Observations and Life in Japan

Well to start off my shipment of household goods would seem to have arrived, if anything I’m quite happy about that, so I was finally able to implement my plan to brush up on my photography skills and get out into town and take pictures. I felt really gung ho about it and took a chunk of yen out of the bank for ‘walking around’ money, and my camera an old model Canon EOS Rebel X2. I took on the order of 500 or so and as most photographers are wont to do only used a tiny fraction of them. I’ll generally use 1 out of each set of pictures, so I should have 35 usable shots, I have far fewer than that. Because it seems my camera/lenses are broke, namely the autofocusing feature. So I’ll have to get those replaced, fun time, not looking forward to paying the price for those good here in Japan, at least I can just go to Akihabara and get what I need.

If anything living here in japan has changed my perspective on a few things that most people will consider ‘normal’ and take for granted, the biggest thing would of course be the langage, being American and having lived in the States, namely the Midwest for most of my life I’ve generally come to expect that most people will speak English as a first language. Of course I’m not expecting to be able to communicate 100%, but well that’s one thing to get used to. Also actually being the ‘foreigner’ is another big thing for me, especially as I’m a ‘big’ foreigner, not fat,, just tall. Hence the blog title…I’ll get lost is a huge group of people, but I’ll still stand out. And here is where the difference is big, but in a great way. Portion size, having all of these meals in japan is quite refreshing, small, filling, generally pretty healthy and it all tastes amazing so far. Then I went to the Chili’s on base the other night and couldn’t finish my meal as it was like 3 ‘japanese’ meals.

Fresh fruits and prosciutto Salad from Forbidden fruit


I will say that I really enjoy Tokyo and the environment, the food is awesome, and generally looks good as you’ll see here. I had a nice salad in a little café place called ‘Forbidden fruit’ while I was down in Harajuku. However eating isn’t all that I did while I was down there, also picked up a brand new coat, just a nice sport coat like design. I will say this, it feels nice wearing designer clothes. By the way, I didn’t find out about this issue until I uploaded the pictures and found out that most of the pictures were incredibly blurry. *sighs* At least I got a few of them post worthy, so yeah…gratuitous pictures in 3….2….1….

And here's my Flickr for more http://www.flickr.com/photos/58409124@N03/


The Meiji Shrine





Dinner (Udon noodles and tempura fried eggplant)




An expensive cake 'worth' 40 USD