Entries this day: AM Click Legal_Alien apartment crud

AM

5:54am JST Friday 28 March 2003

Okay. I'm awake. Shower time.

Click

8:05am JST Friday 28 March 2003

Ah. Something significant clicked for me in figuring out the subway system. Just poring over the maps, and the arrival pack information about where I'm supposed to go and how I'll get there.

This will be easy.

Just gotta learn some kanji.

D'oh. I still can't figure out how to display kanji in my HTML. Well, specifically I can't find an editor on my computer that will write kanji in a plaintext. Gotta figure out some encoding stuff.

Okay, go go go go forget typing kanji for now.

Legal Alien

11:00am JST Friday 28 March 2003

I'm a legal alien
oh, I'm a legal alien
I'm a legal alien
in Japan

(almost)

I'm at the ward office in my local area to get registered. Made it here from the train station with the handy dandy map Nova gave me.

Total tons of information pouring into my brain. Brain in high overdrive doing huge amounts of pattern matching and memorizing matches. Brains are pretty awesome. I like mine.

Oh, a cool thing was getting my photo taken in a little photo booth by the train station. Luckily there was an image of a passport photo (complete with dimensions describing how big it should be) and I matched the japanese name on the image to an item in a list of names on the screen, apparently describing the types of photos to be taken.

After the picture was taken, I hit not the green button but the do it over button, so I was a bit surprised when it wanted to take my picture again though I hadn't paid again. But I figured out what must have happened and pushed the right button to get the photos.

apartment

1:25pm JST Friday 28 March 2003

I paid 500 yen for lunch (plenty to eat) and walked to my new work, which is on the fifth floor of a five story building, the bottom two stories of which are filled with a pachinko parlor. Big half naked sexy cartoon characters on signs out front lure people in.

After looking around the Nova classroom space (four or five small rooms and only 2 being used) I walked to my apartment for the first time. The guy who I'll be replacing answered the door and I got to see inside a bit. Small. Have to duck my head to get into the main living area. I didn't see my room because Frank was sleeping in there aparently.

I got a letter! The winner of the First Letter To Rob in Japan contest is Colleenie Beanie!!

I ate my lunch by the river under a bridge (over which I'll cross each day as I take the 15 minute walk from my apartment to work)

Now I'm on the train back to my hotel.

I still don't have the train system perfectly figured out. I keep getting buzzed like my tickets are invalid, but I'll keep trying various options until I figure it out. Most recently I decided at the last minute the train I almost boarded was in fact the correct train, but the doors were closing and smushed my hand as I tried to bully them open. "Sorry about your hand, but the train can't be late."

crud

10:06pm JST Friday 28 March 2003

Erg.

I've just taken a big ol' nap in my hotel room after watching some kids (?) on skateboards down in a skate park 15 floors below. I'm conflicted in several departments: feeling a little bit sick in my guts like diarrhea, feeling extremely dry like chapped lips, feeling a bit coughy like tickly in my throat, and feeling a tiny bit head-achey like a headache.

I also want to get out to an internet cafe and post my journal entries.

Pulled myself out of the warm bed, converted birthday suit to pants and thick long sleeve shirt, grabbed my computer, realized I don't have a CAT 5 cable with me. D'oh.

Am I scared of being embarassed at language barrier about how to ask for a CAT 5 cable? Yes. Am I using my sickness as an excuse to not go? Yes. Am I taking better care of myself by blasting through my fear or by sleeping off my headache? Dunno.

Things I've done today: navigated myself through part of Tokyo train system to apply for my alien registration and see my apartment, figured out a photo machine in Japanese, got lost trying to follow directions given to me by the guy at the apartment on where to find a nice place to eat my lunch, got reoriented (no pun intended) and ate lunch on the river, renavigated myself back to train station, used a public squat-over-a-hole toilet, got lost going out the wrong exit of the train station near my apartment, recovered thanks to small map given to me by Nova and augmented by Fiona to show my hotel location, ...

Okay, I'll let myself go back to sleep without further self-bashing.

To do tomorrow:
(!) get chapstick slash lip balm of some variety
(@) search for a way to upload journal entries,
(#) meet Andrew, Cookie, et. al. at 2pm under the big clock in the building where Nova's Tokyo head office is located.