After re-awakening, I took a shower/bath.
There is a faucet that fills the tub and a shower head, but it is handheld. It has a wall mount, but it wouldn’t be pointing in the right direction. So I sat in the tub and lathered up. There is shampoo, conditioner, and liquid soap here, so I didn’t have to buy any.
After a few minutes, I decided to put in the drain plug. The tub filled quite fast, although the tub was small, it was tall, so I was able to submerge.
The water was nearly perfect in temperature, from faucet and shower head, which is a hard thing to accomplish.
I had sent a message to the host asking about the WiFi. Apparently there was supposed to be directions on a paper on the kitchen table, but there wasn’t
I did a quick search for restaurants, but decided just to walk around until I found one. I went into a small restaurant and closed my eyes and pointed to the menu. If you don’t know what to order, then random is just as good and any.
I got a bowl of rice topped with cabbage and a very thin cut of meat (bacon???) and a side of miso soup and some sort of greens.
The greens didn’t taste good, but the rest did, and I got full before finishing.
I wandered a bit, aimlessly, until I found a small park. I sat in the shade and watched the kids play.
There were the usual items; swings, slide, monkey bars, etc.. But they also had a sort of moon-shaped hill, that had wall-climbing handholds and the inside part was a large slide.
There are a lot of parks around and I just roam from one to another. In one, I sat under an arboretum and watched the huge bumble bees flit around the flowers.
Before heading back, I remembered to find a shop to get a fanny pack. As I walked, I found a Makita store.
It smelled of machine oil, it was wonderful. But I did manage to not buy anything. How would I get it home anyway?
After a few more misses, I got the idea to search for a purse store. Luckily one was nearby.
It was a general purpose clothing store, but did have a large assortment of purses, and I found a fanny pack that was simple and cheap enough. More important, I could put my iPad in there and stop carrying it.
I also realized something, while I can count out the change I need, it can be a pain if I don’t know if I have enough to start with. The smallest bill is ¥1000, so it is easy to end up with a lot of change. I realized that since most stores have a machine for you to pay with coin, cash, or credit card, you don’t hand the money to the clerk, I can just insert the change I have, then insert cash, and the register will just spit out the minimum change.
Cheating, yes, but I don’t care.
The problem being, the metro machines don’t accept ¥1 and ¥5 coins, so I have to try to rid myself of them at regular stores.