So I’ve moved house on August 3rd… I’m in the flat that was meant to be mine. No more cubical concrete “Weekly Mansion”. I’ve spent heaps of time cleaning this past week, and now I’m nearly finished. Most surfaces were covered in a dirty soot kinda dust.
A strange thing about moving: I hung my clothes on hangers for the first time in over 8 months! All this time living out of a bag strikingly contrasts the extra effort it is to put a shirt or pants on a hanger. There are fewer wrinkles, tho, so that’s a good thing.
During the first weekend of August, I went to Shizuoka with Drew (my predacessor) to meet one of his friends and his successor (which turned out to be one of my roommates back in Tokyo). We ate and drank at the biggest beer garden I’ve ever seen, and it was on the roof of a department store (depato), so it afforded a good view of the metropolis.
I left early to take the train down to Fujieda to meet with other new ALTs and one of them was a guest DJ at a club we went to! It turned out his predacessor was a DJ there and gave Aroop (the new ALT’s name) some lime light. That night was the best night the club has had (ever) in terms of beer sales, so the owner said Aroop can use the club as he likes for parties! This will be good.
The following Sunday was the dinner with Fukushima-sensei, and I’ve written about that already.
The week was pretty bland - just nuts and bolts kinda stuff. Buying things for the flat, cleaning, cooking. But this past weekend was pretty good.
Friday night, I went down to Fujieda again to meet the other ALTs. We ate dinner at an Izakawa (a Japanese pub) and moved on to sing karaoke for 2 hours. You pay ￥1800 and you get your own room with your group and all the drinks you like for 2 hours. It was a great night, and Weezer was sung.
Saturday, one of my neighbors invited me to a BBQ down past Fujieda. As it turned out, there was a festival on and they were going to shoot fireworks. So, we ate great pieces of meat and veggies (grilled over a hibachi, of course) while watching fireworks light the sky. And: there were new kinds. One I remember exploded into bright pieces, and these pieces then spiraled around for a while before going out. It wasn’t the usual parabolic fall, no, it was crazy random movement.
The group at the BBQ was a few of the faculty at Yaizu, mainly ships crew, and their families. I listened to the conversation and occasionally picked up the topics of it, but never what was actually said. They were very friendly, tho, and I was grateful for the invite.
On Monday, I did two things I wouldn’t usually do:
(1) I bought a keitai (mobile phone). I choose Vodaphone (because it’s internationally more connected than the others), and the model was their camera-focused one. Sure, I could’ve gotten one that had a TV tuner on it, or one with a karaoke jukebox, but I wasn’t really going to use those types. So it was the camera phone. Plus, it has a touch pad part for choosing the menes (sorta like an iPod). The camera captures 2MP (which is almost as good as my Canon), and has a bright and clear half-million color LCD. I surfed the web on it yestderday, and found games on it that put GameBoy Advance to shame. There’s a full-on RPG on the thing! This is nearly too much. The best bit: the price. ￥800 (so about US$7).
(2) I ate at a McDonalds. For shame, for shame, but Hayashi-sensei described their teriyaki burger, so I had to give it a go. It was fine, and no harm done. But my five year record will take some time to break….
Last night, Hayashi-sensei and I ate a Okonomiyaki restaurant. Think pancakes meet pizza. You mix flour, egg, and other things (mine included cabbage, tuna, and cheese; Hayashi-sensei’s was beef) and grill it right in front of you on the in-table hot plate. When they’re finished, you put green nori, bonito fish flakes, and mayo on top, cut it up, and eat! Very tasty, very economical, and very easy.
Today, I leave on my first business trip. I take two trains to go to a remote training center (where I’ll stay for 3 days) for my final training as a new ALT. After this, it’s all on.
Finally, some more observations… Japan is the land of the mini. Everything is normal looking, but about 20% smaller. Food, cars, houses, roads, everything. It has a nice space-saving economy feel to it.
Japan is also the land of plastic wrap. I bought some toaster pizza, and each piece of toast was indidually wrapped inside the main wrapper. Every single thing is like this. 2 layers of plastic for household items and food.
Uh, at 7:30am each weekday morning, a song plays over some hidden PA system, probably remnants of the air raid sirens. This song, as far as I can tell, calls people to work (much like a church bell on Sunday mornings) where they start the company calisthenics. Stuff like stretches and jumping jacks. Everyone is outside doing this.
Corn is popular pizza topping.