Exercise

Day 7 - Week 2

I decided to try to do something I would do at home. So I went for a run. Yea... I am that crazy foreign lady, also known as a gaijin, running through the streets of Tokyo. Can I point out that I have never seen anyone running for recreation? It isn't like Central Park in NYC, which is full of runners. Also, I mapped out a two mile run on mapmyrun.com, and I thought I followed that, but I ended up in a completely different part of town. Tim helped me figure out on the map where I really ran. This route ended up being 1.75 miles.


Along the way I saw a gas station. They are a little different than gas stations here.... Mostly because they still have service people, and they are missing the pumps.



I also got far enough on my knitting to pull in another ball of yarn. Thank goodness for youtube videos that teach you how to do things like that.

Tim and I went up to Shinjuku and walked around. There is a really fancy grocery store up there, much bigger aisles. We walked through a big department store. Then we met a friend for burgers. I liked the burger we got last week better than this one, but it was still a really good burger.

District Conference

Day 6

Tokyo used to have an English Stake with 4 English speaking wards. However, due to the economy and less foreigners coming to Tokyo to work, they recently downsized to a District with 3 English speaking branches. Today was District Conference. It was the broadcast style, so it was given to all of the stakes and districts in Japan. What was interesting was the person conducting the broadcast spoke Japanese, so we had an english translation over top of him. But when the general authorities spoke, they spoke in english, so the Japanese wards had a Japanese translation over top. During part of the conference they explained why the Japan MTC was shut down, and showed a video of Japanese missionaries at the Provo MTC and how much fun they were having. The best part was the missionary saying he loved the food because he got unlimited ice cream on Wednesdays and Sundays at the cafeteria. I thought of my sister, and how this would be an incentive for her to serve a mission.

I met several more people, and I got invited to go dish shopping this week. This is a big deal. There is one store in Tokyo that has beautiful dishes (I would call them china, except we are in japan :) ), and this week they are having their big sale, so all the ladies in the branch are going to stock up. The one lady told me to bring cash. So I asked how much, since I haven't gotten used to yen and pricing, and she was like, oh as much as you want. In general the exchange rate is 100 yen to 1 dollar. But Tim was like, give us a ballpark, 10 dollars, 100 dollars, 1000 dollars? Another lady chimed in, and she said, oh no! these are cheap dishes, like 300 yen (so 3 dollars). The other funny thing was Tim said he had never heard of this place, and one of the husbands was like, yea, my wife keeps going there. I don't think we need more dishes, but she says we do.



Since it was district conference, it was up at the stake center. We got a ride with another church member so that we didn't have to deal with the trains. We had him over for lunch after the conference. Tim made shrimp pasta, which was excellent.

Grocery Shopping

Day 5

The first time I went grocery shopping was to a place under the subway station. Tim says there are bigger and better grocery stores, so we decided to go to them on Saturday. Since we don't have a car in Tokyo, we grabbed our backpacks to carry the food back in.

Our first stop was National. This is a grocery store that caters to foreigners. It has many more english labels than the other store I went to. Compared to an American grocery store, it is still tiny. It doesn't have all the prepared food stations that the grocery store under the subway had. It had about 5 aisles of food, one for produce, one for alcohol, one for cereals and dried foods, one for refrigerated items, and one for snacks like crackers and chips. The carts are small. After we had put about half the list in the cart, we decided going to another grocery store was not going to work out. So we just finished shopping at national. All the food didn't fit into our two backpacks. Moral of this story: It is impossible to grocery shop in Japan like you do in America. You cannot have a full refrigerator. You cannot meal plan for an entire week. Basically, the Japanese go shopping every day or every other day. You just buy the food you want for that immediate meal, and don't ever have alot of food hanging around. I guess the benefit of this model is that if you want a snack, you have to walk to the store to buy it, which might make you reconsider. In this case, we survived the trip by taking a taxi.

By the way, when I say "all of the food", I meant some yogurt and cereal for breakfast, some cheese and crackers and fruit for snacks, and three dinners.... a shrimp pasta for sunday where we only needed some tomatoes, a chicken sandwich we will make on tuesday, and a greek pasta salad for thursday.

