5 months is passing since we came here.
We feel as if we have already spent a year. Time pass so slowly because we are spending very deep, meaningful moment. I think we are very lucky to be able to feel like that at our age and we are totally fascinated about our life in Vancouver even though we do not know whether we can survive through this harsh winter.
We really recognize that our momentous decision in the shelter, 5 months ago was successful.
Actually, we lost many things on that day and had difficult moment for a couple month after the incident.
Luckily we survived it even though all my neighborhood was devastated.
If we evaluate the good and the bad after that, we can say with certain confidence that we have much more good
experience than bad one.
It have brought all my family together and have reconnected all my friends and acquaintances.
It taught me the importance of my friends and my family.
It taught me how I was ignorant about the natural disasters.
It taught me the material things were not crucial for our life.
It even brought us the marvellous beginning of ’ the second life'.
I have been totaly convinced that Vancouver is the most livable city in the world only in 5 months.
If I had enough money to live here, I would live here.
There are no many extreme traffic jams compared to another big cities, so commuting is not so hard.
There is little air pollution. The system of collecting garbage is perfect.
I will propose it to the municipal of my country when we return to Japan.
The transportation is almost perfect. This system is considered deeply about elderly people and disable people.
Besides, it cover almost all area. It's very convenient.
The most impressive for us is almost all passengers say some words of appreciation to drivers when they get off the bus, such as 'Thank you'.
There are many variety of restaurants, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Greek,
Italian,Brazilian, etc..We feel we are in the exhibition of international foods.
I don't know about other restaurants, but as far as I know, the quality of Japanese restaurants is high and the price is not so high, reasonable.
The most impressive for us is there are too many SUSHI restaurants. Chinese SUSHI restaurants, Korean SUSHI restaurants, Japanese SUSHI restaurants. You can see one SUSHI restaurant each 50m.
Canadian people really like SUSHI. Canadian children get so excited when they are taken to SUSHI restaurant.
I can say with certain confidence that they eat SUSHI much more than Japanese do.
I do not know why they have been such SUSHI eaters. However, I can assume that Canadian people worry about their health very much, especially they are very afraid of being obese. Besides, they believe that SUSHI is the most 'healthy food' in the world. In addition, they are totally fascinated with the taste of SUSHI even thogh they recognize that SUSHI is totally different from real Japanese sushi.
I think I have to make them notice their misconception.
It is very difficult to get fresh fish.
They don't know how to keep freshness, even how to identify fresh fish.
They don't care about freshness of fish because they believe the freshness doesn't matter when they bake it.
Besides, there are no many variations of fish. I can proud of only salmon.
As a result, I don't recommend living here for a long time, if you really like to eat fish.
Before we came here, we had imagined to eat many Canadian food.
However, as most of all Canadian admit, there are no many Canadian foods.
As far as I know, maple salmon, smoked salmon, SUSHI, these are real Canadian foods.
Because Canada is a country of immigrants, they brought their original foods with them when they came to Canada.
They didn't need to creat original foods from scratch.
The only thing we can't accept about the Canadian custom is cutting off the roots of spinach and throw them away and peeling off the skin of salmons and throw them away.
The electrical appliances,such as computer, rice cooker, wash machine,etc.. are very cheap.
The expense for gas, electricity, water, telephone is very cheap.
The system of wireless internet have completed almost all the house and it cost very very cheap.
I think Japan is 10 years behind Canada in the most important field of computer technology.
We can reduce much more the expense for communication.
Most Canadian people wear black in winter.
It's difficult to find another color in the shop, especially outer pants are almost black.
i think Canadian people are very conservative about the clothes.