Life of a (semi) housewife...

I had a taste of what a housewife would be like in Japan for the past few days - waking up with your loved one (even though you don't have to go work), making him breakfast, seeing him off to work in the morning, cleaning the house, buying food and daily use stuff for both of us, doing laundry, etc.

Sorry hope the list doesn't bore you. It certainly bores me a bit!! -_- I guess I was just not born with the gene of being a good housewife (hehe... just blame it on mom!!) It's just not my thing (not yet anyways =P )

Nonetheless, I still accomplished a lot in these few days: getting Mike and myself a new cell phone (yup, babie, FIRST cell phone in Japan!), taking care of all the administrative stuff with my new company, meeting my boss for lunch (and he seems like a very cool guy!), looking up bank stuff and gyms in the area (they are ALL frecking expensive!), cleaning up the house (which looks much bigger now, so proud of myself, hehe), buying food and daily-use items for Mike and myself, and making Mike breakfast and giving him supports in general. I think I passed (and actually did a pretty good job) of being a "semi-housewife"!! heh...

I also discovered many interesting things in the Japanese culture and society. Below are some with documented evidence:


Interesting Observation 1 - Expensive Veggie

If you are vegetarian, I am very sorry to say - you will have a very hard life here in Tokyo. I don't know about other regions, but for some reasons, vegetables and fruits are ridicoulously expensive. It probably has something to do with the high percentage of imported product and thus high import tax... but, I dunno. The only thing I know is ... I MISS MY VEGGIE...

This reminded me how much I miss the sweet tomatoes with scrambled eggs dish that my mom usually cooked when I was in US. And yes, each tomato DOES cost about $2 US dollar each here!!





"An apple a day, doctors go away!" Sadly though, it costs A LOT here to have the doctors stay out of your way (if you rely on apples).
Because they are each 600 yen ($4.8 USD!!!) You can argue that they are huge... not sure they are five bucks huge though...





800 yen orange - haven't eaten any orange since I got here... felt that rest of my body will be so jealous of my stomach if I buy this $7 USD orange for my stomach...






Mom, I miss the gigantic boxes of grapes that you bought me... look how much they are here!!! -_-... 2300 yen per SMALL box (trust me, they are really small)






Yea, that's right - a 3800 yen mango ($35 USD each)








In conclusion, to get affordable vegetables... you can do this...

Doe's pre-packaged salad costs about $2 USD from Shibuya food mall (yea, you kinda have to go out of your way to get good pre-packaged salad. They are not sold everywhere)





Interesting Observation 2 - "Human browsers"

A lot of times you'll see people just stand at the magazines section of convenient stores and read the magazines or manga there for a very long time (without buying). I can see that in a bookstore, but in a convenient store?! (One time, I even saw some guy took out his cell phone and took pictures of the magazine...)





Interesting Observation 3 - Recycling Fever

Japanese people are absolutely religious about how to classify their garbage. They have different days to dispose combustible and non-combustible garbage. In this picture, you can see they have a box for (from left to right) white toilet paper, bottle, can, combustible and non-combustible stuff.