Omura

If you ask anyone around here, Chrys says they'll tell you there's nothing in Omura. Trouble is...they're wrong. Omura has Jusco. What is Jusco, you ask? Well, it's a mall deprived American's mecca, or at least that's how we see it.

We stumbled across Jusco while Chrys was on vacation for Thanksgiving. We decided to drive North and see what was up there, hoping for a place to do some Christmas shopping. We got to Omura and there, on the side of the road, was this beautifully large building surrounded by parking lot.

Turns out, it's not really a mall, but it has quite a few shops in its 2 stories. There are restaurants and a food court with quick stuff and an arcade full of picture booths and crane games, which seem to be typical Japanese arcade fare.

The bathroom stalls are labelled with the type of toilet within, western or squatter. Usually only one or two are Western so I have to be careful. Luckily, most of the other women tend to actually seek the squatters so I'm usually safe. The women's bathroom even has a short urinal (for boys that go with their mommies, I guess) and sinks that are about kid level which is a neat feature.

It even has a VERY large grocery store with more variety of most things than we've seen anywhere else.

We've gone there the past few Saturdays for Christmas shopping. Turns out they open at 10am, we can grab Mister Donut, shop, get McD's for lunch and be ready to head home. It's about a half hour away and makes for a nice, American syle morning, which is pretty welcome right now.