the best place for shopping!

i have been told of how expensive the clothes, food, transport etc it is in Japan. Surprisingly, they all turn all to be reasonably, erm, cheap! it might be that because it's sale season now (after new year sales) and the food in campus is really inexpensive. for eg, beef curry rice will cost me aud3.50 and udon or ramen will only cost me around aud2.80, with free authentic greenish green tea!

lots of work to do today and i am so very tired by now. it is still very early for the japs and it is very common to find beds in the lab, even ps player! i m sitting behind hiroshi so it is very convenient for me to kacau him when i cant understand anything, for example, what does the jap caracter on my pc desktop means, or how to pres certain character on a kap keyboard. there are frequently someone saying out xxx-gozaimasu which i cant understd and everyone else replying xxx-gozaimasu. i hope i can understd more as the older people outside uni mostly cant speak any english.

oh and i should write down my journal since my arrival in nagoya:

10/1 wed: touch down in nagoya airport which is situated on an island where u can see cruise from the window as we were landing! hiroshi pick us up form the airport (and it takes 1 hour 40km to reach nagoya daihaku) and we met norishige who arrived from thai in the airport too! we waited in uni, where i was assigned to a desk in watanabe lab (where i need to take off my shoes to wear some special sandals to go into the lab). everyone is very nice here and there is a guy call Jun who loves to speak English. Dr Kong is very nice and I feel blessed to find someone who can speak mandarine to me, which later i get to know another gal called Jingjing from China in the same lab.


library




my opis

we finally check-in to Shokuin club in the campus and slept until night. Jiro and Hiroshi came to our club and we went to have dinner in the campus (there are 8 cafeteria in the campus!) and the food is nice and cheap! we later went to the 24 hrs convi shop and got lots of tit-bits yum!





11/1 thurs
i went to uni since morning and finally met Kenji, Gideon, Emi Tanahashi for the financial matters. The japs are very strict and they need original receipt for everything! i had lunch with prof suenaga and he briefed me with their history bout the 3 heroes. Again the food is taihen oishi and the price is reasonable! mum and I had our dinner in the same cafe. mum is very unhappy as the room service obassan bent her glasses and didnt tell her that.





12/1 fri
we moved out to our new apartment which we are going to stay for the rest of our time here. it's near motoyama subway station, around 20-30min walk from the uni.

with hiroshi and dr kong




mum got her glasses fixed and she is super happy

i had to attend a meeting from 1.30pm with watanabe lab mates and it goes on like forever! i had to leave at 5pm to attend a welcome party with tanimoto lab guys so i can leave before it finished. can u imagine sitting there for 6-7 hours listening to a language u dont understand?

we had our dinner in a japanese pub and i tried a lot of food! i love the mackerel to be eaten with some plum wine and we enjoyed all different kind of food. met more japanese friends and kenji offered to bring us around nagoya on sat!












shoe rack - we need to take off our shoes b4 going to our table

13/1 sat
we met up at 10am and got ourselves a subway+bus day pass which cost 600yen each. the 1st stop is a shrine where the furthest we can go is the closed front door of the temple! there are different kinds of charms that we can buy there which will expire in 1 year =p there are lots of stalls selling takoyaki, red bean fish waffles, chocolate coated bananas etc.

From wiki travel:
Atsuta Shrine (熱田神宮 Atsuta Jingū), Jingūmae station. This shrine houses the sacred Kusanagi no mitsurugi (草薙神剣) sword, one of the three Imperial regalia of Japan — but unfortunately nobody but the emperor and a few high priests get to see it. There are some 4,400 other artifacts on the grounds though and the shrine hosts some 70 festivals every year








the nearest we can get to




charms!




gideon interested in kanji... or charms?




if the prediction paper meant somethg bad, they tie it here










taking subway to the next stop!

we then proceed to Guanyin temple and had our lunch in a taiwanese vegetarian restaurant. Gideon has to leave for the city to meet a kawaii gal so we proceed to Nagoya castle without him.






kenji and gideon




pigeons love mum =p


dang4 shop





from wikitravel:
Osu Market, subway Osu Kannon exit 2 (straight ahead one block, turn left into the temple grounds and go straight on through the gravelled temple area). A series of old style shopping arcades packed with mom-and-pop stores, 100 yen shops, traditional crafts, used computers and a fantastic range of clothing stores. There is a little bit of everything. Osu is the shopping area and Osu Kannon the temple just to the west



cool looking guys and darth wadar

The main symbol of the castle would be the golden dolphin and there's some history with it which i had a brochure to explain bout the whole story line. camera is not allowed in the 2nd-6th floor of the castle. we took some pics of the city and snow mountain on the 7th floor.



















The tickets that we bought includes visits to a (mou3 dan1 hua1) garden, an artificial garden in the city. Kenji said this place is very dangerous cause David dropped his handphone into the lake!


very beautiful lake


and very beautiful flowers






exact place where david dropped his hp






those straws arent decorations, they are real trees!




gals who make up in the bus!

we then headed to Sakae city for japanese traditional tofu dinner which taste very very nice! bbq tofu! the price is reasonable too, around 990yen. Kenji went home after dinner and we shopped around for awhile before going back exhausted!


in the city


the galaxy station =p


tv tower


itadakimasu




some fruits

14/1 sun
(i only discovered its valentine day today!) <- not yet lar thhehe
in front of our apartment



we went to sakae city again for one purpose - SHOPPING! it is def a good place to shop and we are eyeing some boots which cost less than 5000yen! we got our dinner from matsuyakaya supermarket on our way back. got lots of good stuff today includes 3 kawaii socks for 1050yen! super cute and cheap!


lunch








nissan showroom


btw, honda and toyota here has got a model with a button for auto car parking! sugeh!!




omellete rice! btw, i found demiglace sauce in the supermarket here!


dinner






tit bits

15/1 mon
now... working very hard on the manual... headache, uumm, more like sore shoulder by now. going home in half an hour time. got my name tag on the board and my shoe cupboard now. yay!