A Day at Home

Jun 12: Staying in Ikkidzuka

Today I spent the day in Ikkidzuka.  I ate Pain de Mie Bread Kitchen for breakfast again, and I got a bit of acid stomach from my curry-naan, korokke-sando and melon-pan.  I think I don't agree with their curry products for some reason.  Oh well the roux they have is kind of wierd anyways, so I won't really miss it.

I went home and found out that borrowed internet is not so great for voice chat, and then went out for lunch and some house-related shopping in the afternoon.  For lunch I ate some ramen at a restaurant nearby that actually appears to serve mostly Chinese food.  I also discovered the wonders of the word "osusume" (recommendation).  Whenever I don't understand something someone's saying when I'm trying to order food I just look confused and say osusume as desperately as I can. >_<  It's worked out pretty well so far.

The ramen I had was alright.  It appeared to have katsu in it, as well as a healthy dose of green leafy veggies, and the soup was clear, reddish and spicy.  I found the noodles and soup (and the whole dish for that matter) to be decent, but not worth writing home about (despite the fact that I'm currently doing exactly that).  I took some pictures of the decor in the place.  It was kind of an odd combination of ye olde some culture or other plus random modern accents.  O_O

After lunch I took some more photos of Ikkidzuka to let people get an idea of where I live, and bought some laundry detergent.  I'm currently doing some laundry as I'm writing, and I was very pleased to find the dryer has a Y-shirt setting!  Perfect!  I haven't checked to see if there's an iron available anywhere, which would be rather important.  I suppose I can always Seiya myself one, but I should know about it at least before I really need it haha.

I came home and "accidentally" took a nap (oh yes I'll just lie down on the bed until I'm not tired anymore... derp).  After my nap I paid a visit to the Yokosan to take a picture of the discount natto for Jiuna, but I was dismayed that they were back on for full price!

I tried out the izakaya that's suuuuper close to my house for dinner tonight.  It was recommended to me by Kabutoya-san, and it's very conveniently located, so I was very hopeful that the food would be good.  I went in and was seated, and the lady asked me what I wanted to drink, to which I replied water, because I hadn't the time to think about how to ask for something else hahahah.  I promptly began reading the wrong menu (I still have no idea what that menu was for), but the correct one was quickly pointed out to me by my barmate.  I had somehow been seated directly beneath the TV blaring Chibi Maruko-chan (or something), and it was a little difficult to concentrate on reading the menu when a kindergartener had a panic attack right above my head every so often.

I ended up ordering waaaaay too much food.  I had agedashi tofu, tako wasabi, tako karaage, a butabara skewer, yakionigiri and tedzukuri gyoza.  I actually made it through most of the food, and they were able to pack up the remainder of the tako karaage and the agedashi tofu for me, which are sitting in the dining hall fridge right now.  I think I'm allowed to use it, but if I'm not, I hope the dorm mother enjoys the food ahaha.  The food was quite good!  I especially enjoyed the gyoza and the tako wasabi.  I'm going to have to try out more of their food in order to find my favourites.  Unfortunately for them, my izakaya standards have been set by Gyoza King, which is pretty brutal. ;D  They fared pretty well though, and I was totally surprised when my bill came to only 2000円!

Over the course of the meal I ended up speaking a bunch with friendly man next to me at the bar and one of the waitresses in horrible, broken Japanese.  Of course, they said my Japanese was "joozu" (skillful) a bunch of times, but my objections fell on deaf ears.  I ended up telling them that I'm from Vancouver and I'm 20 years old, I came here on Thursday, that I don't like Justin Bieber, that I do like Shiina Ringo old material, and that in Western Canada there aren't many Francophones, but in the East there are, especially Quebec.  O_O.  Seems kinda random, but I was mostly just answering their questions.  Ugh Justin Bieber...  During the conversation I turned the volume down on Maruko-chan haha.  I'm looking forward to going there again, and hopefully I can ask friendy man about what to drink, since he had about 3 different things over the course of my stay.

I came home after supper and did some more laundry, set up a flickr, which you can get from my parents/sister, and started writing this.  I appear to have purchased detergent WITHOUT bleach, since my "sheets" (a duvet cover and a bed cover) are still the same colour, as is my Y-shirt.  Go me!  My dorm's dryers have a nifty feature called "soft keep", which means their periodically turn back on for a moment to keep your clothes from getting cold and wrinkled.

I'm going to go take a shower now and then I'll take a stab at going to bed.  I need to be able to get up for work tomorrow, and I highly doubt my wimpy travel clock will wake me from a deep sleep.  I will need to go to the Seiya in Yokochuu to get a real clock ASAP.

TTYL folks.