Hitachinaka

So I'm the only JET in this town. I'm having a hard time figuring this place out- it seems a little confused- half way between a city and a small town- I'm very glad I have a car because its a big city yet there's only so much here. Having said that there's loads here...hmm. I quite like that in a way. It takes half an hour to walk to my local train station katsuta, which has regular quick trains to Mito. I really need to figure out the train system and timetables etc. 

I spent all day yesterday walking around Hitachinaka with Alistair (new JET in Oarai, town based half an hour drive south of me - met him at London orientation). So in our exploration we found that this city has A LOT of restaurants (which I'm very happy about) and a lot of puchinko (gambling with silver balls) . It's a weird place- it's also got a mini red light district which I don't plan on visiting. It's also got the drunken duck- Australian expat bar, but it was closed, so I'm yet to check that out.

I still haven't been to the beach. 

We found a shrine in my town, here's a picture Alaistar took:

We also went to my local supermarket- luckily it's a really good one- suweeeet! Check out the watermelon section:

I was pretty crap at taking pictures yesterday because I forgot my camera- but I took a couple at the yakiniku (grilling meat) restaurant we went to last night:

A lot of places require you to take off your shoes and put them into little lockers:

I love yakiniku:

I'm so glad Alistair can speak Japanese, he's been ordering a lot of food for me:

This was an all you can eat yakiniku, you have a little grill in the middle and you have to cook all the food yourself: