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8/28
Today I'm being a rockstar and am trying to start up conversations with teachers based on things they like. It's stressful, having to think so much, but it also endears me to people. One teacher was interested in my kanji practice, so I later showed him my study website and how you can make your own study lists (even in chemistry! his subject!), I asked the lunch lady how long she'd worked here (23 years! what the crap!), and I had a conversation about jelly fish with the biology professor because I read an article about how swarms of them are going to invade Japan in September, thus threatening the ecosystem. baaaalller.
I got a potato roll from the school store. Essentially that means potato salad on a hot dog bun. Interesting.
Another topic of interest: they almost never use credit cards here and they don't have debit cards at all. It's a cash-based society, which means to pay bills, even for hotels, you need to take them to a bank or a convenience store and pay there. It's interesting. You bring your bill to the counter and they ring it up along with your potato chips, magazine, and Asahi beer. Convenient, really. Though it's a little inconvenient for me because I'm not used to it. Some bills, like my rent, have to be paid only at banks, and of course after a 10 hour work day at school, the banks are not open. I'll have to skip out a bit early on Monday to pay my rent.
I went home a little earlier today (only 40 minutes after my work day ended!), knowing I had to go to the volunteer meeting for the cruise ship event. I took the train for the first time in town with a woman I will call, The Actress. She’s the woman I met with Mochi-san at the jazz festival. I call her The Actress because she’s always putting on some sort of baby act, and when I she asked me a whole string of personal questions and I turned them around on her after my answers, she took the Japanese actress approach and said her age is “a secret.”
It was a little awkward on account of all that, but since I was having such a good Japanese day I was able to carry the conversation in both languages. At the meeting, I got sequestered to a different group from her but I realized that I can understand a lot more Japanese than I could a month earlier at the last meeting. Like a ton!
I met a lot of new people at the meeting, including a woman who speaks Spanish. When she found out I could, she wanted to hear me talk and I found it very difficult because Japanese kept getting in the way. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to be trilingual or if I’m always going to go back and forth between priority languages. Speaking of Spanish, I saw some people from Spain being interviewed on Japanese television and though they had the dub in Japanese you could still hear the original track. My Spanish isn’t great, but my Spanish vocabulary and grammar is so much better that it brought me great relief to hear the Spanish after being bombarded so much with Japanese over the last month. My brain actually opted to follow the Spanish instead. Sorry, Japan.
After the meeting, I went out with Mochi, The Actress, and some of their friends to a place called The Lion of Oz. It’s an old Japanese Inn that’s been revamped into a restaurant/bar that really reminds me a lot of the funkiest of U.S. coffee shops. There was eclectic shit thrown around everywhere and they served a kind of Japanese Italian fusion cooking, which I maintain is the best food I’ve had since I’ve been here. And cheap too!
The proprietor was a little old man who’s friends with Mochi. I told him how good his food was and we talked about it for a little while. He told me the marinara sauce on the pasta had been stewing for 17 hours!! The talent was pretty cool too, the opening was a duo of college boys who’d only been a band for two days (they were pretty good, considering!) and the main act was a man and a woman (dressed like a sailor and a maid) who did vaudeville style comedy based on classic anime and they sang covers of the opening and closing theme songs. My favorite was when the woman sang the Sailor Moon opening, all the women I was with were like “Oh! That takes me back!! <3 <3 <3!”
One of the women in our party had just had a birthday, so we’d brought her a cake. It was a strawberry tart with cake underneath, gigantic strawberries, homemade cream, and the best crust ever. Japanese dessert tends to suit a different palate, so the fact that I loved this so much really highlights the fact that I HAVE to find that bakery!
In short, I had a really great time with cool people. Their English was okay and my Japanese was okay, which meant low stress for me.
At about 10:30 PM I got a phone call from The Canadian (whom I’d met on the bus during orientation in Sapporo and invited to my house, remember) saying that him and Rin had arrived at my train station. At which point I panicked because I was in a crowded bar on the other side of town and they were two blocks from my house. Fortunately Tomo-chan struck into action and agreed to take me home. I felt bad, but mostly I felt like, “I told you guys I’d have to leave when the Canadians called, so it’s your fault for dragging me out here so far and then lingering forever!”
Tomo-chan was also nice enough to drive us back to my place, at which point The Canadian, Rin, and me talked late into the night. I kind of felt like I was playing “that girl,” because the stories of ridiculousness and Japanese culture just kept pouring from my mouth. I don’t think they found it distasteful though.
I went on for about an hour telling stories of ridiculous things the Pred had done and how I suffered for it. Kind of puts things in perspective, but at least I got some cool points from it all. It was a great night, all in all, especially since I’d managed to get my apartment mostly clean. Not as clean as my usual standards, and nothing had been rearranged and made to look cool yet, but at least it was habitable.
Based on something I’d said in a conversation about Sapporo Orientation, The Canadian pieced together that I’d missed the first morning on account of oversleeping. He told me that he’d seen me rush in with my suitcase, but he hadn’t figured out until now that I’d just arrived because I’d overslept. At the time he saw me run into the room he was like, “What’s that girls’ deal? Why does she have her luggage? She must be really organized. Should I have my luggage too?” lol Clearly I did not lose much face that day, traumatic as it was! (Also, no one from school has said anything to me about it, so I’m glad I kept it on the down-low!)
