Info dump time!
Ah, Friday at last. For today's entry, I thought I'd actually talk a little about what exactly my daily schedule looks like.
8:00ish - wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across my head, bum around for a bit, drink a cup, looking around, notice that I'm late, etc.
8:45-9:00 - leave for the Center. So far I've walked there every day except the very first day when I was paranoid about being late. It takes about 35 minutes, give or take five minutes to stop in a combini/bakery and buy a snack. I can take the subway to a closer station, which will save me maybe 10 minutes, but will cost 2 bucks which I could use to buy a baked good that may or may not have mayo in it instead.
9:40 - 10:30 - first hour of class. This hour includes: a 5 minute speech made by someone, a vocabulary "test" which actually consists of reading the words off flash cards, and checking last nights homework.
10:40 - 11:30 - 2nd hour of class. Grammar, mostly.
11:40 - 12:30 - 3rd hour of class. Going over the reading, discussion.
12:30 - 1:30 - lunchies! There's a cafeteria with a daily menu type thing that I've been going to. It's kind of neat because it is divided into two halves. One half has a daily ramen, daily donburi (rice bowl), and daily curry, while the other half has more "Japanese idea of Western" food like a daily hamburg set (hamburger patty by itself with a salad), some kind of spaghetti, that sort of thing. It's pretty cheap, but I'll probably usually bring my lunch once I get more settled in.
1:30 - 2:30 - 4th hour of class. Talk about last night's news, other discussion. Sometimes (apparently) instead of this last hour of class we will go and "experience Japan." Next week we will do zazen (meditation) at a famous zen temple on Tuesday (expect to see much whining about having to kneel for a prolonged period of time) and go see kabuki in Tokyo on Friday (expect...not much of anything since I will probably fall asleep five minutes in. I am a patron of the arts!)
2:30 - go back to the weekly mansion. once I get there, attempt to convince myself that I am not too lethargic from the heat to start getting work done. It is SERIOUSLY hot in Yokohama, and, what is worse, extremely humid and there is almost no breeze to speak of to top it all off. The walk to and from the center kind of takes it out of me although less so in the mornings since I have not just had four hours of class. I have found that if I can overcome lethargy enough to take a shower I can get some work done. If I can't even do that (and so far I have managed it...once)...it's a lost cause and instead I will nap/bum around on the internets until...
6ish: by 6 I usually am recovered enough to start getting work done. Homework usually takes me about 4 hours since part of it is thinking up sentences using grammar points and I have a difficult time coming up with sentences from the ether that aren't so outlandish they are beyond my means to express. At some point during this time, I also eat dinner and at 7 I watch the news so I can talk about it the next day.
midnight or thereabouts: go to bed. unless there's a World Cup game! But I think that starting with the next round they are all at 3am (before they've also been at 11) so I have no idea what I'm going to do about that.
As far as food goes, I have a microwave, a hot plate, and a rice cooker, as well as a bunch of other stuff provided to me by the weekly mansion. Getting it was kind of funny, because the lady gives me a list of stuff that I should put checks to if I want, and I ask whether I need to bring it back after I use it. So she's like, no you can keep it for the duration of your stay, at which point she pauses, looks at me and is like "you're going to check everything, aren't you?" to which I am like "hell yeah!" except in a much more sedate politely Japanese manner. So now I has kitchen stuff. I also bought tupperware which I have no clue what I will do with when I leave. I've been making my own dinners this week and I started to make my lunches around halfway through the week, after I bought my hilarious bento box of hilarity.
Today though, we went out as a class for lunch - the center provides the classes with 2000 yen per person for either one shmancy class lunch or two normal ones. We decided we wanted two and today was the first. We went to a nice restaurant on the fourth floor and I had tai (sea breem, apparently) sashimi but I forgot my camera so no pictures. Sorry!
Since today is Beer Friday, a weekly holiday I made up but observe faithfully, I decided to try out some of the craft beers in the store I mentioned earlier this week. They are an Amber and a Porter (which was half off for some reason) from a brewery named Sankt Gallen Brewery. They have a website! It is here. It is also in Japanese, but oh well! The site is actually interesting since I learned from it that microbreweries were actually banned in Japan until 1994. That is pretty much the most tragic story I have ever heard, I am not gonna lie. Anyway, so this brewery started up in 1993 in San Francisco because they couldn't start up in Japan, but when the ban was lifted, they opened up a store in Roppongi which is Somewhere In Tokyo. I'll try to post my impressions later tonight.
