First Impressions
My apartment is on the 9th floor on the shoreline of the Motoyasu-gawa river. There is a small shopping center a few minutes walk from the apartment, but I'm not sure how good the prices of things are there. I've been told things are expensive where I am. There is a 100 yen shop there, the Japanese equivalent of a $1 shop. In Japan the 100 yen shops are used extensively and shopping bills can be reduced considerably by shopping there. The one near my place is quite small, but I have already visited one that was two stories high and contained an amazing variety of things.
Just across the river from my apartment are a few hotels. I thought it was funny that they were called "Parsley", "Tomato" and "Banana". This turned out to be somewhat embarrassing when I mentioned to Sachiko, the school's associate director, how much I loved the hotels across the river. As I was duely informed, they are love hotels. Couples hire rooms by the hour....
Living conditions here are not very spacious, but not so small as to say it was cramped. Apparently my apartment is quite spacious compared to other apartments that have been available before. Naturally one thing causing particular problems for me was the height of the doors. The first day or two I only got a few bumps to the head as I was being careful, but that soon wore off and for a little over a week I was cracking my head quite hard on door frames quite regularly. I think I'll have to grow my hair out to cover all the lumps :-) The brown line halfway up my head is the top of the door frame.
Bicycles are a very common form of transport here and the school has two of them for missionaries to ride from the apartment to the school. Of course they're both too small for me and none of the bike shops we've visited have any bikes that are large enough. Possibly we'll scavenge bits from other bikes to create a super bike, as there is quite a variety of bikes here and I think we could create something big enough. I'm still getting used to seeing business men riding bikes around the streets, and even harder to get used to is women dressed up in nice clothes, high heels and all riding around everywhere.
I was correctly informed on a number of issues before coming here. One was that food in Japan is quite expensive, another being that the sushi here is not like it is in Australia. I was taken out to a sushi restaurant one night and there were only 2 things which I knew what they were. There is one similarity however, it'a all good! On the price of food, I'm still not too sure on the relative prices of many things but fruit is very expensive. A common price to pay for one Nashi (Japanese pear or pear apple) is around $5. Rice and noodles seem to be the way to go, when you have the energy to cook them of course.
I was also misinformed about things in Japan too. Most notably, everybody (including all you Japanese people) told me that there was no way I could find any clothing of any variety large enough for me here. Well as all the inside slippers at the school were too small I went shopping and found a pair of slippers large enough for me. I also found a polo shirt that is just large enough. While there are a lot of short people in Japan they are mainly older people, so while it is quite difficult to find things to fit me it is possible if you try hard enough.