Tag: walk

Food and parks

SDSpivey

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.

More foolishness

SDSpivey

I woke up around 3am. I browsed around the room a bit, took my first dump since Georgia. The toilet has a heated seat, and fortunately, there was toilet paper.

I understand the need in many places to use bidets as the plumbing is not good enough to move paper through, but I don’t want to have to sit there while air is blown on my backside to dry.

Morning view of Osaka and Yodo River

I don’t think I will use it, but I did bring my Amazon Fire, so I could watch some TV or movies if I wanted, but there is no TV. I thought there was supposed to be, so I will check the listing.

There is nothing anywhere I can see that says what the WiFi is, and there are a dozen signals I am detecting, so I have to use my precious mobile data.

The listing doesn’t say there is a TV, so I must have imagined it.

I also notice, that I had searched for places with 2 beds and 2 bedrooms, but I only have 1 bed. Apparently, since I am only paying for one person, I shouldn’t need the other bed, so that room is locked off.

Even if I didn’t need the bed, I still would want it so I can lay out my suitcase, instead of having it on the floor.

Being bored and hungry, I start looking for an all night market. The closest I can find is an hour’s walk away. Oh, what the hell, I got nothing else to do.

It is cool inside the room so I put on my jacket, but it doesn’t take me very long to remove it. Great, now I have to carry it as well as my iPad. I suddenly realized as I was pulling into Atlanta airport, that I hadn’t brought my fanny pack.

Fanny packs are ridiculous looking, but they are super convenient.

I had to cross over the Yodo river, the bridge being really high above the water. They must have ships coming through. Maybe though, it is just because the river banks are so far apart.

As expected, very few people were out at that time of night. Other than a road crew repainting one of the roads near my room, I might not have seen anyone for 40 minutes.

Following the directions, I made it to the store, and it was open. I would have been really angry otherwise.

It wasn’t very large, barely larger than many convenience stores back home.

I ended up selecting a bunch (4) of bananas, a box of grapes, and some sort of apple drink. I can’t read it, but the label has too many ingredients to just be juice.

One thing I had forgotten, Japanese stores don’t give out bags, normally. So I used my jacket to wrap up my purchases, tying the arms together.

I made another mistake, I had opened the apple drink and drank some, so as I walk, it splashes back and forth. Although I would have been more upset had I waited until getting back and then finding out I had carried it all that way for something that tasted bad.

The Japanese brag about how much they recycle, but they also waste a lot. The bananas were wrapped in a cellophane bag, despite not needing one.

The grapes also were wrapped, but that makes more sense, as grapes don’t have an outer coating that we remove before eating. You wouldn’t want random people touching your grapes before you eat them.

Along the way, my wrist was beginning to hurt from the awkward carrying of the stuff. I had the idea to call an Uber, but after waiting for 15 minutes, I still had not been connected with one, so I canceled and kept on walking.

In China, there are lots of Lawson stores, which are branded just like 7-11 stores are. In Osaka, I see Lawson’s, but they are more blue and greenish-blue logos. There are also 7-11 stores here too, maybe that’s why there is a difference.

The also have some restaurant chain called MacuDonarudo’s. It looks familiar, but can’t place why.

As I was arriving, dawn was breaking, so a good time to go back to bed. 🙂

Downtown Derry-Londonderry

SDSpivey

We really haven’t spent much time in any cities since Dublin, and there wasn’t much to see around anyway, so we walked down, across the bridge to the city walls. Derry has one of the few double decker bridges in Europe and has the only remaining “full” city walls, they were never breached.

Derry is a city full of past trouble. It is the battle ground between the Irish Nationalists (for a free Ireland) and the Unionists (loyalist to the UK crown). Even the name of the city is rife with difficulty. The legal name is “Londonderry”, but it has long been called just “Derry” also.

The city was even a center to the turbulent times referred to simply as “The Troubles.” This was a time of terrorist tactics of shootings and bombings of public places, starting in the 1960’s and having deaths as late as 2002.

We ambled along, enjoying the sights, nothing really new or noteworthy, but enjoyable. Until mom spotted a Hop-On bus sign. Wait a minute, I bought tickets for the Derry Hop-On bus before we left, Unfortunately, the bus here only makes one round per hour, so we had to wait 30-40 minutes.

We took the whole tour, coming back to where we started, mainly because the driver never stopped at the places he was supposed to stop. Also, nothing looked interesting enough to stop at.

It was just a mile to the house, so we went across the Peace Bridge and walked down the street.

Ready for a nap.