Path of The Bike

Well have been here just over a week now, and I’m settled into the hotel, the room is a bit small but it’s spotless. View of the front of the hotel and one out of the window.
Went out the first night I was here with the Fred guy I will be working with, it was raining of course so about half way through we had to buy an umbrella.
Went to my first Japanese restaurant it was a sit on the floor style, didn’t bother me as I was used to doing that in Korea, although I’m a bit older now and when I got up I could tell I was older, you need to keep in practice with these things as it stretches muscles you don’t know you had.
We weren’t exactly sure what we ordered as it was all in Japanese and as you know my Japanese is non existent much the same Fred’s so we were back to pointing and sign language. There were pictures on the menu but you can’t exactly tell from the picture what’s in it and I’m not a squid type of person, I can eat it but would not choose too as to me it tastes of nothing.
Food came and everything was good, mine was better than Fred’s though just judging by the look of it, anyway my first impressions of the food were very positive, I’ll try some sushi another day have had it quite a bit in Korea but to be honest I think Sushi is over rated but I’m here to be convinced otherwise and apparently Japan is the place to be for Sushi.
After the food we stumbled into a bar, well we didn’t stumble into the bar literally on the way to the restaurant some guy tried to get us to go into bar, we decided to go on the way back just to be curious, big big mistake cost us $30 each, for that $30 you get an hour in the bar and as much Whisky or Soju as you can drink in that hour free, if you like Whisky or Soju or are an alcoholic it could be a good deal, but if you drink beer like me it’s a bit of a bummer, you only get one beer free and have to buy the rest, there’s also girls that come and talk to you to try and get you to buy them drinks. Sure enough bang on sixty minuets they asked us if we wanted to say, we didn’t so we left don’t think I will be going there again thank you very much, in fact I know I won’t.
So that was the first night over with, next day it was just a familiarization day, looking round the city seeing where things were and a trip to the job site, pretty uneventful really. Decided not to get a car for a few days as pretty much everything I needed to do was local to where I was staying, and i could get a ride into the job site.
Day after went to the immigration office, we needed an interpreter for this a girl from the hotel restaurant came with us Megumi, who was the girl friend of a guy that Fred knew.
Got there about 11:30 in the morning, took a ticket from the machine, number 41 and they were only on number 10, did not look good for getting seen until a lot later, decided to come back the next day. Before we left Megumi spoke to the staff got me the correct forms and went of to buy me some visa stamps and helped me to fill in the forms so that I could come back the next day by myself and get everything done, that would be interesting.
After that thought we would go off and look at some apartments especially as we had Meg with us to do all the talking. Went to see a guy call Mr Takizawa he took us round some apartments, most I did not like but there was one that looked promising. Once again no one could could speak English, so good for Megumi helping me only cost us a meal, that's not quite true there was one lady in the office that once she knew i was from England told Meg she had just been there. Turns out she could speak a bit of English and had just been to Blackpool for a dancing competition, she was a ballroom dancer, showed us all the photos and everything. I though of all the places for here to go was Blackpool, but from what i could make out she had a good time there.

That was pretty much another day taken care of, everyone was really friendly and tried real to be helpful to a couple of illiterate foreigners.

Other thing i had noticed since i first got here i had noticed that instead of motorbikes and scooter's everyone seems to go round on bicycles, push bikes to you and me. Riding on the path is the normal here, you only ride on the road to get across it. there are literally thousands of bike and all of them on the path, everyone from old people to school kids especially school kids thousands of them, so you have to watch what you're doing or you could get a bike where you don't want a bike. It's almost like they creep up on you on purpose and you could get paranoid about it, but it's the same for everyone.

The type of bike that seems really popular is what I'm going to call the old sit up and beg type bike. Seems really strange to see most people using this when you think of them as being old fashioned, but everyone uses them here. Seems really strange seeing someone who is pretty trendily dressed and obviously thinks they are cool, or in a business suit riding one of these bikes, sometimes with an umbrella up or talking on a mobile phone, want to try and get a picture but am always too late.