Weekend

It was a pretty restful weekend, other than a lot of walking. Got back Friday night and went with Mike (he's here on a business trip from my group back home) to a ramen place and then had some beers at the Lion's Head. It's an Irish style pub that's kind of a gai-jin hangout. I tried to order a black and tan, but couldn't get the point across until they handed me a menu. I figured out that that they called it a half and half.

Saturday, we decided to explore our new neighborhood. We needed to get lunch first. On the way to Lion's Head, I remembered seeing a sign for Genki Sushi, the sushi on a conveyor belt place. We walked that way until we found the sign, figured out it was on the 2nd floor of what looked like an office building, but that doesn't mean much here. We went up and there wasn't a restaurant in sight. Turns out we found the local corporate office of Genki Sushi.

Around the corner from there is a big temple, and when we went in that direction, we found a street festival of some kind going on. Turns out this weekend was the annual Miya Jazz Festival. We got some food from the stands set up and settled in to watch what was happening. There was a band playing, and I got to hear a Japanse woman sing "What's Goin' On". She did Marvin Gaye proud. While we were sitting there, a guy who apparently loved America came up to talk to us. He noticed one of us had a coke, pointed, and said "Coca-Cola!!!". Mike said "Pepsi-Cola!!!". He said "Dr. Pepper". They went on like that until the ran out of soft drinks, and the guy went away.

We went over to my apartment to look around the neighborhood. On our way there, we saw this sign encouraging you to clean up after your dog.

We walked around the neighborhood and went into a place that was sort of like Japanese Wal-Mart. I'm going to have to go back there once I move in to get my place set up. Also checked out a bike shop, a camping/outdoors shop, and Yamada Denki, an electronics place. We ate dinner at an Italian place, walked home, and about 5 miles after we started, I settled in to watch Resident Evil 2, since it was on TV in English.

Today, Joe and I went to check out the local mall, Bell Mall. Kind of an interesting place because it isn't really divided up as clearly as American Malls. There's no real entrance to the individual stores, just a couple of walls. You can easily wander out of one store and into another without noticing.

For dinner tonight, we went to a place 2 doors down from the hotel. The owner somehow figured out that we weren't from around here. He dragged 2 of the waitresses over to us and made them sit down and speak English. I think he realized that if word gets out to Honda in America that they speak English, it will improve business. Anyway, we had a nice chat with the 2 waitresses and a good dinner.