Wednesday’s highlight (as I recall) was a couple of the new JETs that were in Tokyo Orientation Group B dropped in for a pitstop on the way to their towns further northwest in Aikitakata “City”. Geraldine is in Midori and Danielle is in Yachiyo (neither is on the map they gave us at orientatation, Mukaihara at 4,500 people is). It was nice to chat for a short bit with a native English speaker for the first time in like a week.

Later in the evening I was invited by my boss back over to the fire station for dinner. This time it was yakiniku, where you cook strips of meat, veggies and such on a little gas grill on the table. That plus the side of kimchee was pretty good, as was the usual beer and sake (I think by time 6 months in Japan rolls around I’ll have drunk more alcohol than I have in my entire life before…). Anyways, its amazing just how much greasy smoke starts to hang in the air after a couple hours — so much so I didn’t even notice the guy beside me smoking.

Yesterday was relatively uneventful at work, but I did go by the bank afterwards to update my passbook and check that I had in fact been paid for the week of work in July. I then get paid monthly on the 20th of each month unless its a day off (the workday before then).

After that I decided to make my escape and head into the small city of Miyoshi (population about 40,000) to wander around and get some food. Its about a half hour train trip that costs 480 yen (about $4.40) each way. May sound a little pricey, but when you get change back from a 500 yen coin it doesn’t seem like you’re spending that much (the US probably should switch to more large coins to stimulate the economy ).

There’s a pizza place that I still need to find, so I ate at the only McDonalds in the area (another teriaki burger & fries, not a bad deal actually and tastes OK). Spent most of the time wandering around a mall of sorts. It feels a bit like a department store (its wide open), but each area is a seperate store. There were clothing, housewares, toys, CDs, etc. shops as well as a grocery store. There was also a 100 yen store (like a dollar store) where I got this thing that fits on a sink faucet and has a penguin who’s flippers flap when the water flows. Silly/cute, but only 105 yen with tax. I’ll have to post a movie of it in action sometime.

Unfortunately I didn’t find the jackpot after quite a bit more time and wandering and didn’t have the time to really dig into it. What was this, pachinko? No, though they have a few of those too — it was a used book store with quite a few manga for only 100 yen and doujin too! It’s right across from the train station, just the opposite side from the direction I initially set out (doh!). Well, I shall return.

And there is reason to return beyond just the bookstore. By time I’d gotten to the other “mall” it’d closed plus there are largish DeoDeo & Best Denki electronics stores to explore still. Sight-seeing wise there’s apparently a nice park and comerant fishing at night during the summer (where they use a comerant bird on a leash to catch fish). Have to check those out (and the pizza place) another day.

Also in my wanderings around Miyoshi I ran across a martial arts dojo of some sort (wasn’t an aikido class at the time as near as I could see). But after a bit more searching the web, it seems there is an aikido dojo in Miyoshi. Maybe once I’m more settled in and have better local contacts I’ll check into it.

UPDATE: looks like I’ll be getting my cell phone (keitai) in a few days, the temporary gaijin card is apparently good enough now, so just have to wait for the phone to get here and such.

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