It had been pouring off and on all morning and still after lunch, but we were ready to brave the rain to go exploring...equipped with umbrellas of course! Ideally, we wanted to take the train to where my training session will be...to make sure I knew exactly where to go (since it's an hour ride, with one train transfer). However, when we got to the station...the train we needed wasn't running. I wanted to see the grocery store anyway...so we walked a few more blocks to "ASO." At first sight, it looked like an American supermarket, but I was still wide-eyed the whole time. We started in the produce and I just couldn't get over the outrageous prices. It was like Sam's Club prices, but only a small, small fraction of the quantity! For example...a bunch of grapes (maybe 30 count) was $5 (500 Yen)....a small block of cheddar cheese (probably an oz. or two...you could easily fit 3 or 4 in one hand...was $5 (500 yen)....a single...yes, ONE ear of corn was $2 (200 yen)! We have pictures to prove it!
I mean, my Dad's garden is flourishing at home, where he is giving away sack fulls of veggies for free! It's hard to pay a lot for some of this stuff. On the flip side, I've wanted some comfort food...so you just have to bite the bullet every once in awhile!
While we were there, our biggest feat was trying to find the flour. We spotted 4 bags that resembled it, but they were different colors and had different symbols. Brandon busted out his handy, pocket sized dictionary and we were convinced that we had made the right choice. We were constantly saying "if only we could read this"...we just had to play the guessing game constantly. There was a huge seafood section, plenty of fish heads, squid, octopus and probably intestines of something (because, again, we were just guessing).
However, I was pleasantly surprised, on some things, the English word was below it. Plus, they had things like: Kit Kats, Dove soap, Kraft Parmesan cheese, lots of coke, Haagen Daas ice cream....so, it's not impossible to find American things (just limited)! Once we got to the check-out, Brandon wanted me to speak up and practice my Japanese words..."Hello and Thank You"...I feel like that is all I know! He said I turned red, but it's a lot of pressure to spout out a language you barely know and feel stupid saying (because my pronunciation is probably way off). Once we left the store, Brandon pointed out a bakery and it was too hard to resist a quick visit. A croissant filled with chocolate for me and Brandon got a fruity pastry, but we're still not sure what fruit it was.
I still hadn't met Brandon's friends, so we decided to have dinner...and a couple of them were able to make it. Ira, Catilin, Brandon and I went to an Italian restaurant...it was pretty good! Kind of funny...my first meal out wasn't even Japanese...it was a bowl full of spaghetti. Thank goodness for Ira, he's pretty fluent in the language and was extremely helpful at dinner and when we wanted to order ice cream at Baskin Robbins. And yes, they had just as may delicious flavors as in the U.S. I got a scoop of mint chocolate chip and a scoop of strawberry cheesecake in a cone...it was about $4. We also went to a thrift store...lots of random used American t-shirts (Late Show With David Letterman, random high school shirts, etc.) and U.S DVD's. Plus, a lot of video games (including guitar hero). It was a fun first night out!
No comments:
Post a Comment