Tsukiji Market 4/26/08

Tsukiji Central Wholesale Market is a large market for fish, fruit and vegetables in central Tokyo. It is the most famous of over ten wholesale markets that handle the distribution of fish, fruit, vegetables, meat and flowers for metropolitan Tokyo.

Tsukiji Market is best known as one of the world's largest fish markets, handling over 2,000 tons of marine products per day. The sight of the many kinds of fresh fish, shellfish and other seafood and the busy atmosphere of scooters, trucks, sellers and buyers hurrying around, make Tsukiji Market one of Tokyo's major tourist attractions.

Just outside of the wholesale market is a thriving "outside market" of small retail shops and restaurants that cater to the public. Here you can find all sorts of food related goods, knives, vegetables and fish for sale in smaller (than wholesale) portions.

A visit to Tsukiji Market is best combined with a fresh sushi breakfast or lunch at one of the onsite or local restaurants. Restaurants typically open around five in the morning and close between 12:00 and 15:00.

-Source- http://www.japan-guide.com

For more pictures go to http://dumouchellesinjapan.smugmug.com
And go to the Tsukiji Market gallery

The night I took this photo, it had been a pretty cloudy rainy day. Once it turned dark the clouds cleared and the rain stopped and the bridge was one of the most beautiful sites I have seen since we arrived here. At night there are always dinner cruise boats and on weekends there are sightseeing helicopters that take off right out side of our apartment. You can see the helicopter stream on the left side of the bridge. You can see more pictures of the bridge at www.dumouchellesinjapan.smugmug.com

April 17th, 2008

Hi Everyone!!

So we are now in our apartment. I will be posting photos of our apartment sometime after Monday probably. We would like to get out furniture first!

We have been in our apartment now for about a week and what a week its been.
Steve has been trying to figure out the best possible way to get to work. There are 3 stations within 10-15min walking distance. He is defiantly getting his exercise.
We are not as close to the station as we thought. He is okay with it when its nice out, but when its raining its really no fun.

Work for him has been going good. They go to work between 9:30am-10am he is always the first guy there since he is used to being at work at 8am. They don't leave until about 9pm. But he is not required to stay that late. He gets his work done and is working about a 10hr day and comes home. Most of the guys can speak english if he needs them too. But he is doing pretty good with his Japanese.

We went to Ikea for furniture shopping and everything else. It was pretty fun, although its really tough shopping and not having a car. We had to make 2 trips, the 2nd trip was all the small stuff, like bedding, towels, dishes etc. They do deliver but not glass, and of course we didn't find this out until we got to the cashier. So we bagged and boxed up what we couldn't ship, we made it onto the shuttle and to the subway station. But things were too heavy so we had to get a cab to take us home! Everything else will be delivered on Monday!

I also finally got out to the grocery store for the first time. I kept putting it off because I was nervous to go on my own. But, it went ok! I ended up needing to go to 3 different stores to get everything we needed. The first one is about 15-20 min walk. I had 2 of those hand baskets, they have carts that you put both on while you are shopping. I found pretty much everything, its hard to shop when most all the labels are in Japanese unless it American food. And of course the American food is mostly junk food and things we shouldn't be buying. The meat areas were scarce. They don't have packages of pork chops and chicken, etc. Everything is single wrapped. And one pork chop was about $4.00 so pretty expensive. Now the fish area was huge. Too bad we are not big fish fans. Salmon and some other fish looked good because it was so fresh, so I grabbed some white fish and we are going to try it tonight. I have some spagehetti sauce on the stove cooking just in case!

I was walking through meat and fish are and actually started to get a little nauseous. With the fish heads, and octopus, chicken cartliage, and some other stuff that I have no idea what some of it was but just didn't look good! I made it through though. This weekend we are going to see if we can find the costco and see what they have there. Hopefully it will be cheaper.

Last night we had tacos!! The tomatoes were so good. I can't even describe. Now I know why they serve chilled tomatoes as a side dish at some restaurants. There were incredibly sweet. Just like the Strawberries here.

So anyways when I got done grocery shopping I had brought a large Ikea bag and another huge over the shoulder bag, but unfortunately they were way to heavy. I would say all together at least 100pounds, if not more. I strapped them on and grabbed my purse/bag which also had groceries in it and the 2 other grocery bags and made it about 10 mins through the subway station (groc. store is in the station), up about 30 the steps, down the street a little and had to stop and grab a cab. So today I am paying for that. Those little baskets can be rather deceiving. I mean I am pretty strong, but I actually have a bruise on my shoulder from the bags.

