I took some sleeping pills last night to help me get to sleep and stay asleep. It worked pretty darn good. I woke up at 3:30 am and another time, but I was able to go right back to sleep until the alarm went off at 5:30 am. I am debating on if I should take another sleeping pill tonight or not.
Work is work, so I will not talk about that. I got off work around 3:30 pm and rushed back to my apartment to call Denise over the internet using Skype. It was the first time I have seen my beautiful wife since we departed at the airport in Seattle. She looked as cute as ever. We had a great conversation until almost 5 pm Japan time which was midnight Seattle time. I look forward to seeing her again via Skype in a few days.
After talking with Denise I headed over to a Ramen restaurant to have dinner with Don, his wife Joyce, and Kevin. Don and Kevin work with me. The Ramen place was right near the main gate to the base. I ordered a Miso-Ramen and slurped it down. It was quite tasty. The best part was that there was no seafood with it, so I can live another day.
Restaurants are very interesting in Japan because they all have the menu items shown as samples in the window with the price of the item and a description of the item usually in kanji, so I can't understand it. From the picture you can usually get a good idea on what you are about to eat. If you can't say what you want, you can always show the item to the restuarant worker from the display window.
After eating we headed over to the Daiei shopping mall right nearby. It is a five story shopping mall with department stores, restaurants, shoe stores, video game stores, cars on display, grocery store, etc.
One of the interesting parts at the grocery store was a display for tofu. There was a ton of different tofu products and they had a small TV playing a catchy tofu's great type of music video with tofu characters rocking out. It was funny. I ended up buying two beers and some green tea ice cream. One of the beers is just regular Kirin beer which is the most popular beer in Japan. The other is a Kirin stout beer, which I wanted to compare to Guiness.
After the grocery store I checked out one of the department stores that had board games, video games, 100 yen store, etc. What brought me into the store was a Lego display which got me excited. Upon checking out the rest of the store I found no special Lego sets except the bulk piece box that I saw in the display window. They did have Japanese versions of Operation and the Game of Life and a Super Mario Brothers board game. The department store reminded me of a Target, but with a wider selection.
I checked out a few other stores in the mall, but I did not purchase anything else. I found some really cool chop sticks that I might get at a later date, but it is too early in my Japanese adventure to purchase chop sticks already. I have been using chop sticks to eat breakfast and dinner. I have not found a way to pick up french toast with the chop sticks so I use my natural chop sticks (aka fingers) to eat them.
Since I have been back in the apartment, I have finished off the ice cream and one beer. The first bite of the green tea ice cream disgusted me and I thought, "what a bad idea". Then I had another bite and could not stop myself from finishing the rest of the small container since it tasted so good. I drank a can of the best beer in Japan and I enjoyed it. I look forward to drinking other beers while I am here in Japan. I will save the stout beer for tomorrow.
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