Day 12: Himeji and stuff

I got the photos from my friend. There's quite a bit of them so I'm just going to post some here and the rest on Facebook.

After the castle, we went to Kokoen park, which was very pretty. My friend, E, and I are planning to come again in the fall because the picture in the brochure was supppperrr gorgeous.

 

We also went to the longest suspension bridge in the world (?).

 

 It's harder to enjoy when you're freezing your ass off.

I posted a lot of pictures here so the zoo details/pics will be in tomorrow's post, promise. 

Today I picked up half of my scholarship money for this month 'cos it's way more cash than I'm comfortable carrying around. I went to the mall afterward to shop for a few school supplies as well as some presents for upcoming birthdays. Japanese clothing really confuses me. I don't understand the sizing system. What is size F?? Right now I'm guessing...one size? (ETA: Kay, I asked E (who's Korean, FYI) and she confirmed it meant free size/one size). Also, I thought their sizing system was the standard S, M, L but everywhere I went there were NO size S. 

Me no comprehendo.

I walked around 3 stories for about 2.5 hours wondering what happened to all the size smalls. At the beginning, I found something really nice but it was only in size M. It wasn't 'til near the end of my shopping fiasco that I started to noticed that these size M's look like they could fit me. It was THEN when it occurred to me that maybe size M was the smallest size. So I started running around the mall, looking for that store again, quickly coming to the realization that...I couldn't remember what store it was. Memory, how could you fail me when I'm shopping, of ALL things.

After all that "shopping", I was too pooped to do the exploring in my neighborhood that I had planned to do and just went straight home. I bought a little plastic container to hold my tape, stapler, and etc. though. 

One last thing, I filled out the form to set up my bank account today and was told that it wouldn't be ready until next week. It's a little unnerving because it means I have to wait another week to buy a cellphone, which my lack thereof is starting to grow increasingly inconvenient.