Since about 90% of our feedback on Post #1 was “MORE PICTURES!!” we made sure to take a lot of pictures over the past couple weeks! We took them walking our usual paths to the grocery store, the high school, the torii gates, etc.
So lets begin at the beginning…
…our apartment! The building is pretty nice and new, and it’s teachers’ housing so some of our neighbors work at the high school with me (KT)! Behind the apartment is a garden of mostly red pepper plants…probably because “backyards” as we Wisconsinites known them don’t really seem to exist in Japan. If you have extra space in your yard, you plant some vegetables, or if you have a REALLY big yard, you make it into a rice paddy.
So moving on, here are a few pictures of some of the nice houses you see walking around town.
Next, some places we visit pretty often. Fortunately for us, all three are within 5 minutes of the apartment (walking). The first picture is of our local Juntendo, which is like a tiny Walmart minus the toys and clothes and food. We usually go there to get toiletries or stuff for the kitchen, and we also got a tatami mat, an iron, a broom, a tablecloth, some towels, a big pot to make giant batches of curry, etc etc.
This is Godai Drug, which is basically the Walgreens of Izushi.
And this is our favorite place to go…
the grocery store! And there’s Ryne standing by the entrance on the right. It’s not a huge place, but it has a pretty good variety. There are plenty of things that we used to buy at home that we can’t get here (mac & cheese, Twizzlers, sour cream, and any kind of mexican food), but there are also some things that we were pleasantly surprised to find, like Fanta, Pringles, Oreos, Peanut M&Ms, Heinz 57 and Red Bull. They also have a totally fantastic tempura/fried stuff section that we have a hard time passing up.
Now a few more pictures from around town:
And now, Izushi High School! It is about a 15-20 minute walk from the apartment, but the walk there is really nice so I don’t mind it at all.
The picture below is of the torii gates in Izushi. I think there are about 36 of them, but they’re close together so it doesn’t take long to walk all the way through.
On our way to (or from) the torii gates, sometimes we stop at the koi pond and feed the fat, greedy fish. Most of the time they start opening their mouths as soon as they see a person standing on the bridge, and when you drop a piece of fish food in the water they all fight over it. It can be pretty hilarious!! And sometimes we catch a glimpse of a catfish or a turtle swimming in there with the koi.
That concludes the tour! Next we’ll probably be posting about our weekend trips to the cities or maybe the fire festival!
Nihonward Bound 