My ride, my whiskey, and my new bed...

Well, after an afternoon of fretting over the arrival of my new bed (and taking a 1/2 day vacation day to await its arrival), it's finally arrived.



Lets backtrack a bit.

Last Sunday, after an orgy of spending money on various household items, I went with one of the ALTs in my building to Canal City in Fukuoka. Not a city, but rather a shopping mall, it feels like some sort of underground city, even though it's all above-ground. Odd? Yes. Cool? Definitely.

I had originally intended to go get an Under Armour polo-shirt from Sports Authority, the resident American sporting goods chain in Canal City. But they had only size L (I take an XL usually, which is fine for UA, fine for the Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo, but for the most part no good elsewhere, where I need an XXL, or LLL), and I ended up getting a DriClime shirt from Marmot instead.

In Canal City, there's a store called Mujirushi, or "No-name". Basically, take Caban, give it Ikea prices, and you have Mujirushi. There I ended up my spending orgy by ordering a mattress for my bed frame.

Why spending orgy? The day before, I travelled to nearby Akama JR station to visit the SunLive (Sun live, as in "I live in Fukutsu", rather than "Mike Morikawa reporting live from Fukutsu"), where I picked up some housegoods, but more importantly a pair of pants and a shirt from the aforementioned Uniqlo, which set me back about $50, and a Northface jacket (with requisite woodland camo pattern) that set me back $180. The day before, I indulged my airsoft habit and purchased a Colt 1911 Government Gas BB gun. Bad Mike. BAD!

Well, back to the present, sitting on my desk is a bottle of Famous Grouse. I purchased this at the nearby discount liquor shop. Needless to say, I was immeasurably pleased to make this find. I have yet to actually drink it. I think I will save it for when it becomes colder...



And to complete this inversion of the order of topic presented in my title, my bike. I have been commuting around town for the most part on my bike, which I bought in my first week in Fukutsu. It's is a folding bike, so extremely useful when I make stupid and/or large purchases that I can't take home by bike. I call a cab, fold up the bike, and ride on home.

Of course, this convenience comes with a price. The wheels are smaller than even the mama-chari (bikes ridden primarily by housewives, though the reality is closer to like 90% of the bike-riding population of Japan), and so going fast require a lot more work. Though this bike has an astounding 6 speeds (for the record, that 2 to 6 times as many speeds that most bikes here have), even at it's highest gear speed I need to work something hard to get going.

Of course, if everything was downhill, or at least level, then things would be simple. But Japan, and it seems Fukutsu, is made out of small hills. So I have pretty much given up going to school on my bike for now. It's still too damned hot anyway. We'll see when it's cooler.



Well, that's it for today. Next time, a tour of Fukutsu...