What you can and can't find...

So far, off the top of my head, here is a list of items I have been able to get, or not, in the farming area of Japan.

CAN
Milk (only really sold in 1-quart size or smaller though)
Bread -- Basically just white. Their loaves of bread are about 50-75 % an American loaf, and have only 6-8 really thick slices.
Peanut butter -- or should I say, peanut cream? Like a cross between peanut butter and caramel, this stuff has got to be even worse for you than regular peanut butter, which we were able to find eventually.
Tequila -- Jose Cuervo, over-priced but oh so nice. The Japanese liquor of choice is whiskey by far (remember Bill Murray in Lost in Translation -- "Suntory time..." ?)
A newspaper in English. -- Thank you The Japan Times
Cheese -- In very small quantities and over-priced, but not bad.
Pizza fixin's -- I can make pizza! Expect more on that in a later update.

CAN'T
Good beer -- Seriously, the stuff readily available here is terrible.
Wheat-free options -- Much to Tessa's chagrin.
Rice Noodles -- You'd think, right? They gotta be around here somewhere, I says.

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. In other news, we are getting paid for the first time on Saturday (yay!) and possibly taking our first trip t Tokyo on Sunday.

We also are now enrolled in a once a week "Japanese Conversation Club" to help us learn to better read, write, and speak Japanese. Just a little insight into the Japanese language, it is fairly easy to speak, when you know what to say, but can be very difficult to read and write. They have three different alphabets. First, is Kanji, nigh on impossible for a foreigner to learn in a short amount of time because it is very complicated and has over 30,000 different characters, almost 2,000 of which are essential for daily use. It is based on the Chinese alphabet. People and place names are always in Kanji, as well as most other things. We're not touching that one. We're working on Hiragana, Japan's own script, and Katakana, the alphabet they use for foreign and loan words. Their characters are comprised mainly of syllable sounds and 5 vowels. This is of course on top of "Romaji" (what they call roman characters) which has recently became wide-spread in use. It would look like the teacher has indeed become the student. OK, time to give Tessa the computer now. Sayonara!