Shopping around Kyoto~

This morning I was supposed to meet my neighbor Christine to go to a nearby department store for some apartment shopping. But we both overslept a little so we met close to 12 instead of 11 haha. It's not a very far walk but as usual it was hot and humid! Everything in the home goods section was so confusing... I realized I didn't know what size my bed was (for buying sheets). It's pretty big though, so I bought the biggest sheet I could find. Lol. And I almost accidentally bought a futon cover instead of a mattress sheet. The pillows were a bit easier because I could choose the pillow then just pick the matching cover size. I'm going with my landlord's theme of pink and light green lol. Then I bought two hair/hand towels, one face towel, and one body towel. I also bought one glass and one plate. I felt like things were a little overpriced, but maybe that's just how much things cost in Japan... Oh, I also bought an electric kettle! This is very important because now I can make tea! And instant noodles! Lol. There are still a bunch of things I need though - I haven't bought a trash can, cooking supplies like pots and pans, some kind of drawers to organize my clothes and basics like toilet paper and paper towels. Lol. I figured I need to do more than one trip because that was about the maximum I could carry home. I didn't buy a blanket though! It was too confusing. Some things that I thought were blankets turned out to be mattress covers, and a lot of the blankets were too thick/warm for the weather right now. Most of them were also for smaller beds. So I'll have to try again later for that. Still, my apartment is looking much better and homier already!

Christine bought a cell phone from SoftBank. As I expected, it was much cheaper at the store than the airport - about half the price!!! But at the airport they set it up for me in English, enrolled me in the unlimited messaging plan, helped me get a mail address etc... so it was kind of worth it. Then, we were meeting some SKP peeps at the big Kyoto Station to go shopping downtown with one of the SKP buddies (a Japanese student who helps the international students). We had to really rush because we were meeting them at 3 and it takes about 40 minutes to get to Kyoto Station from our apartment building. We caught the bus (the right one thankfully) and got there just at three. But for once it wasn't me who got lost! The other two girls and the SKP buddy got on the wrong bus or something and were running really late. Lol. Luckily we were able to communicate through texting so Christine and I went into the station, got a bus map of Kyoto, then sat down at the Mister Donut and had a snack break. Finally we met around 4:15 and headed off! We went to electronics store and the two girls bought electronic dictionaries. They looked really cool and useful, but I couldn't really justify it since I have the dictionary app Kotoba on my iPhone which works reasonably well.

Then we *tried* to go to the main downtown shopping area, Shijo Kawaramachi. But we got on the bus going the wrong direction! We got off and got on the right bus, but it went back to Kyoto Station first and we ended up stuck in a line of buses for more than half an hour. So it was late-ish by the time we finally got to Shijo. We were all hungry too! But first we took purikura. I'm still so bad at it. I asked Ayame (the buddy) for her tips but she said she didn't have any... But she looks good in every picture and I look weird! Lol. Some I wasn't looking, some half my face was cut off... lol.

This time I'm not the one cut off... lol

Then we ate dinner at a weird tofu specialty restaurant.... I had a tofu "hamburger" (no buns) with sides of fried tofu, soft tofu (weird + gross), miso soup with tofu, rice and salad. Tofu, tofu, tofu, and more tofu. Lol. The tofu hamburger patty was good, the rest was questionable for me lol. After that we went to a store called Loft and we got some school supplies. We were exhausted by then and it was almost 9 so we took the bus home. It's actually only about 30 minutes to Shijo if I go directly from the apartment, so I'll definitely go back soon. The shopping right near my apartment is adequate but not great. Anyway, I cleaned up my room and unpacked some more so I can take some pictures tomorrow! (I want to take some pictures from the windows too so I'm waiting for daylight). That's all for today I think! The promised apartment pics will be up tomorrow!

Placement test in two more days... X_x