Weekend, don't end!

Monday, May 4, 2009 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
As I woke up, I realized that I didn't have work the next day, this endowed me with an invigorating energy.

With this newfound strength, I rode my bike to the neighboring city of Toyokawa. The two neighboring cities are separated by a large river that stretches far past the horizon. The bridge that came between me and my destination was a long arched concrete structure. This arched concrete dragon made me cringe at the thought of biking up it because I was so out of shape.

After huffing and puffing, I conquered the concrete structure and arrived at my destination. "Where to?", I asked my faithful sidekick, Ray. "To the dollar store!", he replied with enthusiasm. "The dollar store?" you might ask... Yes! Dollar stores in Japan are amazing. And this was the behemoth of dollar stores. There was everything a person could ever want at that dollar store. You could literally start your life in Japan from the various products at this dollar store. The only problem was that not everything was a dollar. (Dollar store referring to the 100 yen shop)

This posed to be a problem when we were checking out. Ray decided that he wanted one post card. How does this pose a problem you might think. Well... if you're buying a two for 100 yen marked postcard, they will not let you leave the store unless you pick up another post card. Yes, they wouldn't let him get a single card for 100 yen because it was two for 100 yen. After talking with the cashier in frustration, Ray gave up and we continued exploring the strange land of Toyokawa.

On Sunday, my host family came to visit. I just showed them around Toyohashi. It was nice seeing my host family again, and I was glad they drove out here to visit. It takes about an hour or two to drive to Toyohashi from Nagoya, so it's a pretty long ride.

We went around town, did some shopping, and hung out. We ate lunch at a decent ramen place near the Yamada Denki. After which they headed back to Nagoya. I hope I can go out to Nagoya soon and visit them.

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Nagano Here We Go!

Saturday, May 2, 2009 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
What makes golden week so golden? No, it's not the spring showers, but the consecutive national holidays that are connected to a voluptuous weekend. I was finally going to have some time to explore Japan... or so I thought. The first three days... I relaxed! "You're in Japan, you should go immerse yourself in the culture!", I could hear some people yelling, but after the first couple of tumultuous weeks, trust me, it's what most people would do. I decided for the first couple of days to just relax, but I also planned to take a trip with some international students from a local college.

This was a bus trip to the beautiful, serene mountains of Nagano. The bus ride took about 4 hours from Toyohashi station to our first destination, but it wasn't too bad. I talked with an Indonesian international student named Sidu. She was interesting and reminded me of a person I met in high school in Japan.

The only problem I had with the trip was that the stops were very brief. The trip primarily consisted of sitting in the bus, only leaving about an hour and a half to explore Nagano.

Everyone was very nice. I noticed almost all of the students had very nice DSLR cameras! They all seemed to be avid photographers, including Sidu.


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