6 November 2016
Damp pants
Eating Mapo Tofu in Sendai
Despite being late back to my hotel again due to mountains and trains, I had to do my washing before anything else. I have been wearing the same pants for 5 days now and sliding down things in them.
Luckily, Japanese hotels have cheap washing machines, and some of them have those big drum dryers that work really effectively. Not this one. This hotel has some kind of different dryer technology, featuring units so small you need to put 1 washing machine load into 3 dryers, then after 90 minutes your clothes will be just as wet as when they went in.
I noticed someone else was frustrated that his clothes were not drying, and there are no settings on the machines, so its not like I was doing it wrong.
So eventually I decided to dry them in my room, and clothes are currently strategically placed all over everything. That still left me with the dilemma of what to wear this evening.
I had put all my clothes into the wash except a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, I did not even have any underwear or socks.
This is what hair dryers are for. I put the chair on my bed upside down, the 4 legs made a mini clothes line, then I used the pants press half open as a teepee over that, draped some towels over the whole arangement, then inserted the hair dryer into the whole setup using my shoes as support to keep the dryer pointed upwards.
This worked beautifully, and before I knew it, I was wearing semi dry pants and out the door looking for my dinner I had pre selected the night prior.
All my socks were in the wash, so I used the slippers provided in my room. My feet were filthy, the whiteness of these slippers will never return.
Also they were way too small, and I had to go down to reception for change, then up the top floor to the laundry, then back to my room, then back to the top floor twice more... All the time tripping over my useless formerly white slippers.
Here are the washing machines and dryers. My top tip, do not buy a sanyo dryer.
You might recall last night I spotted a place with a chart to choose your level of numbing and spicy. Thats what I wanted and thats what I had, and it was great.
My lips stayed numb for an hour afterwards.
I needed to buy toothpaste, no problem, theres over 9000 chemists in the covered shopping street. Japan has a whole selection of toothpaste flavours, including honey! Now I cant wait for it to be late enough to go to bed so I can clean my teeth with honey.
This is an imported foods shop. It is actually quite large and impressive, lots of cool things you would not be able to find in Japan otherwise, including Menz products from Adelaide. They also give you free coffee to try, but if I had coffee now I would not sleep. Plus I wouldnt want to spoil my honey tooth paste.
Japanese santa. Someone has replaced a fat white man with a fat Japanese man. Cultural misappropriation.
Not many buskers in Sendai, the only ones are these idiot beat boxers making drum noises with their mouths, my most detested form of busking apart from juggling.
There is a guy in Town Hall station Sydney who has been doing the same 4 bars non stop for 11 years now. Bar 4 of his beat has both a hand clap and a scream.
Inside the train station there is this information kiosk, except its awesome. You stand on the mat and it rumbles and pulsates to the sound. You then Minority Report style wave your arms about to control the screen.
My dinner did not really have enough vegetables, so I thought I should have some dessert vegetables. Family mart has provided me a pumpkin flavoured something, no doubt leftover from halloween.
Those are actually real pieces of pumpkin on the top, and the bottom layer I am quite certain was unsweetened pureed pumpkin. It would be baby food apart from a middle layer of fake cream and whatever the flavourless icing is on top.