Weekly Update #1: First Impressions (3/18-3/23)

Time to get used to making this weekly update thing! Also I'm actually at the dorms now so I actually have enough internet to do things - we were staying at a hotel beforehand, which only had 1 LAN cable and no wi-fi's worth of internet, so we had to share it. >_> But without further adieu, time to talk about what this first week's been like, and go drop some pictures and what not~

So before moving in to the dorms, we stayed at a hotel called Narita U-City Hotel - just a bit of a train ride away from the airport. Check-in went smoothly, though largely due to Steph's efforts- my Japanese isn't quite as good. ^^; But either way, here's our room!

(a bit of a mess since I took it in the morning, but you get the idea)

Here's the bathroom! I'm not sure why I didn't get a better shot, but oh well. 

So the moral of the story here is: The room was small. Like real small, especially for two people. But that's not surprising given Japan's city culture. But on the flip side, service was the best I had ever experienced in a hotel ever. They give you more complimentary stuff than I can shake a stick at: Walking into the room, you get complimentary cloth slippers and a yukata for sleeping in waiting for you on the bed. In the bathroom, you get complimentary bathing supplies, towels, razors, hair brushes, toothbrush/paste. And on the table, free coffee and tea! And a hot water boiler to come with it! Speaking of drinks, they don't do that thing where they put drinks in your fridge to tempt you to drink it so they can charge you for it later. They're such nice people.

I think the most interesting part was - they don't give you disincentives for using the free stuff; they give you incentives for NOT using it: apparently if you don't use the hotel amenities provided in the bathroom, you can bring down a coin in the bathroom (shown below) to the front counter, and they'll donate to efforts to revitalize nature in the Narita area. Gotta say, this whole positive reinforcement and environment loving thing feels so Japanese haha.

Impossible to read, I know, but here's the coin at least.
Sorry for my bad photography skills! :c

So anyways, we had some free time while we stayed at the hotel, so we took the opportunity to explore the area. It was a pretty quiet area, though it seemed to be near a school, since we saw a lot of kids in uniform walking by when we went out to get food. Anyways, a picture's worth a lot of words, so I'll be economical here and go dump a bunch of pictures I took while walking around.

Someone told me to take a picture of every vending machine I saw.
I think it was 'Lil Eater. Well, here's one.

Close-up of the last vending machine. Just so you can see the drink variety.

Qoo! The label is cute. =w=

A random dental clinic we passed by. I took a picture of it because the
pink Squirtle amused me too much.

Seriously, pink Squirtle with a toothbrush.

Banner ad at a student supply store. Being a Japanese male student never looked
so cool since shounen manga.

Gachapon machine! You put a 100￥coin in, and then you get happy surprises.
It's like the stuff we have in the US, but you get cute stuff instead of gumballs
or other stupid junk nobody wants. =P

Rikkakuma! They're so cute. =D We both went for this machine, but got the
same capsule. Variety would've been cool, but having matching keychains
is kinda cute at least!

Random shot of the scenery. It's a nice place! And look how red that house is.

Here's another vending machine for you, Matt. This one offers hot and cold drinks!
Also I think BOSS is the best namefor a coffee brand ever.

BOSS rainbow mountain blend. I'm really curious as to what this tastes like,
but I haven't tried it yet.

After walking around a bit, we went to a bakery on the corner across from the station called Marond for lunch. It was a good life choice.

Entrance shot with the sign and stuff!

Tried to get a shot from the outside of the bread selection, but lolglare.
I'll get better at this eventually.

And a shot of the menu for the linked cafe. Pizza toast!

Japanese bakeries are pretty neat. Basically, there's shelves of trays of various baked goods, ranging from plain to savory to sweet, and from wrapped bundles to individuals, yada yada. You take a tray, take the stuff you want, and take it to the counter for checkout. Then you can get it wrapped up individually to go, or at this bakery, take the tray to the adjoining cafe to eat on the spot.

The coolest part of Japanese bakeries is the variety of goods though! For lunch, I got this 'lil ham and lettuce panini with mayo (pretty normal, but I really liked the taste lol), a yakisoba dog (I kid you not- yakisoba noodles in a hotdog bun), and a chocolate cornet (which you may have heard of from Lucky Star fame- or infamy, depending on your opinion). Steph got melon bread (sweet bread with a crusty top of cookie dough), and a wrapped teriyaki burger. It was all really delicious, but I forgot to take photos of most of it because I was too hungry (*shot*). I'm sorry, I'll try to remember next time if we ever find a bakery near the dorm (seriously, we haven't found a bakery near the dorm and I'm crying a bit inside because bakery food is amazing). Here's what photos I do have though!

Yakisoba dog! I still don't understand why it works, but it does.
Also, note the iced cocoa from the cafe- that stuff was amazing, and worth all of
the 300￥. Iced cocoa is wonderful and needs to be more of a thing in the US.

Chocolate cornet! It's teeming with chocolate, and I love it. Was too chocolate'y
for Steph though, it seems. =( Also, I started by eating it from the fat end, and
alternated bites with the narrow end to balance out bread and chocolate eating,
in case you were wondering.