Today I'm being a rockstar and am trying to start up conversations with teachers based on things they like. It's stressful, having to think so much, but it also endears me to people. One teacher was interested in my kanji practice, so I later showed him my study website and how you can make your own study lists (even in chemistry! his subject!), I asked the lunch lady how long she'd worked here (23 years! what the crap!), and I had a conversation about jelly fish with the biology professor because I read an article about how swarms of them are going to invade Japan in September, thus threatening the ecosystem. baaaalller.
I got a potato roll from the school store. Essentially that means potato salad on a hot dog bun. Interesting.
Another topic of interest: they almost never use credit cards here and they don't have debit cards at all. It's a cash-based society, which means to pay bills, even for hotels, you need to take them to a bank or a convenience store and pay there. It's interesting. You bring your bill to the counter and they ring it up along with your potato chips, magazine, and Asahi beer. Convenient, really. Though it's a little inconvenient for me because I'm not used to it. Some bills, like my rent, have to be paid only at banks, and of course after a 10 hour work day at school, the banks are not open. I'll have to skip out a bit early on Monday to pay my rent.
I went home a little earlier today (only 40 minutes after my work day ended!), knowing I had to go to the volunteer meeting for the cruise ship event. I took the train for the first time in town with a woman I will call, The Actress. She’s the woman I met with Mochi-san at the jazz festival. I call her The Actress because she’s always putting on some sort of baby act, and when I she asked me a whole string of personal questions and I turned them around on her after my answers, she took the Japanese actress approach and said her age is “a secret.”
It was a little awkward on account of all that, but since I was having such a good Japanese day I was able to carry the conversation in both languages. At the meeting, I got sequestered to a different group from her but I realized that I can understand a lot more Japanese than I could a month earlier at the last meeting. Like a ton!
I met a lot of new people at the meeting, including a woman who speaks Spanish. When she found out I could, she wanted to hear me talk and I found it very difficult because Japanese kept getting in the way. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to be trilingual or if I’m always going to go back and forth between priority languages. Speaking of Spanish, I saw some people from Spain being interviewed on Japanese television and though they had the dub in Japanese you could still hear the original track. My Spanish isn’t great, but my Spanish vocabulary and grammar is so much better that it brought me great relief to hear the Spanish after being bombarded so much with Japanese over the last month. My brain actually opted to follow the Spanish instead. Sorry, Japan.
After the meeting, I went out with Mochi, The Actress, and some of their friends to a place called The Lion of Oz. It’s an old Japanese Inn that’s been revamped into a restaurant/bar that really reminds me a lot of the funkiest of U.S. coffee shops. There was eclectic shit thrown around everywhere and they served a kind of Japanese Italian fusion cooking, which I maintain is the best food I’ve had since I’ve been here. And cheap too!
The proprietor was a little old man who’s friends with Mochi. I told him how good his food was and we talked about it for a little while. He told me the marinara sauce on the pasta had been stewing for 17 hours!! The talent was pretty cool too, the opening was a duo of college boys who’d only been a band for two days (they were pretty good, considering!) and the main act was a man and a woman (dressed like a sailor and a maid) who did vaudeville style comedy based on classic anime and they sang covers of the opening and closing theme songs. My favorite was when the woman sang the Sailor Moon opening, all the women I was with were like “Oh! That takes me back!! <3 <3 <3!”
One of the women in our party had just had a birthday, so we’d brought her a cake. It was a strawberry tart with cake underneath, gigantic strawberries, homemade cream, and the best crust ever. Japanese dessert tends to suit a different palate, so the fact that I loved this so much really highlights the fact that I HAVE to find that bakery!
In short, I had a really great time with cool people. Their English was okay and my Japanese was okay, which meant low stress for me.
At about 10:30 PM I got a phone call from The Canadian (whom I’d met on the bus during orientation in Sapporo and invited to my house, remember) saying that him and Rin had arrived at my train station. At which point I panicked because I was in a crowded bar on the other side of town and they were two blocks from my house. Fortunately Tomo-chan struck into action and agreed to take me home. I felt bad, but mostly I felt like, “I told you guys I’d have to leave when the Canadians called, so it’s your fault for dragging me out here so far and then lingering forever!”
Tomo-chan was also nice enough to drive us back to my place, at which point The Canadian, Rin, and me talked late into the night. I kind of felt like I was playing “that girl,” because the stories of ridiculousness and Japanese culture just kept pouring from my mouth. I don’t think they found it distasteful though.
I went on for about an hour telling stories of ridiculous things the Pred had done and how I suffered for it. Kind of puts things in perspective, but at least I got some cool points from it all. It was a great night, all in all, especially since I’d managed to get my apartment mostly clean. Not as clean as my usual standards, and nothing had been rearranged and made to look cool yet, but at least it was habitable.
Based on something I’d said in a conversation about Sapporo Orientation, The Canadian pieced together that I’d missed the first morning on account of oversleeping. He told me that he’d seen me rush in with my suitcase, but he hadn’t figured out until now that I’d just arrived because I’d overslept. At the time he saw me run into the room he was like, “What’s that girls’ deal? Why does she have her luggage? She must be really organized. Should I have my luggage too?” lol Clearly I did not lose much face that day, traumatic as it was! (Also, no one from school has said anything to me about it, so I’m glad I kept it on the down-low!)
