quite delicious, and the sushi was reasonbly priced at 6.50. The salad was yummy too. (Couldn't download the picture. Believe me, it was tasty looking sushi of many different varieties!).
Here's a picture of my room. As I've mentioned before, it is a lot more spacious than I thought it would be.
There are vending machines all over Japan. As I was walking home I decided to try one as my mouth was getting parched. I looked into the machine and saw what looked like a refreshing tea drink and quickly put in the 120 yen (about $1.20) and quickly grabbed the drink after it came out. To my surprise and dismay, it was really hot. I had no idea vending machines provided both hot and cold drinks in bottles.
I'm getting better at using their subway system. Unlike Toronto where you use one token for any stop on their amazing two lines, Tokyo is like London and you pay for how far you go. The easy thing about their system is if you don't know how much you have to pay, you can put in the minimum, 130 yen, and then at your exiting station, you can go to a fare correction machine and pay the difference you owe.
Inside the subway cars they sometimes have bright LCD subway maps that show not only where you are and what direction you are headed but the precise time it takes to get to all the stops on the map. The Japanese are so prompt that if the train or subway is late, they have people who give you late slips when you get off the train and you can give these slips to your boss.
Most of the time on the subway trains you'll find half the people sleeping. The Japanese love to rest as they are traveling. You will rarely see them eat food or drink as they feel that is something that should be done as its own event.
Although I am very bad with languages, one of the words I've easily picked up is
sumimasen, which means excuse me. I find that they use it more than they say hello. Someone will enter the elevator with you and they will say "sumimasen," walk past you, "sumimasen" and order food "sumimasen." They are quite polite.
Tonight I am going to a bar with my two roomates. It should be exciting. I also have to buy a digital camera because I feel ashamed to bring out my primative Powershot A300. I am also looking into a cell phone. There's a large electronics store called Bics I want to go to as well as an area known for electronics, although I've been told the items there are overpriced.
