Bike Ride to OSU

First of all, I bought a hat the other day since with temperature around 5C or less, it is a bit cold on a bike.  

 I went to this store in the mall near me and bought the hat.  When I was paying the girl was so happy.  Then she thanked me a few times, wrapped my hat in this nice cloth/plastic bag with strings.  Even asked if I wanted the labels cut which was nice since I could then use it to get home on my bike.  Then she took the bag and told me to walk with her to the middle of the store... she gave me the bag... thanked me like I did something good for her - was quite interesting.  Then when I was walking out of the store, all the other workers kept thanking me.

Also a few days ago, I bought a nice backpack while in this store where I usually buy clothing (that fits me reasonably well).  I like it.  It's not too big but just right and also fits well to my bike basket if I don't want to have it on my back.

So today I decided to go for a nice bike ride.  I haven't gone on a longer ride for a few weeks now.  I basically had two goals: to go to OSU and buy a HD and to return some movies I rented from Tsutaya in Sakae.  So I put my camera, and the movies into my new backpack and set out.

First, I went to the Ikeshita subway station area to check out some apartment building that I liked from the adds.  Didn't have a problem finding the building and it was basically on the way to OSU.  The funny thing is that the building is about 2 blocks away from that store where that lady bought my a present! hehe!  I can also see this building from the hallway of my university building.  Might be a good choice of a place to move into!  There are actually a few apartments in that building currently available for a reasonable price (basically what I am paying now).  What you think?  This is the street, the building is the one in the back - brown.

 14 floors - each floor 4 apartments.

 From the back.  It looks like the entrance doors are from the outside in the back - which is quite common in buildings here from what I saw.

From there, I went to OSU.  Here is a large street that actually has a highway underground which you can see in the distance comes out and switches to being above ground.

 You can see the highway coming out of the ground and some of the downtown (Nagoya Station) buildings in the background.

 At OSU, as always, lots of people.  Also some festive decorations.

I decided to get some tasty pastry fish filled with bean paste at one of the food stalls.

Behind OSU is a nice temple:

 There were some paper decorations hanging above the street in front of the temple entrance.

From there, I went to return the movies in Sakae and stopped at kappa sushi along the way home.  Had 7 plates of pretty decent sushi for around $9.  All in all, the trip was around 20km.

Osu Market

Looking for some PC stores, I visited the OSU Market.  This place is a gigantic mass of stores spanning a few streets that are covered by a roof.  The roof definitely helped today as it was raining rather badly.  The total shopping/walking area is around 1.5km.  Here is an interesting interactive map of the place.  I took a few pictures while in there:

 I gotta get one of those lucky cats for my apartment!

 It continued across the street but I went the other way since I didn't feel like going into the rain.

OSU is a good place for buying PC parts (as one of my lab members suggested).  I went there not really knowing where what is so I didn't actually go to every store but I did manage to visit a few computer stores.  They looked rather like typical Canadian computer stores just crammed into smaller spaces.  You could buy whole computer systems or tons of different parts.  Two large chain stores are also in there, called Tsukumo and Goodwill.

I want to buy a PC and so I am looking for what exactly to get.  I think I decided to get a ready made system by Tsukumo since the price is basically the same as buying the parts myself less the headaches.  Plus, I can get it shipped to me which helps since I don't need to carry heavy boxes on trains.  Perhaps Monday (it is a holiday - again!) I will take a bike ride there to see how well that goes.  There are also other chain electronics stores around where I live but their computer parts selection is smaller (I'm not sure about the prices but they might be more expensive too).

There were two things that caught my eye while looking around.  First, were beautiful monitors made by Mitsubishi.  Amazing looking and also with IPS panels!  In Canada it is very difficult to get IPS panels and those that you can get (e.g., Dell's) are expensive.  The one I really like is the Diamondcrysta WIDE RDT232WX-S 23inch screen with a gloss coating.  Granted, the price is about twice of a regular 23inch TN screen but this one is amazing!  I am strongly thinking about buying it (also bringing it back to Canada with me when I go back).  The second thing was a 2 speaker system by ONKYO (GX-70HD) that sounded so good as a demo that I just gotta have it (well... hehe, I did like it).  The price was around $100 which is not too bad for a good sounding computer speaker system with built in subwoofer.  And frankly, a 5+ speaker system is really difficult to set up in a normal home environment so something that has 2 speakers but sounds great would be excellent (plus it's small enough to bring back too :P).

Yesterday I got invited to this evening izakaya gathering - there was a lot of beer and tons of finger-type foods (mostly on sticks).  The food was amazing and both food and drinks were really cheap.  Plus, it was nice to meet some foreigners that lived in Japan for a while now.  We left the restaurant rather late so I caught the 2nd last train home (around midnight).  Trains here stop around midnight so you really have to be careful if you're out in the evening.  For me, it was around 10km to get home so walking would have been out of the question (plus it rained).  On this picture, the blue dish has a very interesting food - basically, squid parts mixed with squid ink or something like that - very interesting taste.

And because I don't post enough food pictures on this blog, here's today's late lunch consisting of some tempura stuff and udon in broth.  Not a whole lot of food, but I really like udon noodles so it was good :).  Plus, the wooden spoon was awesome to use!  This restaurant was in the basement of a building that is opposite the street of the Nagoya station buildings.

I was near the Nagoya train station buildings because I went to the BIC Camera (ビックカメラ) store.

This place was huge!  Several level of electronics and computers.  There was also a bicycle shop with a large selection of accessories so I got a pump (small enough to place on the bike), a bottle holder (since my bike has holes for it) and some keys needed to attach things and tune the bike.  Sadly, I managed to misplace one of the screws on the bottle holder (probably in the store) so we'll see what can be done about it.  Maybe tomorrow when it stops raining, I'll try to attach those things to the bike.

Hmm I gotta say that some of the pics taken with this iPhone are quite decent (at least for this blog!).