7th day in Oita - Shopping day!

So it's been one week since we arrived here in Oita. It was about time we went shopping!
First thing to do: find something to eat. One of the best things in Japan is probably the wide variety of Japanese food that is about to be discovered ^_^ For me it is not so easy, because I do not eat fish and meat, which appears in almost every Japanese dish. So we wanted to eat Okonomiyaki, which can be described as the Japanese pizza. It is a batter made of flour and egg mixed with cabbage and other vegetables topped with any kind of fish or meat. It was so complicated to communicate to the restaurant people that I do not want fish or meat in it. We do not speak Japanese and they do not speak English. We discussed about 10 minutes with the waitress (no exaggeration). So when my Okonomiyaki arrived, they had left all the vegetables out and put fish on top of it! So basically I got a pancake with fish! I got the exact opposite of what I wanted. I was so sad.


A proper Okonomiyaki


My wrong Okonomiyaki - it was so flat because all the vegetables had been taken out!

We went into the 3 main department stores here in Oita. They can be categorized by their prices. Most expensive: Tokiwa. Middle range: Parco. Least expensive (affordable, but still not cheap): Forus.


Oita looks nice when the weather is good


A nice word for "toilet"

The clothes look much different than in Germany. In Germany many clothes look more basic, here it is more feminine and playful. I really like that about Japanese fashion.





What really strikes me is that in most cases the clothes have only three sizes. S, M, and L. Even for jeans, there are often only these 3 sizes! But even worse, many clothes are "free size", meaning they are only available in this one size! Do Japanese girls all have the same body size? Why don't they distinguish between skinny, super-skinny, and ultra-skinny?


There they are! The creatures who make you feel bad in their natural habitat (^_-)


Even the only guy in our group has been captured by the model world influence ^^