Quiet Weekend

This weekend I decided to relax.  However, on Saturday I bought a few things worth mentioning!

First of all:

Yes, I finally decided that if I can't decide what to get, I will never get a bike.  So I decided I wanted this one and got it.  It was around $350 - about $100 more expensive than the basic city bikes but I didn't like the shape of those and I wasn't clear on the gears (they said 3 but I couldn't see any).  It has a nice lock in the back that locks the back wheel.  Some people said I should get a chain lock and lock it to a post or something.  Getting the bike was fun since the person serving me spoke as much english as I speak Japanese.  But we somehow managed to communicate - the good thing is that I knew exactly what information he needed so I just provided it to him.  I had to register the bike with police (a $5 fee) in case it gets stolen there is a sticker on the bike identifying it.  There is also some insurance for 1 year that covers half of the bike fee if it isn't recovered.  After getting the bike (and while waiting for them to get it ready) I treated myself to some green tea (matcha) based drink with green tea icecream.

It is so nice to go shopping with the bike.  Get on the bike and just ride for like 5mins and I'm at a large supermarket.  I park the bike, go in, shop, and take the bike back home with grocery bag in the basket.  Works really well for normal day to day shopping.  However, the main purpose is to use the bike for commuting to university and I tried this today (Sunday) and it took around 30mins.  There was one tough moment where I had to go on 1st gear for a bit and I got quite tired but made it to the top of the hill.  Otherwise, it is quite nice.  The ride home is easier since the hill the other way is much smaller.  I have to get used to a few things though.  For instance, the steering wheel is very sensitive so I have to watch out not to drive into things.  Also, many sidewalks here have very little room to fit between some road barricade and a lamp post for instance so have to be careful not to hit thing.  Then there is people.  During my current working hours it's not a problem since there aren't that many pple on the sidewalks at that time.  However, during busy times, it's nuts.

Also on Saturday when I got back from the bike shop, I received an email that my phone is ready.  So I decided to head to the Softbank store in like downtown Nagoya.  I took the train.  There were so many people walking around on the sidewalks there on the weekend that biking is out of the question.  I had to wait a bit at the store for the english speaking person to appear but...

It's very shiny!  For free, I also got a small wireless router:

The phone is amazing (well... I haven't made a phone call on it yet...hehe, but the unlimited internet access is nice).  But more on that later.  I took a few pictures with it at the train station:

It's not bad - definitely good enough for the blog :P

After getting the phone, I went to the nearby rental store (TSUTAYA - the most popular rental store chain here) and got a membership made.  It was nice since they had somebody on staff that spoke english so she helped me fill out the form.  I rented 3 music CDs.  The rate was around $1.50 for a single and around $4 for album.  They came in a nice bag.  I had to return them the next day though.

On sunday, for lunch I had some miso katsu in the underground mall called Central Park.  I had some pictures from the park in earlier posts.  [picture from iphone!]

I found a comic type store walking around.  I didn't go in, so I don't know what they have inside:

Around 5pm, I biked to school to check out the route.  I went to the lab to see if anybody is around and there were a few people working on their presentations for the upcoming lab symposium.  Luckily I was able to go for dinner with one of the members and we went to this japanese home style restaurant near the university.  We sat on tatami (the mats) and short table.  This time it was more comfortable - the other place lacked the tatami and just had a hard floor.  The place was almost packed with people.  I asked my lab member to order something so we both got pig's intestine dish which was excellent but a bit chewy!  All that for about $8.  I really like the place - hopefully we will be able to come back there more often!