Shimodate

March 17, 2004 10:47pm (Shimodate)
March 17, 2004 8:47am (Ottawa)

Kombanwa from Shimodate, the tiny city in Ibaraki.

Shimodate is my final stop here in Japan, this is the city I will be calling home.

If you'd ever seen Shimodate you would understand what a frightening concept that is.

The population is about 64,000, and to my knowledge I represent half the Gaijin population. The other half is the guy I'm replacing, he moves away in 2 weeks. Then it's just me an 64,000 men, women, and children who can't understand me. Scary!

I'm told I live in "downtown Shimodate", but I question the right of this city to call anything "downtown". It can't be downtown if I'm a 5 minute walk away from a rice farm.

Shimodate has no Internet cafes, I think some of the residents are still working together to invent fire.

The nearest real city is Mito, it's about 40 mins away by train. Tokyo is only about 1.5 hours away on that same train. So I can go to one of those places on weekends for my i-net fix.

Since arriving in Japan I've made multiple attempts to find a Go parlor. No luck so far, though those nice Mormons taught me the Kanji for it while they were trying to convert me.

I tried another of the "must do's" on my list today. I had Taiyaki.

This is basically a fish-shaped bread around a filling fo one type or another. Mine was pizza flavoured. It's supposed to be pretty sweet, but it didn't seem so to me. It was very good in any case, and it looks like a fish...you can't beat that.

Sign for Shimodate

Taiyaki