"The lone matsuri float near Oyama Station"
Okay, this is first in a series of posts I decided to do because I love you guys. But seriously, the real reason is that finding out all these things is because it takes forever to find out these things on your own, and seeing how I feel this blog is 2/3 my experience blog, 1/3 tell people about life with the Hakuoh program, the whole purpose is to share the experiences I had.
Today has several links and will talk about general things dealing with things around Oyama along with places where you can buy food at (not restaurants).
Here's a link to the map of Oyama. It's in one of the Japanese online map sites, so if you can't handle the Japanese for some reason, I'll pull up what google maps has on the region.
http://www.mapion.co.jp/c/f?el=139/48/12.215&scl=70000&uc=1&grp=all&nl=36/18/41.346 (The Japanese online map site)
Not really a link, but by typing "日本栃木県小山市" into Google Maps search engine, you should be able to get a similar (but not as detailed as the Japanese site's one) map of Oyama city.
Other links relating to the city:
The wikipedia (oh how lovely) on Oyama, Tochigi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyama,_Tochigi
http://www.city.oyama.tochigi.jp/ (Oyama's website in Japanese)
http://www5.city.oyama.tochigi.jp/english/sitemap.html (An English site that has links pertaining to Oyama)
http://web.hakuoh.ac.jp/index.html (Hakuoh University's Website)
http://web.hakuoh.ac.jp/english/index.html (Hakuoh's English website, which is a far cry from the Japanese one)
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Anyway, my post will talk about several things to keep in mind that take a bit of exploring to figure out.
First off, cobinis (convenience stores) can be your friend. All are open 24 hours and have various products that can be purchased at those places. You have three major ones in Oyama to choose from: Family Mart, 7-11, and Ministop. Family Mart is average in terms of what convenience stores offer, but it's also the closest cobini right near the men's dorm (to the left of Toys R' Us. Ministop has a wider variety of foods and also has tables in most of it's stores so you can sit down and relax or eat in the store. However, me being an enthusiast of coffee knows that ministop's offering of coffee is pitiful versus the other two convenience stores. 7-11 by far is usually the best. They have about the same offerings as the competition, but they also are the only one I trust (because I know I can do it, thank you Takahashi's class) that I can pay my bills at. Yes, you can pay any scan bar bills you receive at a 7-11 in Japan. Makes it handily nice. There are other cobinis in the Oyama area, but they are rare (I found a Am and Pm the other day near the station, and they had the biggest selection I've seen a cobini have of books) or are specialty (like the ones in train stations or platforms).
For those that cook (or can deal with the prices of cooking), there are several stores in the Oyama area you can go to. There's a grocery mart in Oyama station that has a wide variety on things. Fruit is sometimes extremely expensive here. The good thing is, this store (and other stores like it) have pre-made foods ready for the consumption. Wait until about 7:30 PM here and you'll notice they'll mark down all the pre-made items half-off. You can get dinner for the next three days for like 600 yen or something. Just be sure to refrigerate it.
There's an import store near the post office called Marche that sells a lot of imported food from America, but it's pretty expensive. They however have probably one of the better pre-made food areas of most of the other grocery stores in Oyama, but it comes to be a little bit more expensive in price though.
There's a shopping center called harvest walk a little away from the station. They have a bus near the station that comes every 15 minutes to go to Harvest Walk. At Harvest Walk, there's a Ito-Yokado which is pretty big and has lots of available items. They have a limited portion of imported food, but it's expensive.
There's also another Ito-Yokado near the station right next to Yamada Denki. It has about the same fair as the one at Harvest Walk does.
I do a lot of my shopping sometimes at a drug store called Welcia that has a decent selection of what you would find at a grocery store. No fresh vegetables or anything, but it has the lowest prices on drinks like milk, coffee, and juices than most of the other stores in Oyama.
I'll try to make a map later pointing out various locations in Oyama.
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