Another week has past..
I know I said I was almost ready and thought I'd be kinda on time with this one but seems I'm a whole week late.. I'm sorry about that but the wait is over and this is my third week in Japan.
Monday (Korean):
And so our second week of school starts, we had a new student joining us. He was from Vietnam making me the only one without a country friend.. But I'm fine because we had lunch with イム-san last Friday and キム-san today. Since we’d decided to have Korean for dinner (it was inevitable, though I tried to put it off for as long as possible..), we invited him to recommend a good place or come with us. He joined us and so did カシア-san, I'm sorry I have no clue of the name of what I had for lunch but it was a huge bowl of ice cold dark grey noodles.
As I got home me and Mariko-san tried to register me for the SIM card I'd bought earlier (last week), but no luck here. After three long calls to the support centre (which really had no clue about anything as it seemed) and countless tries of getting the system to accept my name (in different forms) on several devices (computers as well as phones), we gave up. And ordered a name stamp instead (the Japanese way of signing documents).
Tuesday (Return the SIM card):
It was time to return the SIM card and to try getting my money back. But first Curry Rice!!
It took about 2 hours to return the SIM card and to get the money back since they themselves wanted to call the support centre and double check I wasn’t lying when I said the application needed a name in either Kanji or Katakana, the English alphabet were no good (though this is what the support centre told us to do all we got when we wrote with the English alphabet was that it couldn’t recognise the characters). But if I put my name in katakana then it wouldn’t go through because the name on the credit card didn’t match (that one had to be exactly as it is on the card which is absolutely impossible in this country as I have letters which aren't included in the English alphabet).
But after standing in the store just waiting for two hours I then had no longer felt like going anywhere (my plan was to go to the SoftBank store in Harajuku to talk to the English speaking staff about a new phone..). We all just decided to go back home.
As Bitter Blood started today! It’s actually more fun than I thought it would be. I guess that’s another one to the list..
Wednesday (Ice skating):
あや-chan, まり-chan and I had originally planned to do this last weekend, but due to some unforeseen changes in our schedules we re-planned it for today. Which meant I left school and headed for Takadonobaba Station (Waseda Exit). As I was unsure of the station (and frankly the exit) I tried to connect to the internet, found out I don’t have to turn my roaming off because I can’t use the internet anyway. A few minutes late the girls came running basically screaming “ごめんなさい!!!ほんとにごめんなさい”
After a tonkatsu lunch at one of まり-chan’s favourite places we got to the ice rink. It was cold of course but warmer than I thought it would be, and I guess the reason why I didn’t start freezing until we got back after the break. I had great fun though! It’s been years since I was on ice last and it didn’t help the borrowed skates were too big (I tried three pairs on and they were either too big on the whit or to small on the length or both). Had to work real hard with my feet, not optimal, really wish I had my own skates =(
As あや-chan absolutely loves the Green tea flavour (maccha) to sweets (and everything else) we went for desert at a place where they served that. As we started learning how to say “going to” in school today too we started studying during dinner (continued tomorrow).
Thursday (finding a JA accomplice):
One of the Russian students from another class (seriously they love to get into our class room during the breaks which makes it sound like a Japanese fish market in Russian almost every break we get) came asking me how I found the store where ヴィカ-san bought her Gapachin costume (ドン・キホーテ) and since I wasn’t able to convey how to explain the way for her (both our Japanese are limited and her English was almost as limited as her Japanese) I decided I’d take her after lunch.
For lunch we ended up a huge gang of Russian speaking people and then me and セツ-san, for the Curry House we went to the other day. Now I absolutely love Curry Rice but seriously?! I’ve been eating curry for three of my lunches these one and a half weeks. I’d like to try as many places as possible and reject going back to the same places for as much as possible but sometimes it’s unavoidable, and like I said I love Curry Rice (this time with Cream Croquettes).
And off to Shinjuku I and the Russian student went, when we found a joint interest in Johnny’s. Her favourites: Arashi and NEWS (with bias of Sakurai Sho & Aiba Masaki and Koyama Keiichiro & Kato Shigeaki). Let’s just say we had a lot to talk about on our way to the store and miraculously I managed to find it super easily!! Think I’m getting a bit of a hang of Shinjuku now. Time to explore the rest of Tokyo??
Back home あや-chan and I were practicing todays lesson: ”we’re not going on a trip to Kamakura on the 26th.” As well as everything else we come up with. Actually this isn’t an unusual thing when ever あや-chan isn’t working late we sit down and name different things in Japanese for me and English for her. Whenever I learn something in Japanese she wants the equivalent in English, and even though I may be fluent in English I’m not perfect.
As the second episode of Border started あや-chan left me and Mariko-san to watch.
Friday (Rain):
My original thought was to go to Ueno park today but as it rained when I went to school and I felt exhausted the park will have to wait.
We learned the last lesson every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from now on is going to be Kanji practise. I see my workload is going to increase beginning next week. But it’s fun it means we’re going forward.
