Exploring our town....
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2009
1
4
47
Trip End
Jun 25, 2011
Nachikatsuura,
Japan
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Anyways....I'm sitting here at 'work,' Lily and I have been checking e-mails for 3 hours at this point, and I am watching 2 guys making shadow puppets in front of a projection screen. I swear they really dont do any actual work - the only important thing is is that they are present at the office. They all wear, a white/light blue short sleeved button down shirt, with dark gray or black dress pants. They aren't required to wear a tie until October or something. Then since we have to wear indoor shoes inside, they all walk around in addidas sandal type things
01 Meeting the Mayor
. It's really funny how they are on such a set schedule, because every day, at 8:25am we have our morning meeting which lasts approximately 1 minute. Then right after that the tea lady Okazaki-san brings each BOE member a small cup of tea to their desk. None of the men say thank you. Then at 11:55am they turn on the TV (technically 5 minutes before their lunch hour) to watch the weather. Then at 12:00 a loud bell rings throughout town, the lights are turned off in our office, and they turn on baseball. Theres a huge highschool baseball tournament in Japan going on right now and they are all obsessed with it. Our prefectures team is actually in the FINALS! So the TV is on and all the men either go get their lunch from the fridge (that their wife obviously made) or are delivered a bento box of rice/sushi from a little lady that comes around. I saw one many yesterday lying on the couch taking a nap too. That's usually when Lily and I leave for the day and go home and have lunch in our appartments...
Afternoon activities last week:
Monday after work we decided to spend the afternoon at the beach. We biked there and there were tons of people there, kite surfers, regular surfers, boogie boarders, wind surfers, and lots of swimmers
02 Map of Nachikatsuura outside the train station
. The waves were kind of like the ones in Hawaii, they break far out and then break 4-5 times. The water was really warm and felt nice. We stayed there all afternoon and got major stare downs from everyone there. I was literally the only person with blonde hair at the beach (well I'm actually the only blonde haired person Ive seen since I got to our town). We biked around our town for a couple of hours Tuesday after work, and stumbled upon a shrine/temple thingy (not sure the correct lingo yet), biked around the rocky coast, and were stopped by a Japanese man on the street who wanted to practice his English. He leaned out of his car and goes 'You America?' and we started talking to him, turns out he had lived in Charlotte, NC and had friends in Boise, Idaho that he kept telling us about. He was about mid-40's and still lived with his mom, thats very typical for Japanese people to do until they get married. WEIRD!!
I will put more pictures on the flash drive and write another update tomorrow with pictures from this past weekend, I dont like being so behind on my journaling!
Address update:
For all of you that got cards with my address on them, I am actually in appartment 305, NOT 406
03 Nachi Beach
. PS: Some of you know how I have a postcard collectoin (and tickets yes, shut up!) but I have a huge map of Japan in my kitchen and am putting postcards up all around it. SO PLEASE SEND ME POSTCARDS!!!!!!!
I will leave you with foods that I am craving, and things I miss:
1. california pizza kitchen
2. anything that falls under the mexican food category
3. MTV
4. central air conditioning (or 'air con' as the british JET says)
5. my big comfy bed
6. egg and cheese on a bagel
Look out for another entry tomorrow with new pictures.
Hopefully I will catch up with what we've been doing and be able to share the most recent pictures soon.
MISS YOU ALL!!
