First Impressions: A Tour of Okazaki in Pictures and Thoughts

Well, this isn't actually a tour in pictures as much as it is a collection of pictures that I thought were worth taking as I explored Okazaki during my first full day.

This morning I took an early walk through the neighborhood in order to familiarize myself with the surroundings. I came upon a small lake in the middle of the neighborhood, and in the early mist, I thought it was quite beautiful. It's definitely a place I will return to.


This is the view of my apartment building as you walk towards it (or backwards walk away from it, as I did here).


There are vending machines everywhere. This one specializes in Boss Coffee, and for some reason Tommy Lee Jones is there mascot. I'm not sure how they managed that, but I'm not complaining.

Every non-high-end care sales lot I've seen (and I've seen quite a few already) has a section with cars on display like this. Why US dealerships don't do this is beyond me.

I found it interesting that a burger and an italian place were right next to each other. There was a delicious smell coming from the burger place, and it will definitely be a place I visit when I get sick of the local cuisine and get by with the language.


Every elementary school aged kids I saw had yellow caps. Every single one. I suspect that it's part of the uniform because so many kids walk to school, and it makes them stand out to the completely insane drivers.

Taking this picture was a no-brainer.

The Yamasa Institute, where I will be taking classes.

Once my Japanese is good enough, I am totally ordering pizza just so that it can show up in one of these bad boys.

Most of the main streets were surrounded by trees like this. Again, a valuable lesson for the US.

Not sure about this one. My guess is school bus, although it seemed like everyone walked to school.

There were a number of stores like this, all of which seemed like kinda dirty porno shops, and yet all of the ones that had windows I could see into seemed like they sold perfectly normal stuff

Although McDonald's has a large presence in Japan, I haven't seen one in Okazaki yet. This chain, Yoshinoya, is extremely common, though, and I hear it has delicious beef dishes for less than 500 yen (that puts it at around $4).

This park is a block away from my apartment and has a beautiful lake as well as a ferris wheel and merry-go-round.



Just beyond the park is a shopping center with a pretty big arcade, a shoe store, a video/game/book store, where I will almost certainly wait in line for a PlayStation 3, finances allowing, and Wal-Mart sized Super Center, where I went in to find rice and ended up buying sushi and some prepackaged meals, making decisions solely on the pictures on the packages, as well as price. I never found rice, which is confounding, to say the least.


I noticed on the train here that the reason cities are so densely populated is because they want to preserve the land's beauty, so they build cities in the flattest, least remarkable spots, and fit as many people in as they can. Indeed, when you can escape the cluttered surroundings, the view is always quite breathtaking.

Here's my cozy apartment, extra cozy kitchen, narrow bathroom door, mind-bogglingly small and dense bathroom, and my fun little bed







Finally, here are my initial impressions of Japan after one full day:
-It's actually prettier with clouds and mist than with sun and heat
-Everything is more efficient in Japan, from the store clerk system to the trains
-No one jay walks. Absolutely no one. Except Me.
-Traffic laws only pretend to exist, since NO ONE obeys them. Everyone here is psychotic behind the wheel. This is probably why no one jay walks.
-In the US, if a store or restaurant were to carry just one flavor of Fanta, that flavor would be Orange. In Japan, that flavor is Grape.
-Always compare items at the grocery store. There is always one version much cheaper than the rest (case in point, the Volvic bottled water in vending machines is 120 yen for 330 mL, but I found good bottled water 8-10 times that volume at the supermarket for 108 yen. I drink one a day for my whole trip and spend less than 10000 yen on water. That is awesome).
-The Japanese have a serious sexual fixation, as eroticism finds its way into many more aspects of Japan than in America. In convenience stores, at last half the magazines are pornographic, the manga (comics) sold everywhere has tons of nudity, and is available for anyone to purchase, and nearly all ads are either super-happy or super-sexy (or super-both). The list goes on and on.
-Honda and Toyota have cornered the automoblie market. I'd say 70-80% of cars I saw were made by either of those companies or their subsidiaries. My favorite car not made by either of them: the Suzuki WagonR. I want my car to be called the WagonR in the worst way now. It's too bad that would never fly in the US. Why do so many Americans like such good taste?
-I hate Japanese keyboards. The space bar is tiny and next to buttons that turn your keys into Japanese characters, which gets annoying fast, and they've rearranged the setup of symbols. For example, it took my like 5 minutes to find the @ symbol (it has its own key) and the apostrophe (Shift+7 in Japan. Ugh)

That's all (so short, I know) for today. Tomorrow is the big day. I have to be at Yamasa at 8:55 for the start of hardcore intense language immersion. By the time I'm done here, I'm going to be running language circles around all of you (does that even make sense?). Till then, tata.