Before I went home we stopped by the 100円 shop in Okubo to buy some plastic mats for our picnic this weekend. Back in Asagaya I also went in to the Supermarket to buy a メォンパン (Melon bread) for lunch and a birthday card to one of my childhood friends (actually my oldest as I’ve known him all of his life and he’s like a brother to me I’m just sorry it’ll arrive about 2 weeks late).
Mariko-san and I were having dinner and after which we started looking at ways of getting in to TV studios as audience not as easy as it may seem. We had some lucky and some not so lucky findings, so signed up for the ones we could find and were allowed to sign up for.
When あや-chan and まり-chan came back home we ended up talking until しげ-san came home (which happened to be after Shinigami-kun had started but I guess I just realised that now).
Saturday (Emperial Palace):
We got to Tokyo Station Marounochi Central Gate at around 12:55 signed in to the rather large group of people (I’m guessing we were around 20 people). And almost instantly after that they started introducing themselves, one head guide and a few newbies were going to show us around today.
We walked around for about 2,5 hours before they let us go at a different gate.
This made it confusing for あや-chan since she thought we were in the same place we started and just walked on. We did manage to find our way back to Tokyo Station eventually but we
were in a bit of a hurry and the Maccha place we’d been looking at had a huge line waiting. Instead we decided to try one of the restaurants in the “Kitchen Street” and voilà! We found a store which were offering Curry Udon.
As we all got back home we decided to watch today’s episode about Tokyo’s strong points since it was featuring Asagaya.
I also found out my name seal had arrived..
Sunday (Picnic):
Feels like I got up real early just to on a picnic.. Not really the case but I had to run after hanging my washing to make it (I didn’t make it in time).
ヴィカ-san had planned (kinda, not really more than the fact that she wanted to do) a picnic and invited me, セツ-san and her boyfriend (as well as キム-san and イム-san but they were busy). We had fun playing games in a park ヴィカ-san had been to before.
As it got rather cold we decided to move on, and ended up in a sports park where a young baseball team were practising, so we stayed here for a while. Met this wonderful 3 year old girl named まゆ-chan who was there with her grandfather.
As me and ヴィカ-san were walking home we successfully managed to ask for directions to the station in Japanese to a very nice traffic police officer just standing around.
Once again I believe this past week will be posted soon (but I can't promise it).
I also want to take the time to congratulate a few friends (amnosno0fan, kanazawa_ren, Sara and flyfaraway28) on their birthday (these past two weeks). HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRLS!!!
Okay this long post is now over..
Monday (Korean):
And so our second week of school starts, we had a new student joining us. He was from Vietnam making me the only one without a country friend.. But I'm fine because we had lunch with イム-san last Friday and キム-san today. Since we’d decided to have Korean for dinner (it was inevitable, though I tried to put it off for as long as possible..), we invited him to recommend a good place or come with us. He joined us and so did カシア-san, I'm sorry I have no clue of the name of what I had for lunch but it was a huge bowl of ice cold dark grey noodles.
As I got home me and Mariko-san tried to register me for the SIM card I'd bought earlier (last week), but no luck here. After three long calls to the support centre (which really had no clue about anything as it seemed) and countless tries of getting the system to accept my name (in different forms) on several devices (computers as well as phones), we gave up. And ordered a name stamp instead (the Japanese way of signing documents).
Tuesday (Return the SIM card):
It was time to return the SIM card and to try getting my money back. But first Curry Rice!!
It took about 2 hours to return the SIM card and to get the money back since they themselves wanted to call the support centre and double check I wasn’t lying when I said the application needed a name in either Kanji or Katakana, the English alphabet were no good (though this is what the support centre told us to do all we got when we wrote with the English alphabet was that it couldn’t recognise the characters). But if I put my name in katakana then it wouldn’t go through because the name on the credit card didn’t match (that one had to be exactly as it is on the card which is absolutely impossible in this country as I have letters which aren't included in the English alphabet).
But after standing in the store just waiting for two hours I then had no longer felt like going anywhere (my plan was to go to the SoftBank store in Harajuku to talk to the English speaking staff about a new phone..). We all just decided to go back home.
As Bitter Blood started today! It’s actually more fun than I thought it would be. I guess that’s another one to the list..
Wednesday (Ice skating):
あや-chan, まり-chan and I had originally planned to do this last weekend, but due to some unforeseen changes in our schedules we re-planned it for today. Which meant I left school and headed for Takadonobaba Station (Waseda Exit). As I was unsure of the station (and frankly the exit) I tried to connect to the internet, found out I don’t have to turn my roaming off because I can’t use the internet anyway. A few minutes late the girls came running basically screaming “ごめんなさい!!!ほんとにごめんなさい”
After a tonkatsu lunch at one of まり-chan’s favourite places we got to the ice rink. It was cold of course but warmer than I thought it would be, and I guess the reason why I didn’t start freezing until we got back after the break. I had great fun though! It’s been years since I was on ice last and it didn’t help the borrowed skates were too big (I tried three pairs on and they were either too big on the whit or to small on the length or both). Had to work real hard with my feet, not optimal, really wish I had my own skates =(
As あや-chan absolutely loves the Green tea flavour (maccha) to sweets (and everything else) we went for desert at a place where they served that. As we started learning how to say “going to” in school today too we started studying during dinner (continued tomorrow).