Japan is expensive. This glares at you when you see 5 apples cost $9. When you think about buying some cherries, but a fistful is $24. The best rule of thumb in Japan is if it costs twice as much as America, then it is normal.

Once we got home, we were hot and tired, so Tim made delicious smoothies. Luckily he had been to costco and had some frozen strawberries.



For dinner we ate McDonalds. I did not want to admit this on my blog. The reason is because I don't eat McDonalds in the US. I am a Wendy's or Chick Filet person if I am doing fast food. But McDonalds (or Maku-do-na-ru-do) in Japan is different. The Japanese are very quality oriented, so the big mac looks exactly like the picture and it tasted pretty good.

Country Club

Day 4

Tim has lived in Tokyo for over a year now, which means he knows how to get around, the location of many great places to eat, and has friends in the ward. I benefit greatly from all of this knowledge, especially in the friends department.

I got to go to lunch with a friend from the ward and her three kids. We went to a Mexican restaurant, El Torito. It is an American chain that also exists in Tokyo. The funny thing is, in Tokyo, you get soup instead of chips and salsa. Like the egg soup you sometimes get with asian food in America. And they have three dishes with eggs on them... an egg burrito, and then two things with eggs just on top. This is one thing I am not sure I will get used to... the love of eggs. On everything. Literally. I am not exaggerating. My friend says she always says no eggs just to be sure an egg won't be thrown into what she orders.

Then we went to the Tokyo American Club to go swimming. We met another lady from the ward and her kids. Unfortunately it was raining, so we didn't really get to swim. The kids played pool, and we sat in the cafe and chatted. The Tokyo American Club is basically a club house, with a pool, and game rooms, and a cafe. This is the second time for both of these families in Japan. Everyone tells me once you have living in Japan, you spend the rest of your time trying to come back. For a moment, talking to these ladies, I believed them. I could see how it would be fun to live in this place for longer than a few months.

The adventure part of the day was the train. I got on at my station, Shinjuku, and took the Yamanote line up to the restaurant. Then to come home, I got on at a new station, I can't remember what it is called, but I figured out how to get on the right line, and made it home just fine. Next thing to master: Switching train lines.

Because it was raining all of the umbrella vendors were out selling plastic umbrellas. I saw a lady riding a bike holding an umbrella. I think in that scenario you would probably stay more dry with a rain coat or poncho.

Tim and I went to dinner at a restaurant, Xen, that has california rolls. It is located in Roppongi Hills, which is a really really really really huge mall. I cannot stress how massive this place is. Oh, and it has a Banana Republic, so I will be fine here :) Back to the california rolls. When I came to visit in March, Tim told me that rolls were American sushi, and that real japanese sushi was just raw fish over rice. However, the restaurant is an asian/western place, so they had rolls that were very tasty. Then we got coldstone ice cream. You have to order in engrish. I got a key-ara-me-ru ta-to-ru temu-ta-tion, and Tim got boso-ton ku-re-mu pie. In case you have no idea what those are, it was a caramel turtle temptation and a boston creme pie :) The funny thing is, Tim says they don't think of it as speaking english, these words really are now Japanese words.

I should also admit that part of my days this first week has been spent watching tv shows. I am claiming this is to get over the jet lag, by just laying on the couch. Let's be honest though, I am trying to get the full "country club wife" experience, so I imagine lounging on the couch watching tv is part of that :) Now.... where is my tennis racket?

Kindle

As a wedding present, Tim bought me a kindle. This was fantastic.... a couple of minutes before we had to leave the house I had my sister (an english professor) download me a bunch of books to read. Here are my reviews:

Percy Jackson Series
I read all five books, and really enjoyed them. I then saw the movie on the flight to Tokyo, and it wasn't as detailed as the first book. I am kind of sad there are no more books in this series. If I had realized that, I might not have read them so fast :)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
This was an interesting book because of the writing style and the subject. The writing style was told from several different voices, and one of those voices had Alzheimer's. It was interesting to see how the Alzheimer's changed the narration. The subject is a women who is locked up in a mental institution by her family, and is released because the institution is shut down into the care of a great niece.

