Foodie paradise

The wife of my boss has been supervising me during my time in the lab here. She has been very helpful. She is leaving on Monday (more than two weeks early of my fellowship's end). While I probably say thank you dozens of times every day, I feel like I cannot express it sufficiently. Since Japan uses gifts to express things, I really wanted to give her a thank you gift. Since they both spent time in Germany and she said she likes cheese a lot (on my first day in town), I wanted to give her some German cheese. The grocery stores seem to only sell brie cheese. I found a cheese specialty store in my town and I was really excited to go there. Their website listed the cheeses they sell (by country since it is about international cheeses) and there was a particular cheese from Germany they had listed (with picture). When I arrived, they told me they do not sell any German cheese. :-(  I ended up buying her two different cheeses instead. I also bought sake, for my adviser. The store wrapped them for free, it was very pretty :-) The wrapping of the gifts is also very important in Japan.

The cheese store was in the large train station in town. During my internet searches, I found it said that this station is the LARGEST TRAIN STATION IN THE WORLD. While I have not confirmed this source, I am completely able to believe it! This place is huge and AMAZING. It was a foodie's paradise. I wish it didn't cost me 520yen to travel there and back each time because otherwise I would visit daily!

Yes, two peaches for 680yen... about $9 :-o