Nagoyan Winter and Old Ladies

So, it's the middle of December and the temperatures are still around 12C during the day and around 5C at night.  Many trees already lost their leaves but some still remain!  Here is a nice example of a nicely coloured tree on campus:

 There are a bunch of interesting trees planted in a row basically in front of the building where I have my Japanese classes.  They have almost needle like leaves that are falling down now making the ground very nice looking.

 The nice golden ginko tree is now completely naked.

 The trees along the large park on campus are still quite green.

 Nicely coloured tree on campus:

There are also some flowers still flowering in bushes in the campus park.

For Hello Kitty fans, there is a large multi part display in Central Park underground shopping mall in downtown Sakae featuring various regions of the country and special hello kitty phone straps for each region.

Sunset as seen from my office.

 Sakae now seems to have a lot of Christmas decorations.

 Yesterday, I went for a walk around the campus - to areas that I haven't been to yet.  Found a nice shrine with the red tora gates right next to the campus.

 In the man made lake on campus, there do seem to be quite big fish!

 The neighbourhood to the east of the campus has quite a number of hills.

 This is an apartment that was for rent on google maps - but the location isn't all that convenient.

 Not sure what this is...

 A bit dark, but the tree was left when building the sidewalk.

Today, I went to Ikeshita - an area around a subway station where I want to look for an apartment.  Along the way, I found some nice flowering trees and a garden with vegetables.

 A nice flower shop...

 A nice path...

An interesting event happened on my journey.  I found this small store with veggies and other stuff on a side road in Ikeshita.  I went in and bought some fruit.  But when I went in, one old lady - one of the customers - kept looking at me!  So when I paid... the cashier handed me some sweet buns from that lady and the lady said "presento".  Hmm... I don't usually get presents from old ladies... so this was kinda strange... so I thanked her a few times and left.  Felt kinda bad since maybe she wanted to talk to me but I run away so quickly... well... maybe it's a good sign to move to the neighbourhood?

hmm tasty buns... if only she was like 50 years younger... ;P

Weekly Food Update (x2)

I'm a bit overdue with the blog posts...

First, some cafeteria pickings:

Some spicy ramen:

 Indian curry day at the cafeteria.  There was even an Indian person making the naan in the special clay oven. Hehe, there is even a story about the little orange paper...

Basically, there was a lottery at the school cafeterias  - when you bought a meal, you got one ticket.  With 5 tickets, during this one day, you could pull out a card from a jar... and could win an ipod touch.  I won some candy... hehe.

However, during that play day, I no longer needed tickets but got one while eating.  It was a busy time at the cafeteria so there weren't many seats - so I seated next to these 3 Japanese girls (always a good plan!).  At some time, the girls gave their tickets to one girl and she only had 4... so I gave her my ticket.  She was quite happy about it and kept thanking me... and I was even more happy ;P.

Some Chinese style soup and fish.

 A nice spicy korean kimchi broth with rice.

 Hamburger on rice with avocado and other stuff.

 I bought this drink one day... it wasn't all that great and I asked and it doesn't even have milk - hehe.  But it has "asian taste".

This one day I felt like having some spicy Thai curry.  So I bought the standard (NOT) ingredients...

 This is the package of curry I bought but I didn't realize that it is actually all inclusive and you should not add stuff to it.

 The result...well.. okie..but not all that great.

 One day I went for sushi... had this tentacle sushi!

 A bento box for dinner one day:

 A nice dinner set at this restaurant next to the campus - Hisaya.  Teriyaki fish was awesome!

 One night, we went for okonomiyaki that we made ourselves - was great fun!

 Hmm.. tasty!

Bike Ride Downtown

On Saturday, I decided to go biking downtown.  I haven't biked to school in a while but it was a nice day so I went.  It was quite enjoyable and I took some pictures along the way:

This was an interesting looking building along the way - I don't know what it is.

 After about 35mins, I got to the Central Park area.

 As you can see... not many leaves left on the trees.

 Some trees were cut like this before the leaves started to fall off...

 This is Nagoya town hall area

 Finally, after about 50mins, I managed to get to Nagoya Train Station.  Here is the famous doll dressed up for the holidays.

 Interesting buildings next to a park along the way back.

 Some of the trees in the downtown core have lights on them.

Some palms, covered in preparation for the colder weather.

 More of the Central Park.

 More funny looking trees near Sakae.

Overall, it was a 20km journey.  Along the way back, I stopped at this Kappa Sushi place that has very cheap belt sushi - each plate basically 90yen.  Was not too bad.