Quick Notes:
Weather Sunny but still a little cool
Had amazing curry
Bike tire blew up
Explored on foot
Found NM

Woke up about 9:00 and just relaxed for a while. I met Seth at 12:00 and we went to have lunch at Talcali. Talcali is in front of the Ninomiya house and actually has english on the building. Though there was english out front there was none inside. This restaurant is the same size of the “Red” one but with “regular” tables. We sat at the bar and the waitress tried to tell us the specials. She spoke enough english that we knew it was curry, small and large, with rice or naan. Seth order the special and order a tomato based curry that was pictured on the menu. Since we were sitting at the bar we could see the kitchen and watched the two guys cook. There was a large iron cylinder that was three feet tall and two feet across that they cooked the naan in over wood. The curry was amazing. My curry was a little sweet and really creamy. I’ve never had anything like that and the naan was great too. I’m glad that restaurant is just right there.


                 Seth’s Curry                                                         My Curry

The Awesome Naan

After lunch we planned to go to Tsukuba Station then explore and see if we could find the movie theater. Before we left I needed to put some more air in my bike tire since I guess my patch didn’t seal perfectly. As I started to roll it out this extremely loud gunshot sounded. But then I looked down and my tube had exploded. Well great, now I just need a whole new tube. Now being after lunch I figured the bike shop would be open, so we started walking down to the shop. I walked into the shop and I was turned away because apparently they only work on Specialized bikes and not “regular” bikes. So they guy point us in the direction of the “regular” bike shop and we head that way. The new bike shop guy said it would be ready in an hour, so Seth and I headed out on foot. We just headed out west since we hadn’t been over there at all. Walked around for a while and found a Wild West shop, I guess since we went west. Out front, there was a New Mexico sign and it turned out they pretty much only have New Mexico stuff. Mostly Native American influenced items like turquoise jewelry, and paintings. We fly thousands of miles away from NM but still cant get away from it (not that it is bad).


Wild West Shop (see the New Mexico sign)

After the shop we continued our adventure and ended up walking through some farm fields, parks, and neighborhoods. It was amazing how quite and peaceful the neighborhoods were. We also saw a lot of small personal gardens that people had. (Sorry for all the pictures, just thought they were needed)


Farmland


1 of the 20 parks within a 2 mile radius


Neighborhood


Flower of a tree, not sure what it is called

Made it back to the bike shop to pick up my bike and I was unpleasantly surprised that it cost me 2500Y(~$28) to get a new tube installed. So I need to find some tools so I can do my own tire changes next time, or maybe just not try and jump gaps on my “regular” bike.

By now it was 4:00 and we didn’t want to go find movie theater, so we went to the Tsukuba Station. Around the station there is a large 5 story shopping center and we just explored it. We found some really expensive store in there and probably won’t be back there to buy anything. Well, now back to the house to start dinner and probably head to Mt. Tsukuba in the morning.

P.S. we have a smugmug account now from our friends Jason and Tracey White. Go to http://hainesfamily.smugmug.com if you want to see more pictures.