From bikes to chinese food...

Today was an interesting day.  In the morning I went to the store to get some coffee supplies for the lab. There is a coffee maker in the lab that people use so I got some coffee, filters, and a miffy mug (miffy is this bunny that I've seen advertised on tv here).   I forgot to take a picture.

While at the store, I looked at the bike selection at this supermarket.  I liked those two:

In the afternoon, I went to a bike shop near the university.  I decided to walk so that I get to know the area - it was around 2.5kms.  The area around the university has a few small hills so the tiny roads looks pretty interesting going up and down.  I took some pictures along the way.

Ramen shop.  You can see an McDonald's in the distance - they are pretty popular.

This is the bicycle store that I was getting to - Cycle Joy.  It is a Nagoya chain with about 7 locations.

The store had a large selection of bikes but not much of what I found interesting.  Had an interesting "conversation" with one of the staff - well, he was saying things in Japanese and I was basically responding that I don't understand.  What I did understood is that there is a city registration fee of about $5 and he suggested I bring a friend that speaks Japanese when I buy the bike.  Here is one that was decent for about $300 - behind the pink one of course :P.  Many of the bikes have very few gears - 3 or 6.  Most of them have a basket in the front to carry things - which is quite good.  They also have nice dynamos for lights and come with all the lights and bell.  The ones starting at around $250 have a lock built around the back wheel to lock it - that is probably as much protection as you need around the city since most of the bikes don't even have locks and they are just left at random places with no worries.

Coming back from the bike shop (I took the train back!) I stopped at a market and got a package of one of Nagoya's specialties uiro.  It is slightly similar to mochi but more sticky and slightly sweet - very tasty.  I didn't know I bought a whole stick of it so we got a knife in the lab and cut it up into chunks for a few people to enjoy.

I stayed at the lab until around 6pm and then about 9 people from the lab (people from 3 rooms) went for dinner.  The original place that we were going was closed so we went to a Chinese restaurant not too far from the university.  On the way was a nice shrine:

The restaurant was tiny - could probably sit around 15 people.  We brought a lot of work to the (I think) one cook who was cooking for around 1.5hr to get all of us food.  My dish actually arrived last but it was quite tasty.  Quite a typical Chinese tofu dish that I had in Canada - they call it マーボ (maabo i.e. marbled) I guess due to the texture.  The egg drop soup was also tasty.  The whole thing cost around $6.50.

I learned something very interesting over dinner (due to some plate with bunnies and the moon).  There is a Japanese story/legend about a bunny making mochi on the moon.  What immediately came to mind was the Mashimaro episode where the monkeys see a bunny making mochi on the moon and Mashimaro shows them a plunter and toilet (if any of you remember the little bunny sitting on a toilet with plunger on it's head that was hanging off my car window - that is from that episode of Mashimaro!).  I didn't know that bunny on the moon was making mochi though!  It was also my first time sitting at one of those low tables where you sit on your legs.  My legs went numb a few times - I kept switching positions.  However, other people also seemed to complain about sitting for so long!

As always, you don't see many people on the pictures.  That might be due to a few reasons I think.  First of all, only crazy people walk around in 35C weather for kilometers - smart pple take train or stay home! Second, around mostly residential neighbourhoods just like these, there is really no need for massive people to be walking around.  Nagoya is such a distributed city (hehe, laid out over a large area) that you don't really see many people walking home to the same place.  You do see people on the trains and near the train stations though but then they disperse their separate ways.  Another thing is that I walk around during hours where people are working - the situation is probably quite different during mornings and when people are coming home from work (which could be any time I guess).  In the morning there is even a woman only cart on the train.  I should try taking the train in the morning and take pictures of that.  Japanese people also seem to live quite closed lives so you don't see them much "around" their house unless they are tending some plants or what not.  Houses have quite strong fences and gates so that you can't even see much of the entrance in most cases.