So anyways, after that delicious trek, we hit up the conbini before heading back. Convenience stores in Japan are amazing by the way. We were at this place called 7&i (it's actually literally just Japanese 7-11, but it's called 7&i for some reason). Imagine 7-11, but instead of slushies, you get to get Japanese snacks and drinks (like Pocky and bottled milk tea, and at a reasonable price lol), and an entire aisle of just various flavors of rice balls, bento sets, and microwavable dinners. It's really excellent. My personal favorites by the way, are mayo tuna rice balls, and katsu curry bentos. Either way, below are my conbini photos.

You can buy manga at conbini! Shout-out to Annemarie, who told me to read
Rose of Versailles- I found a tankabon of it in a convenience store of all places lol.

色エンピツCANDY - Colored pencil candy. Didn't buy it, but it was cute, so picture!

Alright, now that we're done buying snacks, back to the hotel. Here's some random pictures at the hotel.

Here's another vending machine in the hotel lobby. It dispenses choice hot and cold
cafe drinks (coffee, tea, cocoa) in a paper cup. Also, buttons for customizing
milk and sugar levels at your leisure. It's really cool!

I dunno, it was to the side of the reception desk. It's cool.

Posters for the hotel restaurant we never went to. Convenience stores and bento
too powerful.

Specials sign for said restaurant above. It was neat. =3

City view from an open emergency exit.

Anyways, after getting back to the hotel room, we chilled to some quality Japanese TV. Some kind of news program on cosplay. It was kinda amusing lol.

Leafa and Madoka cosplayers being interviewed. There was a Miku as well!

More of that program.

So that's the hotel area adventures. Fastforward a bit, and we're off to move in to the dorms! We used a service called takuhaibin that's hella convenient: Basically paid delivery service on a next-day basis that's available out of hotels and convenience stores.Used it for our luggage so we didn't have to lug it on the train! Speaking of trains: Train system is pretty sweet here. Hard to read the train lines when the maps don't have English, but oh well. We'll get used to it eventually lol. Either way. Picture dump!

Vending machine at the train station. There's so many of them, seriously.

Full view!

"Warm onion" from the vending machine. Curious about the flavor... I guess it
would taste like onion soup haha.

Vending machine with an LCD screen. So high-tech!

These train tracks are so clean. Japan is just so clean in general, wow. I wish
the rest of the world is like this.

 After the hour train ride, we got to Hiyoshi station in Kanagawa. Google Maps lied to us, so we got lost getting to the dorm. >_> But after a bit of an adventure, we finally found it. Behold!

Shimoda Student Village, where I'll be living for a few months.

Here's the front sign.

 Cool stuff. So how about the inside?

Here's the entrance to my dorm room!

Name tag, English on top, Japanese on bottom.

Inside of my dorm room! It's a little messy 'cuz I took this on the first day.
I'll get more picture of it later!

Well. The concrete walls makes it look like a prison cell a little bit lol. Also the dorms don't come with much complimentary stuff, unfortunately. They don't even come with a trash can, what the heck? At least there's fridge and beddings though. Pretty homely though. Lovely sunlight through the window, and there's a remote for the light which is pretty convenient! 

After arriving at the dorm, we chilled for a night, and then we explored the area a bit. We went out and got lunch at a cafe. We got curry and hot chocolate, and the owner was pretty nice!

Spicy Chicken Curry!

Uh... I forgot what kind of curry this was. Sweet vegetable curry I think?

So that was the cafe. The next day, we went to McDonalds for lunch just 'cuz I wanted to see what Japanese McDonalds was like. I got a teriyaki burger! It was pretty good, for McDonalds food haha. Lots of mayo and teriyaki, hooray!

Here it is as presented. The Teriyaki McBurger.

Inside of the burger. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Tasty though!

I took a picture of the placemat because it amused me a lot. I can only read some of the grid,
but some of the words read: Smile, self-confidence, bonds, good morning, "I can do it". So inspirational!

 And then we got food from Mister Donut on the way home. It's basically Japanese Dunkin Donuts. They have interesting flavors, and offer some other pastries which is pretty nice! (I got a hamburger pastry that I ate for breakfast the next day, omnom) This time, I bought a glazed donut, a chocolate donut, and... some kind of sakura themed donut? The sakura donut was too sweet and fruity for me, but the other donuts were good. I liked the glazed the most, but it might be because I ate that one the earliest so it was fresh.

Mister Donut's selection!

 Okay, I'm almost done with this week's update. The last thing is we went to this ramen place for dinner last night, and I've gotta say, real Japanese ramen is its own experience. I got shio (salt) ramen for my first time. It was really delicious, but man, it was overwhelming. The noodles had a lot of... punch to it? But yeah. Have some pictures.

 Well, that's the end of this week's update! I got pretty lazy at the end because it took so long. ^^; Also I'm sorry if the blog format isn't that spectacular yet, I haven't yet gotten down and playing around with this blogger thingy. I feel like I had more words to say here, but I'm rushing out, so I'll just wrap it up here. See y'all next week!

-Kyle