Jiyugaoka

Ohayoo gozaimasu! (good morning!)


The days are starting to blur together now.  It`s hard to keep track of my experiences when I don`t post them up right after.  Damn I`m lazy.

Well, I haven`t lost my mind yet, so I still remember most of what happened when a group of us went to Jiyugaoka.

Jiyugaoka is a nearby shopping area.  Nearby as in a 20 minute walk which is not bad at all because I thought we were in the boonies of metropolitan Tokyo.  The walk was very nice mostly because the street was lined with nice houses with nice cars.

Jiyugaoka is full of little independent shops selling clothes, housewares, cosmetics and then there are some brand names like Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and I don`t remember.  There are also equal numbers of cafes, canteens, bakeries and convenience stores.  We just walked around, taking in the scenery and window shopping.  Today was the second day of the 2 day festival, so sure enough, there were people dressed up and carrying shrines on their shoulders marching around the streets.  Today was different though because there were kids and toddlers holding up shrines and chanting.  How adorable.  Just look at this kid.

He`s having the time of his life.  His fingers are the tastiest things in the world.

When walking around we spotted a fugu restaurant! (fugu is blowfish)  

Fugu is known for its poisonous body parts.  Only a master chef who's gone through training can serve fugu.  They have to know exactly where to cut!  Have you ever seen that Simpson's episode where Homer supposedly ate the wrong parts of fugu?

See all that?  Poisonous!  But even so, I really want to try it!  Fugu me now!

Cool parking lot eh?

Some of my new friends here in Japan are British.  So they say 'loo' instead of washroom, 'hobs' instead of stove, and they love their squash (it's not what you think).  So they asked me one time if I, being a Canadian, say 'aboot'.  Hell no, I have never heard anyone say that ever.  I told them that I do say 'eh' occasionally.  I don't even notice it.  Is it a very Canadian thing?  Damn, I fell into a stereotype!  So I asked them about gypsies, and they prefer to be called 'travelers' and apparently these are new types of gypsies and they squat in parks in their trailers and never leave.

I love learning.

So here are a few more pictures of Jiyugaoka.

Pachinko Slots - My god there are a billion of these in Japan full of old men with lots of coins

A cute antique shop along the walk

At Labi with my friend Dan - Labi is a Japanese equivalent of Futureshop or Bestbuy.  

I don't remember which night it was, but we went to an izakaya again with a few of our Japanese buddies.  Same type of place as the Shibuya one, and same style of ordering and such.  I really would like to go to a more traditional style one though.  Anyways, here are a few pictures of what we ate.  There are only a few pictures because I didn't want to flash everyone all the time...

Fried pasta - it was great snackage material to go with beer

Not you typical Guu daikon salad, but it was still really good.  So simple!

So some other day, we finally got our train passes!  It's called Pasmo, and you can buy either a plain one that you reload money on, or a commuter pass where you buy it for a particular route you take like everyday or something and you pay x amount of money for unlimited use of that route.  This pass is from the station closest to the dorm, Midorigaoka, to the station closest to the University, Shirokanedai.  This baby cost around 15,000 yen...for 3 months.  Luckily the school gives us 40,000 yen for transportation.  Whew...

Stay tuned for the next post.  It's about Shibuya and shopping!