Exchange rates and a big breakfast

The exciting news for the day comes from a tip from a Earl. He's in all but one of my class sessions and lives three doors down the hall in my dorm, but was also here last semester. Last night he asked a bunch of us newbies if we wanted to go for breakfast on campus with him today, saying it's pretty cheap. This sounded good because it meant something different to eat. I've still been being pretty uncreative with what ingredients I'm buying.

So this morning we went to cafeteria in the Ikagakukan in the southeast corner of the campus. Every school day, from seven to nine in the morning, it's a buffet-style breakfast, all-you-can-eat style. You get one plate, one bowl of miso soup, one bowl of rice, and as much tea (hot, cold, or both) as you want for 260 yen. You can fit an awful lot of food on one plate if you've had practice.

I should note that the breakfast options are not the typical ones. There is more fresh fruit than there is at lunch, but the rest of the options have more meat in them than the lunch buffet. I've had chicken for breakfast more times than I can count, and I've been a big fan of it, but after having octopus and squid for breakfast I think my preferences may have changed. Octopus feels amazingly substantial in the morning.

Tomorrow I'm going to repeat this, except this time I'm going to bring a container along to stash save half of the monster breakfast for lunch.

Now, the annoying bit for the day: since the US economy is taking a nose-dive due to the panic bill, while this breakfast would have been $2.47 a week ago, it's now at about $2.60. Almost a 5% in change in a week, after the dollar and the yen were pretty much in lockstep for at least a year. That's not a good sign...