Sunday, April 24, 2011

First Day in Japan!



Wednesday April 20, 2011

Konnichiwa Everyone! and where do I begin.....
In a good way------
Basically I feel like I am in the set of a Japanese cartoon tv series...you know the animated ones with dressed up girls, cute toys and characters.  Last night, we headed out to dinner at a local area where you kind of have little plates of Japnese style dishes.  This type of dining is popualar among friends since you share a lot and the specialty is the skewers cooked as tempura.  We sat on tatami mats and everything which was very cool indeed and didn:t get home until about midnight.  
I had a really nice sleep in this morning and then got up to ride on a bike with Adams wife and daughter to the 100 Yen shop...basically its Japans version of the dollar store.  It was so nice to ride around since everybody does that....I love seeing the elderly do so too.  Businessmen and women all dressed in their fancy suits and dresses for work all ride bikes, grandmothers pick up grand kids with bikes..what a healthy lifestyle!
For Lunch, my friends wife showed me how to make the famous Osakan dish of takoyaki.  She said every family in the their area has their own kit at home and it is tasy, cheap and easy to make....they were delicious and i liked it criosp on the outside and gooey on the inside.  the recipe is simple, eggs, flour, octopus bits and cut up radish...cheese and sausage can also be used and Ifirgued you could just throwanything ithere.  The balls are about the size of a donut hole and the dish you cook it on is like a dutch pancake one with 18 balls you can make.  
After lunch, Iheaded out to explore the district of Namba on my own.  It was an easy 2 stops train ride away...Kind of like the ¥Broadway avenue of NYC basically...lots and lots of name brand stores..but then a street parallel to that is about 3 miles of a covered shopping arcade...ycan you imagine that...sooo many stoes from clothes, food, accessories, shoes..you name it! They even have arcardes here that you can win the Cute little cartooon toys with the claw if you know what Imean...
So here are my observations of Japan on day  1
1. People are soooo hip and trendy...women especially...make up and all dolled up with the latest fashion and all...incredible and yes Ifeel really out of place with my hiking boots and pants on but anyway...it makes sense after seein ghte endless shoppping malls today. It really is consumerism to the max here...but somehow different from the USA???Idon:t know how to explain it.  Even elderly men and women seem to get dressed up to shop and the women:ss fashion is sooo cool. ive been taking photos of that too!
2. clean! everything is soooo clean. subways, stoes, public toilets ..very impressive
3. Presentation of food is amazing and Ithink Ihave taken so many pics of food today more than sights.  the food is fake but looks so real and when you buy something from the store the packaging is absoultelyl immaculate.Ieven walked through a massive floor of entitled the sweets design market!
4.  the toilets...aaa yes so Itook asome photos in the toilet today.  the public restoroom was again spootlessly clean.  there was a little baby chair you could put your kid in while you did your business.  automatic flush of course and then a little control pad on the side of the toilet seat that controlled the volume of the flush and everything.  in fact, from what Icould work out, the volume also controlled a nice watering sound while you did your thing in the loo....amazing!
5.Greetings...every store you enter is delightfully  greeted by the storekeper or chasier.  Ihave no idea what they are saying  but its So nice to be greeted with a friendly face.  I guess the customrer is very important no matter what!
Again, I apologize for the tyuping errors as my friends computer is a Japanese sone so still getting used to some of the keys and where they are not.
Another chilly day out but no rain which is good. Ithink I will be heading to Kyoto tomorrow for a day trip.  More soon...!

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