Continuity
It’s been nearly a week here now and we’re getting into a bit of a routine. There are some nice restaurants around, we’ve managed to eat nice meals for about 500-600円, although it’s a bit hard to tell what you are actually eating. It still continues to suprise me how cheap things are compared to Australia.
I’ve still yet to try some of the food at the うどん・そば (udon soba) bars scattered everywhere, but I have no idea what I’m going to order if I do go into one. I’m not sure how big the meals are either.. it seems like a breakfast meal would be about 300円 or so. We found a nice bakery around the corner, also in 新世界 (Shin-sekai), with a super friendly chef, quite a character. The bakery has some peculiar music playing, I’m not even sure what genre it would fall under.
I think Japan has it’s own ‘shop’ genre of music. Lots and lots of music in shops, even the local convenience store plays a 5sec~ jingle when the doors open. On top of that is that most stores have someone out the front (or just the clerks themself) to call out 「いらしゃいませ どうぞ!」 everytime anyone walks past. It’s strange that after a couple of days you kinda stop noticing all the noise like that, it sort of all blends in together.
It’s getting a little tiring living out of a hotel though. Having to catch an elevator to get to a toilet or sink, going to the ground floor to have a shower; quite a hassle. I’m pretty used to having a water tap nearby so I can drink plenty of water, but it’s a pain here so far. The thing I miss the most is cooking food though. A nice big vegetable soup or stir fry. Mmm. It’s still really hard to tell what nutrition you are getting (or more importantly, not getting) with such a huge change in diet.
All of the Japanese meals I’ve had in Australia at various restaurants and bars seem very different to everything here. I’m dying to find a nice とんかつ (tonkatsu), but all I’ve seen around here is クーリとんかつ (curry tonkatsu) which isn’t really my thing. I suspect the diet will be a bit different in Kyoto, apparently Osaka has lots of foods that are specialties of the city, like 蛸焼 (Takoyaki), which I’ve not yet tried either!