The Secret of Lost Things
It wasn't until the end of this book that I realized it didn't really have a point. I kept waiting for the point of the story, and never really felt like I got one. It is about a girl whose mother dies, and she moves to New York City and works in a book store. I am not really sure I would recommend this. It kind of leaves you just wondering where the story really is. There are alot of references to Melville, so maybe that would be interesting.

House Rules
This is a Jodi Picoult novel. I had gotten tired of her books, but this one was really entertaining. It is about a boy with asperger's, and is told through several different character voices. It gives an interesting perspective on what living with asperger's is like. Of course, the ending is not complete, as Jodi Picoult leaves you to ponder the ethics of the situation.

Assassination Vacation
This was interesting because it is a novel, but it read like research. Since I enjoy Presidential Libraries, I found it interesting how the author travels to different sites researching Presidential Assassinations.

Home Sweet Home

Day 3

Let me take you on a tour of our apartment.
In a previous post I showed you the street and outside of our building. Come inside, and ride the elevator up to the 10th floor.
Welcome inside:



Please take off your shoes and store them in the foyer.
Let's walk through the foyer and down the hallway



On your right, you will find the kitchen, a hallway to the living room and dining room, and the laundry and shower room.






I forgot to take a picture of the shower, but it isn't attached to the wall like in America. It is attached to the middle of the wall, but the tub is on the edge of the wall, so it works better if you hold it over your head to wash out the shampoo.

On your left we have the guest room and the toilet room




The toilet has a washlet attached to it, and the sink is on the top of the tank, so when you flush the toilet, clean water comes out of the sink and back into the toilet.

At the back of the hallway is our room


Go back to the hallway that takes you to the living room and dining room.... you will find the kitchen on your right, and behind that, the dining room. On your left is the living room, and behind that, the office. So basically the office, living room and dining room are all in a row.










The interesting thing about the kitchen is that it has a stove top with two burners, and no oven. Just so you know, this is a large apartment for Tokyo standards. It is rare to have enough space to have a stand up table, and to have two bedrooms plus an office is a real luxury.

We ordered hamburgers. Really great avocado on top.

Also, Elena, the maid came. The interesting thing about the laundry is that your clothes come out wrinkled, so ironing is a necessity. Elena does this, and many other things, for us.

Laundry

Day 2

I got to talk to my sister over skype, and I tried to catch up on my blog.

I asked Tim to show me how to work the washing machine. In Japan, they don't have driers, they just have washers that can also dry your clothes. It is tiny, and of course, all the buttons are labeled in Japanese. I like to follow the instructions on the labels of my shirts to wash them, so Tim took a picture of the buttons and emailed it to a friend to translate so that we could figure out how to wash cold on a delicate cycle. The nice thing about the bathroom is that it comes equipped with a bar to hang clothes on to dry. So instead of having a rack in my bedroom like at home, I can let the clothes dry in the bathroom.

We went out to a store to pick up an adapter for my laptop plug (Tokyo has two prong electric outlets, not three prong). The interesting thing is the elevator. Everyone crams into the elevator when it opens. They also hold the buttons to keep the doors open or to close the doors. In America, we would just stick our hand out to stop the door from closing, and usually, you wait for the next elevator if it is too crowded. There isn't the same consideration for personal space here.

Bakeries exist in every grocery store, at the train stations, and on street corners not occupied by con-bean-ies (convenience stores, aka 7-Eleven). You can buy just a slice of cake, which is perfect. However, it is not pronounced cake, but cak-e, where you say the e. Cheesecake is pronounced cheese-u-cak-e. Chocolate is choco-reto. Strawberry is suto-raw-berry. This is the fun world of Engrish. I haven't figured out if key lime exists in Japan.

We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant called Emilia. It was good, I had tortellini with a spinach white sauce.