19th-23rd September 2011<\/p>\n
My first few days in Kurashiki were pretty lazy. I may have ventured out to the supermarket, but mostly stayed home and read. The one day I tried to go to the station to use the wifi at Starbucks was a disaster. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but it just felt that way at the time.<\/p>\n
I was getting used to being on a bike (something I hadn’t done since I was 12) and managed to follow some odd directions missing an important right turn. Had to try and talk to a random lady and her child who pulled faces at me, and got back on the right track eventually. By the time I got to the station, I was hungry, tired and had a sore bum.<\/p>\n
I went to the tourist info place and got a handy English map, and went to the post office. I thought it would be a quick visit, but no. I had put stickers on the postcards, and apparently this was a no, no. They had to call up their international centre and find this out, then they asked me to call the translation service, then they called them themselves because I wasn’t going to make that call on my cell phone, then I had it all explained to me (even though I had actually figured it out already), then I had to buy envelopes to put the postcards in, and that was sorted……apparently the parcels and envelopes with stickers on them were OK, as long as I wasn’t worried about the stickers coming off, this rule only applies to postcards!!<\/p>\n
Then I found out that actually, no, Starbucks doesn’t have free wifi, and I sat there getting hyped up on my sugary caffeine drink. I really should have eaten something apart from pumpkin pie. Or just gone and used the computers at the tourist centre. But by then I was pretty Hangry (hungry – angry) and probably the less human contact the better. It didn’t help when an old man grumbled at me due to my uncoordinated cycling abilities as he went past on my way home either.<\/p>\n
So, yeah, I was happy to stay home and rest a bit. Actually, I was a good house sitter, and vacuumed, mopped and fixed a screen door! Although I was useless at putting out the rubbish and understanding the neighbours when they came to give Hugh his rubbish schedule. When Hugh came home from his overseas jaunt, it was lovely to see a friendly face again and have a catch up.<\/p>\n
The next day I headed out to properly explore Kurishiki and Okayama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
19th-23rd September 2011 My first few days in Kurashiki were pretty lazy. I may have ventured out to the supermarket, but mostly stayed home and read. The one day I tried to go to the station to use the wifi … Continue reading