Exploring the city

Not much of note happened during the week, aside from doing some more apartment hunting. I have some good leads and should be able to make a final decision this week, when one of the apartments I'm interested in is finally open to be seen. I think I'm leaning toward that one, despite not having been inside. The pictures looked good, and the two rooms are larger than the other leading apartment, although the apartment itself is smaller.

This weekend I took the chance to explore the city a little bit, mainly the downtown area near the main local train station on Saturday. There are a lot of restaurants and family-owned businesses in that area. There are also some chain stores, like McDonald's, Daiso(a 100 yen store), and Wants(which I didn't go into, but is apparently like a department store). I did stop and buy a CD that caught my interest at one of the family-run stores. So far I've been liking it a lot, despite it being a little on the expensive side.

I also went back to Yamada, the store that I said was like Best Buy, but louder, in an earlier post. I have to say that impression was slightly mistaken. It's more like a cross between Best Buy and Target. Besides electronics, video games, and movies, they also have stationery, toys, household appliances, and other stuff. Afterwards, I had lunch at an Indian restaurant that was recommended to me by a co-worker.

While walking around, I saw some interesting sights. Perhaps the most memorable was actually in the street itself. Well, actually covering a hole in the sidewalk.

Japanese man-hole covers

Yep, the Japanese flair for artistry extends even to things most people would probably never even think to look at twice in the ordinary course of events. Shortly after taking the pictures above, I got the opportunity to take a picture of one of the historic buses that the city keeps in service for whatever reason.

While I was looking around at the family-owned stores, which seem to have been built literally around a road that has since been closed off to street traffic, at least running in one direction. However, you'll often get traffic coming through on the intersections running in the cross sections between the enclosed strip mall. Japanese drivers can be quite scary in their driving habits. They play fast and loose with anything you might consider normal traffic regulations. I've seen some pretty crazy things walking around town. The craziest so far has been a pizza delivery guy driving a motorcycle through an alley that two people would be hard-pressed to walk side-by-side in. You really have to pay attention to cars and bicyclists while walking around.

Since space is at a premium in Japan, you really have to think about looking up for places, even when you think the place should be on the ground floor. In America, it probably would be, but there is a lot of upwards development in Japan. There are also a lot of places hidden in surprising nooks and crannies of places where you wouldn't think to look for a business in normal circumstances.

There are also some places that you wouldn't expect to see in Japan. For example, I've seen a Mormon temple and this place:

Yes, that's really a YMCA building here in Japan. And sometimes the Japanese try to imitate American places, but just get things a little off:

 

 

 

Get your haircut and maybe have a drink?

And sometimes, you just get things you have no explanation for:

The apartment building of many colors

I'll post about what I did today later. I think this post has covered enough already. Please leave a comment if there's anything you'd like to hear more about.