Sunday September 3, 1989
Posted in diary on 09/03/2009 07:44 pm by M Sinclair StevensAccounts
| ¥920 | train: 1.5 Kamegawa-Oita-Kamegawa |
| ¥350 | 10 B5 notebooks 240-pg |
| ¥800 | book: Read Japanese Today |
| ¥2500 | book: A Guide to Remembering Kanji |
| ¥1657 | groceries |
| ¥200 | deli: chicken |
| ¥250 | shampoo |
| ¥1395 | body care |
| ¥580 | Vape (30 pack) |
| ¥310 | beer |
| ¥200 | present: cake for Abe-sensei |
| ¥100 | machine drinks |
| ¥236 | consumption tax |
| ¥9498 | Total |
Postmark: Beppu September 3, 1989
We went shopping in Oita again this weekend. The basement floors of the big department stores always are supermarkets. We discovered one [probably Tokiwa] that had a large western liquor section. And they had Johnny Walker black label, the same size I bought that last night [in Austin] for only ¥3600 ($25.00). So I’m very relieved and happy to know I have a resource for my New Year’s presents. Plus, if I get desperate and dip into the scotch I brought, I’ll be able to replace it. But I haven’t been driven to drinking alone yet, except for the occasional liter of beer from the vending machine down the street. And that’s only if I’ve bought sushi for dinner. Of course, we practically live on sushi. An old woman keeps a take-out shop down the street and I can get six pieces of nigiri-sushi and one tuna roll for ¥400 ($3.00). That’s about the same as one piece of sushi in Austin.
Notes from 2009
Stationery
I found the notebooks on sale on the top floor of Parco. They were really cheap. Maybe it was a back-to-school sale. They were fairly plain notebooks by the standards of Japanese stationery. They came with aqua or pink covers which said.
Seduce Notebook: This notebook is well bound with automatic excellent machine by Bun’undo that is traditional since 1909.
Vape
Our un-air conditioned apartment was very open to the outdoors. We slept with the sliding glass doors to the balcony open and the screens did little to keep the mosquitoes out. Our dorm mother had brought over the modern equivalent of the mosquito coil, an electric diffuser for Vape mats. Each little mat had some sort of insect repellant. It smelled pretty bad and I wondered if they were carcinogenic so I was reluctant to use them. I couldn’t read the information on the Japanese packaging. But the mosquitoes were numerous, so I solved the immediate problem and tried to put my fears about long-term consequences out of my mind. Twenty years later, this is what I discovered about Vape, on the Internet.