I'm Coming Home with Scurvy (and Ricketts)

Even with the warnings of Japan's outrageous prices, I was not prepared for what we have encountered here. A large pizza, delivered to your door, costs $35. Jeremy and I can live without pizza.

Grocery shopping is a major task for us. Not only do we have to walk 10 blocks each way, everything is unfamiliar. There is no English writing on the packages and the selection of foods are, well, lacking. The foods we do recognize are generally the fruits and vegetables. I thought it was because of the winter season everything was so expensive. We are now mid-April and prices have not budged. One apple costs $2.50. A watermelon that is the size of a large grapefruit is $27 and a grapefruit is $7. One tiny cantaloupe costs $16.80. It amazes me that people here actually buy fruit. Needless to say, jeremy and I are a little low on our vitamin C intake. I won't even go into details about how much supplements cost here...

We had another earthquake this morning. We have experienced quite a few in the 5 months we have been here. We were trying to recollect just how many there have been (which proves there have been plenty) and we think we're at seven. The first one was quite jarring. I wasn't sure just how long our apartment would sway and shake for and it seemed like an eternity as glass after glass fell to the floor shattering. The second we experienced came at around 5am. We awoke suddenly and I cannot even tell you how much our old, pathetic apartment swayed. We opted to stay in bed as we could hear all of the glass breaking and didn't want to deal with it yet. As of recently, they have become much less exciting. Now we continue on with our business almost as if it wasn't happening. There is much less to clean up as almost every piece of glass has already broken. The forces of nature are like nothing else I have imagined. I did research on the internet and several sources state that Tokyo is indeed windier than Chicago. Compile this with the fact that daily temperatures in Tokyo, for the month of January, are actually lower than those of Reykjavik, Iceland. What were we thinking?

Case in point, it is now mid-April and winter coats are still out! Not just coats mind you, but scarves and gloves as well. It should not be necessary to wear heavy coats and gloves ANYWHERE after March.

All that aside, the plum blossoms have come and gone and the cherry blossoms bloomed last week. Jeremy and I had two picnics over the weekend, trying to enjoy the bit of decent weather that came our way. It is amazing just how much the cherry blossoms are cherished here. They are quite beautiful, but even our neighborhood park was too crowded to enjoy. I will post some pictures of our weekend as soon as I get them uploaded.

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