We also went to Tokyo at night to see the lights! It was amazing how many people were there. Also we went into this tall cylinder building about 10 floors, it was a mall. We almost left since there are malls everywhere. But we decided to just walk through and it was like club and street clothes, and accessories on every floor. It was also ALL womens clothes. Of course most of the clothes are too small for me but it was fun to walk through! In 2 years I might buy something fun from there. All I got was this pretty butterfly hair thing!

Anways I think that is about all that is going on! The weather has been off and on rainy. This morning we had a pretty good rain/wind storm. I started getting a little nervous but its over now! I love the view from the apartment and watching the boats. I will get some pics soon to post of that.
You can leave comments if anyone has questions about anything. You can also email me at amanda.droke@onesourcetalent.com or Steve at s_dumouchelle@yahoo.com.


We miss everyone.
Amanda and Steve

A walk around town

We went for a walk from the hotel to our apartment and then through the park near our apartment. Here are a couple of pictures you can see more at www.dumouchellesinjapan.smugmug.com The photos are under Misc Japan Photos from 4/2/08-4/17/08. We were able to see Cherry Blossoms before they died off. I had no idea that Cherry Blossom season was so short. Hopefully next year we can experience more of the season and festivals.

China Town

Yokohama Chinatown is the largest Chinatown not only in Japan but also in Asia (larger than Chinatowns in both Kobe and Nagasaki) and it is one of the largest in the world. There are over 200 restaurants alone (other shops are not included for this number).
We just did a quick walk through. We will need to go back once we are more settled in and have more time to explore!

You can see more pictures of china town at www.dumouchellesinjapan.smugmug.com under
Misc Japan Photos from 4/2/08-4/17/08.

Week 1

1st week in Japan

Everything is going okay here. We are having some trouble getting used to the time change this time. We have been going to sleep around 7pm and getting up around 3am. Its Saturday at 2pm, right now so we are going to try to stay up tonight so that Steve can get used to the time before work on Monday. Its kinda weird right now that we actually live here and we are not just coming home in a couple of days.

We bought a DVD player from a city called Akihabara, electric town about 45mins by train. We got it home and found out that you can not play American DVDs in it. So we are now going to have to try to return it and see if we can order one online. I guess there are region zones to help companies with sales tracking and you cannot mix the zones.

We applied for our alien registration cards and reentry permits and got a bank acct. (Kinda weird that we are now "aliens") So now Steve will be starting work on Monday and then we move into our apartment on Friday!

The hotel we are in is nice, the room is much bigger which is helpful. It still only had 2 twin beds but we were able to push them together. We have a view of Mt. Fuji. You can only see it during sunrise and sunset really and only if its clear out. Its pretty far away but its HUGE!! The Cherry Blossoms are really pretty as well. Not as many as I imagined. I am sure if you get out of the city there is probably more. Unfortunately Steve has alot of work to get done this weekend and week so I don’t think we will really be able to get out to see to many. We will have to go next year. We have done so much walking the last couple of days. The relocation lady took us to do what we needed but then also showed us around a little. I had no idea the first day we would be doing so much walking I had on these little black heeled shoes they were ok at first but then about 6 hours later I could tell I was getting blisters. We got back to the hotel and the bottoms of both shoes were worn down and rubbed off. Crazy. We walked I would say about 4 hours straight. All over China Town and Yokohama. It was awesome just I had the wrong shoes on. So the next day I wore sketchers!

I think we are going to set up the Wii tonight in our room so we have something to keep us awake. So far not too bad on food situation. There is a subway near us, we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant which was good and then lunch at a Japanese restaurant that had some western food and it was pretty good. We are also big fans of Tonkatsu We used the Ranch my sister Melissa gave me on our subway subs lol! I think that we will probably have to have someone send us Ranch every month. I think we are going for pasta tonight!

Well I think thats pretty much it! Feel free to write whenever. We are already starting to feel pretty home sick!

Introducion

This is our small piece of the internet! We wanted to set this up so we can show everyone our pictures, adventures, mishaps, and good times.