A Little Relief

Hello Everyone,
Hooray! We sort of have the internet at home now... I went out yesterday and bought a new external wirless card. It has a higher range than the one I had, and now we can get a weak signal from one of our neighbour's network. He was kind enough to offer to share his network with us and so we got his password and are able to check email at least. As I mentioned, the signal is weak, so we are getting 9Mbps at the best of times within our apartment. It is practically impossible to download things at this rate, but it is fine for email. Right now I am sitting in the hall, where we peak at 36Mbps, which is good enough to do most things.

Some of you may have heard about the earthquake in Japan on Monday. Melissa and I are both fine. The earthquake happened in a nearby city called Nara. The quake was strong enough to knock over a few warehouse buildings and do some severe damage to a few homes. Fortunately Monday was a holiday , and few people were at work or at home. The initial quake wasn't felt in Osaka, however Melissa did feel the ground shake and we were told later that it was from an after-shock. Last week I also felt a small quake, while I was in our living room watching TV. It was like a little foot massage. Apparently Japan has thousands of noticeable earthquakes each year. Let's hope we don't experience anything more than a vibrating floor under our feet.

Melissa and I went to Costco last week. It was surprisingly similar to the ones back home. It was such a relief to find familiar products, with english names, descriptions and ingredients listed. It has been a challenge walking through our grocery store and finding things like salad dressing, juice, canned goods, and alcohol. We are relying on subtle cues like colour, and pictures on the containers. Of course, not everything here is packaged the same as back home, so you may find sake in a jar (or tetra pack), and your salad dressing may look like meat marinade... and vice versa. Here is our Funky "Super Tamaday" Grocery store. They have the most anoying anouncements, constantly and insescently telling
you" Welcome to Super Tamaday , we have the best specials on today". I'm not certain that they actually say they have the best specials, but what else would they boastfully be talking about.
It's funny... If you are kinda' sleepy on your walk to this 24hr grocery store, by the time you are 50 feet from the entrance you will be brigt eyed and bushy tailed. So this is our Pachinko Parlour Grocery store.


I will leave you with a few more fun pictures.

Feel free to click on the word "COMMENTS" at the bottom of this post if you'd like to leave Melissa or me a message about anything.


















'Till we meet again,

Mike