[essex]

i personally live west of sendai in miyagi. i'm 10-15 minutes from sendai station by train.

Originally Posted by MMM

Besides deodorant, I would also make sure you have enough toothpaste w/ fluoride from your home.

I am not sure where you live, but even McDonald's seems to be just about everywhere. I am not saying you need to go every day, but sometimes a cheeseburger and fries is what I need to get me through a rough patch.

yeah, thankfully i brought a ton of toothpaste too. at least i got that right. i was thinking of stopping in at mcDonalds or KFC soon. i also saw a burger place in sendai station... great burger or something? i think i remember reading it was a japanese chain.

as far as restaurants, i'm trying not to eat out much, but i'm going to need to find a pizza place that makes actual pizza. there are a couple of local chains i've seen, but they tend to be super expensive and make nonpizza.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I wasn`t meaning to be defensive... You just simply can`t imagine the number of extremely detailed questions that are asked by people who have never been to Japan. A lot of people assume things are very different from reality. and some people will debate about issues they have only heard about somewhere online.

yea... i didn't come here expecting much. and most of what i've found is that things i've read tend to be either blown out of proportion, or largely ignored. for example how expensive it is supposed to be. granted, i don't live in tokyo, but i've found some things are more expensive, and some things are cheaper. or the assumption that electronics are so much cheaper here when in fact they tend to be much more expensive. not too bothered by most of that though.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

When it comes to food - make your own. Seriously. Learn to cook the dishes you enjoy and break any prepackaged/processed food habits you have. I don`t mean that to sound harsh - it`s something you should try to do wherever you are. Processed food isn`t good for you, regardless of whether you like it or not.

I am usually really stumped when people say they cannot adjust to the Japanese diet because all the ingredients are available to make whatever it is you like to eat, or at the very least something passably similar. I honestly cannot think of any western dish that I could not make if I felt the desire, and all with ingredients from the local grocery stores. Vegetables are vegetables. Meat is meat.

well, i'm not attached to processed foods. an example is that pancake mix isn't too hard to find or that expensive... syrup, on the other hand, comes in small bottles and it's INSANELY expensive. so unless i can find some cheap syrup or non-"pure maple" type syrup, pancakes are out of the question.

my diet right now consists of chicken (or beef if it's on sale), pasta/rice/ramen noodles, bananas, eggs for breakfast, and the occasional sandwich. that's fine for right now, but if i don't add some sort of variance, it will eventually slowly drive me nuts.

i've tried the native curry and it's not exactly up my alley, but i don't know how to find english curry. even if i were to make the curry paste from scratch, some of the ingredients aren't something i've been able to find. i was also thinking of trying to track down some mexican ingredients, but i can't find tortillas (thankfully i brought a boatload of cumin with me from the states).

i also located a couple of vendors who sell the cheese powder you'd find in a box of mac and cheese. as i haven't been able to find boxes of that anywhere, i was thinking maybe getting a bunch of that shipped would be an easy cheapish way to do mac and cheese (just buy pasta from the store).