{"id":232,"date":"2004-01-18T09:32:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-18T09:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2004-01-18T09:32:00","modified_gmt":"2004-01-18T09:32:00","slug":"consumerism-encroaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"Consumerism Encroaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while back I mentioned that a new shopping center is going in literally right next door to my apartment complex. The other night while knocking back non-alcoholic beverages at the yakitori the master mentioned that a new complex was opening this weekend in north Futami. Today I decided to go check it out. <\/p>\n

It was easy enough to find – it’s only a ten minute walk from my doorstep to theirs. The shopping center is pretty big – the best way I could describe it is that it was “American sized”. Kind of like the big shopping centers that might have a Target, Home Depot, and Best Buy. <\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The big attraction here was Midori, an electronics store kind of like Fry’s, but bigger. Next week the rest of the shopping center opens, with a supermarket, and a mall\/shopping center type thing with lots of clothes stores. <\/p>\n

I went and explored Midori for a while. The first floor was all electronics, and it was pretty busy, since this was the grand opening weekend. Upstairs was a furniture and housewares area – lots of interesting things. Everything on the furniture floor was pretty expensive – the electronics were priced pretty competitively.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, I walked over to the nearby Maxx-Valu and did some grocery shopping. I got some great stuff for this week – it’ll be a good mix of Japanese and California cooking. <\/p>\n

Miss Kageyama dropped by to pick me up for a movie in the evening, and so we went out to the nearby family restaurant for a set dinner. The food was OK, but not mind-blowing. It was a good opportunity to do some research and also to chat with Miss Kageyama. She was recovering from a hangover – she was hanging out with a friend last night and drank a little too much beer. <\/p>\n

We ran over to the movie theater, and to kill a little time before the show, we went into the arcade and played that game where little monsters pop out of the holes and you have to beat them with a big mallet. They had a head-to-head machine and I got my butt kicked. Miss Kageyama swings a mean mallet.<\/p>\n

The movie was pretty good – Bruce Almighty. There was a small crowd in there, and everybody seemed to laugh at the right times. There were a couple of jokes that only I got, but for the most part, people enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

After the movie Miss Kageyama dropped me off at my place and I had time for a bowl of cereal before bed. The Frosted Flakes here are not nearly as frosted as the ones at home – I found out the hard way. Finally I did a few stretches and went to bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back I mentioned that a new shopping center is going in literally right next door to my apartment complex. The other night while knocking back non-alcoholic beverages at the yakitori the master mentioned that a new complex was opening this weekend in north Futami. Today I decided to go check it out. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-3K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}