Steve In Japan: Squid And Chips

Joined a gym a couple of days ago, haven't been for a while so will have to get back into the swing of things, joined for 3 months cost about $180 similar price to what i would have to pay in the UK. I saw the gym yesterday while walking around waiting for my visa appointment, decided to come and give it a go. It was a bit of a trial finding out the cost and everything else, normally it's about 10,000 Yen or 50 Quid a month but they had a deal on, join for 3 months for 6,300Yen a month. Like i say it was a bit tough finding all this out but then they brought out a girl who could speak pretty good English and it all got better from there.

After joining had to go through a bit of an induction, which was just questions really, the only thing that stuck out was that they would not have let me in if i had any tattoos, not many people in Japan have tattoos and i think they are looked on as a bit of a stigma.

Got to say after getting in everything was spotless, but it should have been as it was all new, there was an O2 room, which is basically just a room where they enrich the Oxygen supply and you just sit in there and chill out for a while. It also has these total body massage chairs which sort of hugs your body like giant bucket seats in a car, it then vibrates and massages while you listen to music in a dark room, will give them a go at some point. Been going for a few days now and everyone is nice and want to try and talk, but it's hard work. Did see the girl who had helped sign me in the other day,she's one of the trainers there. Get this she had just had here hair dyed red not bright red just a shade really but her boss had told her that red did not really go with the image of the gym and not to do it again.

Got a car the other day as well, you have to pay for parking everywhere you go even at the hotel bit of a liberty if you ask me as I'm paying for the hotel. I'd rather see it included in the price then you wouldn't know anything about it, bit like tipping when in the states would rather not have it to do it, all these little extras seem a little bit much especially as you have to pay for parking every day and it's a bit of a pain.

Parking here can be quite novel at the hotel for instance they don't have

much land so they have a type of multi story car park arrangement. You don't drive up it's sort of a multi level lift system, you drive onto a platform the attendant gives you a ticket presses a button and up goes your car on an elevator. It's all automated you just drive in it's got a little turntable that turns the car around so you can drive out when you come to get it back you get an electronic ticket telling it where the care is position in the system, when you want your car back you just insert the ticket press a button and hey presto your car arrives as if by magic from somewhere up above, all pretty cool. Actually the attend does it all they don't let foreigners loose pressing buttons around here, but it all seems to work well and you see these type of things all over the place.

Another odd thing happened the other night or should i say morning wasn't sure but though i had a pretty vivid dream about the hotel rocking. Not sure now if it was a dream or not because when i did get up put on the news and guess what there had been an earthquake in northern Japan, 7 on the Richter Scale which doesn't mean an awful lot to me except that i know it's pretty high.

Like i say can't be sure about whether it was a dream or not now but it was a bit of a coincidence and felt very surreal to say the least when i heard the news. They did say that the tremors had been felt in Tokyo and we're are a bit further north than that, like i say not sure about it now.

Same day went out to a supermarket a bit further afield and guess what, almost tripped over a Buck Rodgers toilet seat, $280 worth of the latest technology in a seat which seems to be all the rage over here.

After this it was off to meet Fred to get something to eat, which is where the title of this blog comes from. We got a few things as you can see but one of the dishes was a plate of chips and the other was some deep fried squid, hence the title, which i thought went well together, i don't mean the food just the title. Don't really like squid but am told by Fred that it was yummy, but I'll take his word for it at the moment.