Shopping and poo

We decided that we should have a quiet day today - we've done a lot recently and we all needed a break. We woke up to a grey, rainy morning (still hot though). Went through our usual routine of breakfast, then Matt did some work and Tom and I ran off to play some football when the rain stopped for a while.

We then donned our rain coats and headed down to the Co-Op for a spot of shopping. First purchase - a pair of Trainers for Tom. There is a line of train trainers here - you can get Dr Yellow ones, Rail Star ones, Blue Train ones and White Train ones. We've seen quite a few little boys in the Dr Yellow ones. However, as you can guess, the yellow ones are quite garish so we went for Rail Star ones instead. They are far too big for him, so they will be something for him to grow into. We then did another 100 Yen shop before heading down to the restaurant for lunch - it was closed, what restaurant closes on a Saturday?

Food

So we hunted out the local restaurants, found an Okonomiyaki one, which was full, but then found one in the covered shopping street, I had yakisoba and Matt hamburger and curry whilst Tom had a bit of both. Very nice they were too. We headed back to Co-Op to do our big food shop of the day - this is for bringing home, the mark up on Japanese food in the UK is tremendous eg a pack of panko bread crumbs here is about 60p, The same weight pack in the UK is about £4.00, also of course there are many things you can't get in the UK. We brought my backpack with us from the UK empty so we could bring back as much 'stuff' as we wanted, in fact we can bring back 40 more kilos than we came with here as we packed very light.

I paid for the items with my credit card. Now Japan is largely a cash society and it is the norm for shops not to accept credit cards, but the Co-Op did which was good. And their system for credit cards? You give the shop assistant your credit card, she swipes it and hands it back to you. No signature or pin code required. This has happened both times I have used a credit card here. This must be the only country in the world where you aren't asked for any security or ID.

By now it was raining quite hard. Tom and I went to get the bus home, whilst Matt went to the post office to get some more cash out - we are running a little low. We had to wait quite a while for the bus to arrive. In the meantime about 80 meters up the road from us a motorist knocked down a cyclist, we didn't see it happen, but heard it and saw the commotion afterwards, an ambulance arrived after about 3 minutes and the police after about 10. The cyclist, an old man, was OK, he was able to shift himself away from the car and his bike as far as I could see was relatively undamaged. It made me reflect on the standard of driving and cycling here though. Lots of people use bicycles here, I've seen people cycle whilst holding an umbrella, texting and talking on the phone (although not all 3 at the same time - yet!). I've even seen one old man cycle on the wrong side of the road wobbling towards the traffic coming at him - I couldn't believe my eyes. The standard of driving here isn't that much better either, I've seen one man driving with his toddler sat on his lap, people ignoring red lights, mounting the kerb, and zebra crossings - well they are a nightmare. If you are standing by a zebra crossing there is very little chance a car will stop for you as it is still their right of way (which begs the question why they have them). Sometimes a car will slow down, but I think that is because they think that maybe as a foreigner we will cross the road, we of course are hesitating because the 10 previous cars have speed through the crossing. It is then a 50:50 chance that the car will speed up again when they see you hesitating, or stop. Problem is they don't flash at you or gesture towards you in anyway that it is safe to cross so you have to wait until they are completely stationary before taking the chance that it is OK to cross. In short, zebra crossings are a waste of time, it is better to use pedestrian crossings with traffic lights.

Anyway, we got home, Tom went to bed for a nap and then we had a quiet afternoon before dinner. After dinner Tom did a poo in the toilet - yahoo, it has been a week since the last one. We all had a very happy evening.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location: Aioi