Adventures in Japan

Japan is indeed expensive

Tyler and I, we've been very social this weekend. Friday night we went out drinking with a couple of the guys we met at the Working Holiday party. We started out at a bar very close to where we live, and ended up at a bar about a 2-hour walk away. We didn't get home until sunrise. You'd think that meant we had a really good time, but really that just means there was a lot of walking. Seriously though, we did have fun. And we took a lot of pictures. Most of them are dark and fuzzy. Some of them, we can't tell what they are. Many are inappropriate for family viewing.

I think I may have mentioned it before, but the bars here are tiny. Drinks in a bar are expensive. Trains stop running pretty early, and taxis cost a ridiculous amount of money.

Saturday, we met one of our Japanese friends from that same Working Holiday party. He had some of his other Japanese friends with him. One looked a lot like Jet Li. I guess they were looking to practice their English, but they sure did speak a lot of Japanese amongst themselves. We met at the train station in Umeda (near where we stayed for the first couple of weeks) then we went looking for somewhere to eat. We must have tried five big-ish places before we found one where we wouldn't have to wait 30 minutes or more for a table. We ate A LOT, but it also cost us a lot. Over 5 times what we would normally spend on a meal. Add that to the fact that we ate before we caught the subway downtown, and the fancy coffee that we drank at a café back near the station, and it makes for an expensive evening. An expensive weekend, really. Maybe we should get jobs.

We took an outdoor table at the café. It was much quieter and easier for us all to talk. Our two new Japanese friends were bundled up in their jackets and commenting on the cold. Tyler sat there in a T-shirt. We both found the weather rather balmy. It couldn't have been colder than 15°C. Sure beats October in Regina.

We'd only just met her, but before we all parted ways, Kanae gave us a gift of prettily-wrapped dessert-type things. They were full of red bean paste, which neither Tyler nor I really care for, but it's the thought that counts.