Japanese crows have a Japanese accent! I swear it’s true, and it totally flips me out! They’re also very big, and have big beaks. Probably best to keep out of their way. It seems we’re just in time for all the big new year sales. Since the department stores don’t open until ten or eleven in the morning, we got to see the people queuing half way up the block to get in early while we were looking for breakfast.
We did go shopping. Thanh found it quite amusing to see a bunch of guys milling around a table to rummage through a pile of discounted clothes on a table. In Australia, it’s only girls who do that. I got a bit confused with the money. Why can’t they make the different notes radically different colours like we do? That would make life far simpler. Three zeroes and four zeroes don’t look all that different with a quick glance.
The video game arcades are pretty cool. I saw all four House of the Dead machines lined up next to each other. And I saw Mario Kart GP and F‑Zero arcade games. Why don’t we have those in Australia? The “print club” (photo booth) machines here are about five years newer than the ones in Australia, and only cost half as much to use.
There are lots of geek shops, filled with digital cameras, phones, organisers, sub-notebook computers, and all sorts of other gadgets. The prices are OK, but the video cameras are all NTSC.
The food is good here. The sushi is all fresh – Thanh got a bit scared by the absence of anything cooked at all. People aren’t afraid of eating fat here. When we had beef with rice, there was plenty of fat on it, and the bacon that we saw some people eating had more fat than meat.
Speaking of food, I’m getting hungry…