Day 4 of life in Japan

Day 4

Today was our day off... Every Thursday we get a day to rest, recover, sleep, blog or really whatever we want to do without the students.

First I must begin with a story about oatmeal....


We didn't get a chance to go to the store last night so we had to use some items that were left for us when we got the apartment. There is this big box of oatmeal that Rachel and Jason (who are letting us use their apartment) left us, it was the only thing to eat in the kitchen... So Monique and I boiled water and prepared the oatmeal, though there was something missing... we had nothing to sweeten it with... we dug around and found the Hershey's chocolate powder (unsweetened) and confectionate sugar (not sweet at all) it was the most bland meal that I've ever eaten... blah... we had a good laugh about that

After our delightful breakfast we had some more orientation with Mark before he took us to get some Ramen! We got to walk into town I guess you could say ^^ it is cooler today... not as not, maybe a few degrees cooler but the humidity is also less which helps. I enjoyed getting out and walking around and familiarize myself with the area since we will be walking it often.
















So..... let me say this really loudly because i just must... THE RAMEN IS AMAZING!!!



It is so so good. I got a yummy ramen bowl with rice and salad for 650 Yen (which is a good price for lunch)
I have also done something that never crossed my mind before: eating salad with chop sticks.... yes, salad with chop sticks. It's been 3 days now since I've seen a fork, but I'm doing ok... it is just hard eating the very last of the soup amidst the broth. But picking the bowl up and drinking the reminder of the soup is OK, I slurped up the stray noodles. I am also working on eating rice and corn with chopsticks. Mark left us right after we got our food and we had to pay and go to the supermarket by ourselves.

The supermarket was where it hit me square across the face that I'm not in the USA. As I was walking down the tea and soda isle I realized that I hadn't seen a white American (that wasn't a leader on staff here in Japan) at all, walking though the store. It was a weird feeling. We got some of the essentials like bread, milk, sugar and some yummy snacks and tofu and spinach for dinners. During the week we will be having students come over for more Bible discussions and we thought we should get some fun snacks for them to eat as well... so we got some fun things. :) I bought a scrub for the shower as well as some body wash i forgot to bring, apples and some green tea. I love tea... tea is so good here. I do have to say that it has been 4 days now with no black tea, i have gone cold turkey from my usual 2 venti iced black teas a day...

After getting our food we headed back to the apartment... but, it wasn't until we hit Spencer and Ross's apartment complex we realized that we had to make it to our place... on our own... yup, three girls who had just walked the street once, who had no cell phone, no map and no idea (except for landmarks) where to go. It was a team effort getting back to the apartment. The three of us combined our memories and headed off... we made a video of the beginning and end of our adventure

This video is one that Kylie made of us as the boys left us to find our way back to the apartment



This video is one we made as we were walking up to the apartment that we found.