of sakura, health insurance, and tonkatsu

Today I finally rode my bike to school.  I took about a week off from the bike so it was good to be on it again.  Along the way, I rode by the start of that yamazakigawa river/canal that I had in a previous post that was filled with sakura trees.  Well, here is how it looks now:

 The sakura are blooming:

 Looks quite interesting.  I only went by a few hundred meters so it must be great looking a bit further in.

 Not full bloom yet but getting there:

 Here is a row of sakura trees right by my university building (on the right):

 At lunch, I went out to eat and took a short bike ride.  Here is a shrine by the university:

 A line of sakura trees by the zoo entrance:

 Riding along a street by Motoyama, I glimpsed some large statue... so I went around the block to get a better view:

 Basically, it is a cemetery with this large Buddha statue supported by elephants:

 Here is how the sakura trees near the campus convenience store look like today:

 And the other side:

I went home earlier to stop at the ward office and pay my health insurance bill that I got in the mail.  Well... the one lady started saying something about "cheapest one" in Japanese which I completely didn't understand in this context, so she called another person who spoke English.  I have no idea what that first lady was talking about but this person explained to me that I don't have to pay anything - it is just saying when the money will be withdrawn from my bank account every month.  Which is great - I guess last time I got this kinda of form about 6 months ago, I went to the office and paid for 6 months (nobody explained it to me hehe).

So, being home for dinner time, I decided to go find some nice new place to eat.  So, after about 30minutes by bike (after which I brought the bike back home) and about 1hr walking afterwards (no, I am not kidding!), I finally found a place to eat.  I do have a problem with deciding when there are like 100 restaurants near me - hehehe!  Most of them don't even have menus outside and it is just a name and you can't even see inside so it is a bit difficult.  So I finally decided to go to this shop which is basically on a large street corner on my street.  I found it later online once I transcribed the name: 吉川屋.

This was the menu.  Luckily I was able to read most of it so I got a tonkatsu とんかつ (pork cutlet) teishoku 定食 (set meal).  The left part of the menu is their specialty - unagi うなぎ (freshwater eel) - a bit expensive.

Very tasty - katsu with miso sauce (of course, Nagoya is famous for it's miso katsu) and miso soup, cabbage salad, some pickles and rice:

Very tasty.  The place looked like it was family run with husband cooking, wife serving, and grandpa preparing some smaller dishes - quite a comfortable atmosphere.