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Hey.
This morning we spent a fair bit of time lazing around in John's apartment and catching up with all the things that have been happening in the UK without him. We then went shopping for food in the local supermarket which was one hell of an experience! It is so difficult to tell what anything is - all the writing is unsurprisingly written in Japanese, most liquids look the same and the pictures on the packaging do not tend to help either. Fruit is very expensive here but I also discovered that alcohol is very cheap. I mistook a bottle of sake (the traditional Japanese alcoholic drink) for mineral water because it was in a 4 litre plastic bottle and cost about 5 quid! I was also offered a couple of free samples of food to try in the supermarket, which I did - no idea what they were but don't think I'll be buying them anytime soon. Faz is trying the drinks over here rather than the food and seems to be doing better than me. She has been drinking sake (I haven't felt like drinking alcohol at all yet) and a really popular drink over here called Calpis (which is pronounced cow piss and I haven't been brave enough to try yet).
After our shopping trip we went to a nearby park for a picnic. I made a big mistake trying to experiment with the local food and had to leave most of my dim sum (which I'm pretty sure had anchovies in) while Faz was pretty happy with her ham sandwich she made. We also drank cider, which is a kind of lemonade style drink which tastes a bit like bubblegum.
After our picnic and a few photo opportunities with terrapins, massive coy and some buildings and statues wearing head scarves, we headed off for a stroll on the beach and then on to Hakkaijima Sea Paradise, an island off the coast of Yokohama. It has an aquarium and amusement park which we were going to visit today but decoded to put it off until another day when we can spend more time there. Instead we took a (very rocky) boat trip around the island, taking lots of (mainly blurry) photos. Afterwards we went round some of the gift shops on the island and came across one called Bean World which was completely bizarre! It is a world of baked bean characters and is apparently a tv show here (which seems a bit wierd if they don't have baked beans, which they apparently don't as John was so desperate for us to bring some for him). Bean World seems to be a bit like MR Men and Little Miss where all the different characters are dressed differently and have different names like Magic Bean, Has Bean, Old Bean and Teen Bean (who says wotever)!
Despite our searching we have not yet managed to find any postcards to send back home - we'll keep looking though.
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