Thursday (finding a JA accomplice):
One of the Russian students from another class (seriously they love to get into our class room during the breaks which makes it sound like a Japanese fish market in Russian almost every break we get) came asking me how I found the store where ヴィカ-san bought her Gapachin costume (ドン・キホーテ) and since I wasn’t able to convey how to explain the way for her (both our Japanese are limited and her English was almost as limited as her Japanese) I decided I’d take her after lunch.
For lunch we ended up a huge gang of Russian speaking people and then me and セツ-san, for the Curry House we went to the other day. Now I absolutely love Curry Rice but seriously?! I’ve been eating curry for three of my lunches these one and a half weeks. I’d like to try as many places as possible and reject going back to the same places for as much as possible but sometimes it’s unavoidable, and like I said I love Curry Rice (this time with Cream Croquettes).
And off to Shinjuku I and the Russian student went, when we found a joint interest in Johnny’s. Her favourites: Arashi and NEWS (with bias of Sakurai Sho & Aiba Masaki and Koyama Keiichiro & Kato Shigeaki). Let’s just say we had a lot to talk about on our way to the store and miraculously I managed to find it super easily!! Think I’m getting a bit of a hang of Shinjuku now. Time to explore the rest of Tokyo??
Back home あや-chan and I were practicing todays lesson: ”we’re not going on a trip to Kamakura on the 26th.” As well as everything else we come up with. Actually this isn’t an unusual thing when ever あや-chan isn’t working late we sit down and name different things in Japanese for me and English for her. Whenever I learn something in Japanese she wants the equivalent in English, and even though I may be fluent in English I’m not perfect.
As the second episode of Border started あや-chan left me and Mariko-san to watch.
Friday (Rain):
My original thought was to go to Ueno park today but as it rained when I went to school and I felt exhausted the park will have to wait.
We learned the last lesson every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from now on is going to be Kanji practise. I see my workload is going to increase beginning next week. But it’s fun it means we’re going forward.
Before I went home we stopped by the 100円 shop in Okubo to buy some plastic mats for our picnic this weekend. Back in Asagaya I also went in to the Supermarket to buy a メォンパン (Melon bread) for lunch and a birthday card to one of my childhood friends (actually my oldest as I’ve known him all of his life and he’s like a brother to me I’m just sorry it’ll arrive about 2 weeks late).
Mariko-san and I were having dinner and after which we started looking at ways of getting in to TV studios as audience not as easy as it may seem. We had some lucky and some not so lucky findings, so signed up for the ones we could find and were allowed to sign up for.
When あや-chan and まり-chan came back home we ended up talking until しげ-san came home (which happened to be after Shinigami-kun had started but I guess I just realised that now).
Saturday (Emperial Palace):
We got to Tokyo Station Marounochi Central Gate at around 12:55 signed in to the rather large group of people (I’m guessing we were around 20 people). And almost instantly after that they started introducing themselves, one head guide and a few newbies were going to show us around today.
We walked around for about 2,5 hours before they let us go at a different gate.
This made it confusing for あや-chan since she thought we were in the same place we started and just walked on. We did manage to find our way back to Tokyo Station eventually but we
were in a bit of a hurry and the Maccha place we’d been looking at had a huge line waiting. Instead we decided to try one of the restaurants in the “Kitchen Street” and voilà! We found a store which were offering Curry Udon.
As we all got back home we decided to watch today’s episode about Tokyo’s strong points since it was featuring Asagaya.
I also found out my name seal had arrived..
Sunday (Picnic):
Feels like I got up real early just to on a picnic.. Not really the case but I had to run after hanging my washing to make it (I didn’t make it in time).
ヴィカ-san had planned (kinda, not really more than the fact that she wanted to do) a picnic and invited me, セツ-san and her boyfriend (as well as キム-san and イム-san but they were busy). We had fun playing games in a park ヴィカ-san had been to before.
As it got rather cold we decided to move on, and ended up in a sports park where a young baseball team were practising, so we stayed here for a while. Met this wonderful 3 year old girl named まゆ-chan who was there with her grandfather.
As me and ヴィカ-san were walking home we successfully managed to ask for directions to the station in Japanese to a very nice traffic police officer just standing around.
Once again I believe this past week will be posted soon (but I can't promise it).
I also want to take the time to congratulate a few friends (amnosno0fan, kanazawa_ren, Sara and flyfaraway28) on their birthday (these past two weeks). HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRLS!!!
Okay this long post is now over..