8:00ish - wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across my head, bum around for a bit, drink a cup, looking around, notice that I'm late, etc.
8:45-9:00 - leave for the Center. So far I've walked there every day except the very first day when I was paranoid about being late. It takes about 35 minutes, give or take five minutes to stop in a combini/bakery and buy a snack. I can take the subway to a closer station, which will save me maybe 10 minutes, but will cost 2 bucks which I could use to buy a baked good that may or may not have mayo in it instead.
9:40 - 10:30 - first hour of class. This hour includes: a 5 minute speech made by someone, a vocabulary "test" which actually consists of reading the words off flash cards, and checking last nights homework.
10:40 - 11:30 - 2nd hour of class. Grammar, mostly.
11:40 - 12:30 - 3rd hour of class. Going over the reading, discussion.
12:30 - 1:30 - lunchies! There's a cafeteria with a daily menu type thing that I've been going to. It's kind of neat because it is divided into two halves. One half has a daily ramen, daily donburi (rice bowl), and daily curry, while the other half has more "Japanese idea of Western" food like a daily hamburg set (hamburger patty by itself with a salad), some kind of spaghetti, that sort of thing. It's pretty cheap, but I'll probably usually bring my lunch once I get more settled in.
1:30 - 2:30 - 4th hour of class. Talk about last night's news, other discussion. Sometimes (apparently) instead of this last hour of class we will go and "experience Japan." Next week we will do zazen (meditation) at a famous zen temple on Tuesday (expect to see much whining about having to kneel for a prolonged period of time) and go see kabuki in Tokyo on Friday (expect...not much of anything since I will probably fall asleep five minutes in. I am a patron of the arts!)
2:30 - go back to the weekly mansion. once I get there, attempt to convince myself that I am not too lethargic from the heat to start getting work done. It is SERIOUSLY hot in Yokohama, and, what is worse, extremely humid and there is almost no breeze to speak of to top it all off. The walk to and from the center kind of takes it out of me although less so in the mornings since I have not just had four hours of class. I have found that if I can overcome lethargy enough to take a shower I can get some work done. If I can't even do that (and so far I have managed it...once)...it's a lost cause and instead I will nap/bum around on the internets until...
6ish: by 6 I usually am recovered enough to start getting work done. Homework usually takes me about 4 hours since part of it is thinking up sentences using grammar points and I have a difficult time coming up with sentences from the ether that aren't so outlandish they are beyond my means to express. At some point during this time, I also eat dinner and at 7 I watch the news so I can talk about it the next day.
midnight or thereabouts: go to bed. unless there's a World Cup game! But I think that starting with the next round they are all at 3am (before they've also been at 11) so I have no idea what I'm going to do about that.
As far as food goes, I have a microwave, a hot plate, and a rice cooker, as well as a bunch of other stuff provided to me by the weekly mansion. Getting it was kind of funny, because the lady gives me a list of stuff that I should put checks to if I want, and I ask whether I need to bring it back after I use it. So she's like, no you can keep it for the duration of your stay, at which point she pauses, looks at me and is like "you're going to check everything, aren't you?" to which I am like "hell yeah!" except in a much more sedate politely Japanese manner. So now I has kitchen stuff. I also bought tupperware which I have no clue what I will do with when I leave. I've been making my own dinners this week and I started to make my lunches around halfway through the week, after I bought my hilarious bento box of hilarity.
Today though, we went out as a class for lunch - the center provides the classes with 2000 yen per person for either one shmancy class lunch or two normal ones. We decided we wanted two and today was the first. We went to a nice restaurant on the fourth floor and I had tai (sea breem, apparently) sashimi but I forgot my camera so no pictures. Sorry!
Since today is Beer Friday, a weekly holiday I made up but observe faithfully, I decided to try out some of the craft beers in the store I mentioned earlier this week. They are an Amber and a Porter (which was half off for some reason) from a brewery named Sankt Gallen Brewery. They have a website! It is here. It is also in Japanese, but oh well! The site is actually interesting since I learned from it that microbreweries were actually banned in Japan until 1994. That is pretty much the most tragic story I have ever heard, I am not gonna lie. Anyway, so this brewery started up in 1993 in San Francisco because they couldn't start up in Japan, but when the ban was lifted, they opened up a store in Roppongi which is Somewhere In Tokyo. I'll try to post my impressions later tonight.