Muikamachi

I went to the next town Muikamachi (10 mins by train) with Patrick to meet the JETs in that town. Forgot to bring my camera so no photos! :( We had lunch with Kate (American), Katie (British) and Dean (Canadian) in a cool café. Kate and Katie are both in their second year so they were a great help to us!

Muikamachi is bigger than my town. It has bigger supermarkets and more shops (including a 100-yen store) and also a second-hand store, where you can get furniture, home appliances, ski gear and even clothes and shoes from. The highway bus to Tokyo also departs from Muikamachi. Most of the local train connections also appear to be at Muikamachi, although the shinkansen stops at my town and not Muikamachi…hmmm, their town planning doesn’t seem to make very much sense.

Basically, my town (Urasa) merged with some neighbouring towns, including Muikamachi, to form a city called Minamiuonuma late last year. At present state, the “city” is more like a string of towns. It will probably take a long time before the towns really physically merge into a city. The whole lot of towns here are ski towns. Every town has its own ski run(s). Katie said that last winter, she was snowboarding everyday because the Japanese open their ski fields until 9pm, so she goes immediately after school. Apparently, there’s nothing to do once its winter but ski/snowboard. That’s something to look forward to since I’ve always wanted to learn skiing.

We had dinner at a Sri Lankan restaurant (?!) Basically chicken/prawn/vegetable curry and rice/pappadams. Although the curry was the right colour, it wasn’t spicy (yes, if even I say that its not spicy, you can imagine how tak pedas it really is…but apparently the Japs think its damn spicy cos they needed towels to wipe their perspiration!)

Went home and there was 6 days 7 nights or whatever that Harrison Ford movie about him crashing a plane off a Tahitian island is called. I don’t particularly like the show but its nice to hear something that I finally understand.