Thursday the 20th
Thursday night I got lost in my neighborhood, and also my bike broke through no fault of my own. I went outside to practice not falling off of it and found it with the chain around the pedal, so I tried to fix it which really didn’t work at all. Then I took a walk and got lost and then found my way again. It was super windy and cold but it was nice to exercise and stretch.
Friday I was woken up by the doorbell (the first time its been used!) - it was the delivery service with a package for me, but they made me pay an extra $20 to get it. Grr. I don’t understand why, either. Its not like I was going to refuse the package, but still. Now its like I’ve paid $50 for this natural cranberry shit and it just isn’t worth it. It does seem to be working though…Work was long and there wasn’t enough time in the day to do everything I needed to do. I went home in the middle of the day to get more of the cranberry stuff, checked out the local bookstore (which is amazing btw), and went to 7-11 I don’t know how many times. The Manager also took me to the hanko store to get a hanko made - for those that don’t know, hanko are the stamps that you see on Japanese documents in place of a signature. I chose a wooden one (over plastic) and the Japanese staff at work helped me kanji-fy my name (even though I think its wrong for foreigners to use kanji for their names…now I’m a hypocrite). I have to admit it looks way better than katakana, though… It cost 3700 yen (a little under $40). It could have been less if I’d gotten plastic, but the difference was like $10 so I just went for it. So they told us to pick it up the next day.
Saturday was another long day of work, I taught 6 classes and I’m exhausted. I got my hanko and its totally cute. As soon as I get my Gaijin card next week, I can start getting a life - internet and cell phone and bank acct. etc. You need the Alien Registration card to do ANYTHING in Japan, which is a real drag so far, since I haven’t had it.
I made copies of the pages I have to teach Monday and Tuesday and came home because the manager seemed to want to leave (she had her car out front and had changed out of her suit already and was standing there waiting…) so I got out of there fast. When I got home I used some of the thin sliced beef I bought on Thursday to make a stirfry-esque meal that I can’t call Chinese or Japanese…its Jennish…I make up recipes as I go along and use whatever I have on hand and it always turns out fine. J After dinner I played spider solitaire and tried to get back to my former glorious statistics, but really I just wasted a few hours. I found out my travel adaptor is not for use with computers so that was a useless purchase…I’ll probably ebay it. The sockets here seem fine and they fit all the stuff I have; they look just like the ones I’m used to in the US. So despite what the internet says, my American electronics are fine in Japan.
Side note about food: I’ve decided I’m in love with salmon onigiri. They’re 100 yen and delicious. Unbeatable combination!