9/4/08
Ishida House, Matsudo

This morning we were to meet in Shinjuku station, and I arrived forty minutes early. I wandered around the station, looking at shops while I waited. I found a nifty little place selling umeboshi-onigiri, so I bought one and stuffed it in my backpack. I was looking for an umbrella, but most of the shops were food oriented, and the ones that did have umbrellas had the long sort that doesn't fit in my backpack.

After we all met, we went on a walking tour of Shinjuku. We saw Yodobashi Camera, a few restaurants, and the only Krispy Kreme in Japan. It's apparently a popular attraction, because they had a permanent line set up like an amusement park ride. When Ariel saw that it was only ten minutes long, she said she couldn't pass it up and sent us off to a bookstore with Kate and Simon. After she caught up with us, we went around Takashimiya times square and eastern shinjuku, and back to Labo through i-Land.

We had lunch with a bunch of folks from Labo, a pizza party. The president of Labo (I forgot his name) sat next to me, and I had a few conversations with him before we did formal introductions and I found out who he was. The pizza itself was pretty good, I wonder if Dominoes has ever considered selling eggplant, corn, and mayonnaise on pizzas in the US as well.

For class, we had Kurosaki-sensei, the head teacher at the Nihongo Institute. He was really good, I finally understand the difference between wa and ga now. We learned a bit about the US and Canada as well, as we explained things about our homes.

After the train, I stopped at the SATO in kita-kogane. They had a few lego sets, but it seems that lego didn't get a patent soon enough in Japan either, as there were several knockoffs. One of the knockoffs was really prominent, and featured the badge "made in Japan!" I almost bought I set of legos just to spite it. I should have.

There were banks upon banks of gashapon, but most of them weren't of any interest. They're getting pretty expensive, many were 200yen a pop, and a few were 300. There was a Lucky Star one I wanted, but I didn't want it 300yen bad. Of course, now that I don' t have it, I do sorta wish I'd gone for it. Oh well, maybe later.

I found a vending machine on the way home that was selling CC Lemon for 120yen. It normally goes for 150, so I bought it. I put in 150 yen (100 coin and 50 coin), and it spit out 70yen back at me, plus the drink. It's possible that I accidentally put in two 100 coins, but I'm pretty sure I didn't. I think what happened is that the machine ran out of 10yen coins after dispensing two, so it dropped a 50yen coin (the next highest denomination, the machine doesn't take 5yen coins and there is no japanese quarter). Lucky me!

1 comments:

Jeff said...

Was that pizza designed with you in mind, or was that a standard issue?

Regarding Gashapon... on top of being expensive, if you buy them from the machines you are gambling your money away. If you cannot resist, at least find a store that will sell you the ones you want.