Day 15 June 9th

Big day today – our washing machine was finally delivered and installed. I know that sounds lame but hiking the laundry up that hill and paying close to $8/load was not sustainable. The guy had it all in and working before 10am and I finally did the first load at about noon. What did I do for those 2 hours? Translate the various settings and buttons. There was no English manual online so it was just me and my various dictionaries. I figured it out enough to not flood the bathroom and the clothes seem clean so I am today's Kanji Master.

I've decided that walking up that hill at 3pm is the worst. Not only is it hot but hordes of school boys, just released from school, are making their way down. Tween and teenage boy disrespect must be universal. Perhaps it's not disrespect but a complete unawareness of your surroundings. This is the third time I've gone against the exodus and I feel like I've taken on the super power of invisibility. You'd think they'd see a gaijin, who is taller than almost all of them, using a bright blue parasol and carrying bags of groceries, and you'd be wrong. I'm not the only person they force to the side and into the gutter so this isn't a complex.

We tried a new restaurant that had pictures in the window. Everything on the menu was 280yen (294 with tax). That's about $3 (a little over with tax). One thing that we haven't had a lot of is crunchy, leafy green stuff. So I was very excited to see a salad on the menu – my first tomatoes and lettuce in Japan! We also had skewers of beef with garlic sauce and chicken with hot chili sauce. They had an English language menu so I suspect Craig felt like we were copping out. We decided to get "chocoball ice" for desert. One reason why there aren't many fat Japanese people may be that their scoop of ice cream is about the size of a ping pong ball. It was a scoop of chocolate ice cream rolled in little pieces of chocolate crumbles so I would give it two thumbs up.

This is a picture from a bakery we pass when ever we go down to the JR train station south of our regular hankyu station. They make little animals out of roll cakes. They are soooooo cute. I've already decided that is where my birthday cake is coming from. I'm afraid if I don't save it for a special occasion I will start looking daikon because I pass it about every other day.