Saturday, October 14, 2006

Oshu-shi : The Japanese Youngstown

"It's country living", they said.
The hell it is.
This place is Youngstown ,OH transplanted to Northern Japan.
What that means is that it is a dying city filled with delapidated, rusted out factories interspersed with rice fields.
It's the rust-belt all over again!! (And everyone knows how much I despise, l.o.a.t.h.e. Youngstown.)
The school itself is located close to a small factory so every once in awhile we get the wonderous perfume of burning metal and welding wafting throughtout the entire building.

And the driving!
Youngstown ALL over again.
The worst driving I've ever seen--cars blatantly going through stale red lights, driving 50 mph through side streets and the streets here would be only wide enough to fit a single Hummer, if that.

Country is pretty fields and this ain't it. (We won't even discuss the overrunning spider population. I'm sure they outnumber us 3-1 at the very least.)

That being said with some concentrated searching, I have found that I can buy just about everything I need online except for eggs. Soymilk, rice, a dozen different lentils, detergent, spices; literally everything but eggs--all online. Thank god because not only does the wind NEVER stop blowing, but I had to go to my favorite clothes depot today (which they actually have in this backwater) and buy turtlenecks--it's that cold already!
I'm literally busy battening down to hatches--marking where I can buy clothes online, ordering food in bulk for storage so I don't have to go out in the -10 weather come January. I'm almost finished hanging extra "curtains" in the living room/bedroom. There's no such thing as insulation in Japan so the key to staying warm is wearing many layers--not just for yourself, but for your home.

From now on, I'm hibernating with my bag of Ghiradelli chocolate until March.

Thanks again for stopping into my little corner of the 'net, and Happy Browsing!!

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