Entries this day: A_State_of_My_Life_Address Images New_apartment abc_delivery frank_and_matty

A State of My Life Address

3:27am JST Sunday 30 March 2003

State of My Life Address

1. I'm in Japan!

2. I've come to Japan to learn Japanese, the first language in my goal to become conversant in three languages (not English) by 2010. To support myself during this process, I'll be working for Nova, the most prolific ESL company in Japan.

3. Interestingly, I wonder if I've already lost sight of my original reason to come to Japan, or maybe if that reason is just chillin' on a back burner (haha chillin' on a burner) in my subconscious.

   That reason was to get a job for a company called US Experiment (http://www.usexperience.org I think) which requires its leaders to have in-country experience in various countries before they can lead youth group tours there.

4. I have become aware of an Eminem concert here in Japan! According to Cookie, the venue is a good hike from here, but I'm definitely going to talk to a cat named Ben (at Cookie's suggestion) who has been to some concerts there. Ticket price is 8400 yen for advanced tickets. Shows are scheduled for 23 and 24 May (Friday and Saturday). Nice.

5. I've been living in a hotel for the past three nights. My apartment (which I'll be sub-leasing from Nova) is not ready yet (read: the guy I'm replacing has not moved out yet), but I'll be moving in today. Adrienne G will be picking me up from the hotel to escort me there. That's cool though I've actually already made my way there once. But the cool part is that I'll be able to ask her why my train tickets don't work the way I thought they would.

6. My hotel room features a teapot and green tea, toilet with bidet and butt sprayer, a short bathtub that appears deep cause it's so short, light switches at the head of the bed to control most of the lights in the room, a flashlight in case of emergencies (earthquakes), and two sets of pajamas clean and folded on my bed each afternoon.

7. I lost the key to my hotel room yesterday. Paid 2100 yen to the front desk for a new one. But I retraced my adventure from yesterday and found my key in the third to last place I had visited. Got my 2100 yen back. (That's a 1/4 price of an Eminem ticket!)

8. I've met Andrew (Dru Daddy G), Janelle & Kevin, Cookie (5 years with Nova), Fiona (some years with Nova), the guy in my apartment who I'll be replacing (didn't get his name), and some other new Nova recruits whose names I've forgotten.

9. Lots of people smoke here. I just try not to breathe it.

10. I'm awake early this morning because I went to sleep early (8pm?) last night. I don't think it's because of jet lag (8pm JST = 5am CST), but because of culture-shock. I'm comfortable in my hotel room where everyone speaks English. So after a day (12 hours) of navigating ... you know; I don't really know where I am on a large map of Tokyo/Yokohama ... this city, I'm ready to hibernate again.

11. (Okay, I looked on a map. I'm basically on the western edge of the subway loop around Tokyo, near the Shinjuku station.)

12. I do not yet have bicycle or skates here. I don't know if I'll ask Janette for them, but a lot of people ride bikes. There's definitely more pedestrian traffic, but many bikes. My particular bike seems like it would stand out as higher quality than the average bike here. The only skates I've seen were at a skate park.

13. The only Japanese words I can use are "sumimasen" (I'm sorry / excuse me) and "arigato" (thank you) and "hai" (yes). Thank goodness I can just point at display food in a restaurant, and public restrooms are clearly marked.

14. I've purchased stationery to write to people, but I've not gotten my computer connected, so these 20 entries I've written are still unpublished.

Images

5:22am JST Sunday 30 March 2003

This morning I've tweaked the home and wtf images to make them more closely resemble the others (raised home so it will appear on the same level, changed font of wtf) and I created a japan image, by cutting and pasting existing letters ktru bumper sticker style. Hey I wonder if I have a w, t, and f from other images that dude made me back in the day. Yes I do. I may use those letters, but probably not now. I'm going to take a nap again. So I can maybe more easily stay up "late" to a normal time tonight in my new apartment.

New apartment

1:55pm JST Sunday 30 March 2003

I'm in my new apartment. Adrienne is from London, though she considers Japan her home now. Her husband's mother can make 300,000 yen (per sitting? per day?) at the pachinko parlor. Wow.

Adrienne showed me the difference between an express train and limited express and the local train. Limited express is even more express than express (limited means it stops at a limited number of stops compared to the express)

Got to my apartment and neither Matty nor Frank are here. They'll be in around 8 and 9 respectively. Adrienne helped me set up my futon including a pillow with beans sewn onto one side of it. Quite soft and lovely. Plenty big enough to sleep on, I think, though I haven't actually lay on it yet.

She said the place is bigger than she expected. It's plenty big enough for me. It's about the size of my apartment on West Gray in which I lived for 11 years. The living room and refrigerator here are a bit smaller than there, but it will be just fine.

abc delivery

7:11pm JST Sunday 30 March 2003

I hope I haven't fucked up too badly. Adrienne suggested that if ABC doesn't deliver my luggage by 6:45 that I for sure call Nova and they would track it down. They all leave Nova at 7pm. But I fell asleep until just now and I don't know where to find a phone except a 5 minute walk away. But what if I leave and ABC arrives, etc.

My tickets say that ABC will deliver between 6pm and 9pm, so it's likely that it will still arrive. Also, I can hopefully wear a suit and tie of Matt or Frank's.

I trust all will be A-OK with ABC.

One good point is that I don't see a note on the door from an attempted delivery by ABC.

7:28pm

Oh man I feel so tired! I don't know what is up with that. Is my consciousness just shutting down as a defense against overwhelming emotions? Is it jetlag? is it from my brain being in hyper overload mode for days?

8:05pm

Guess who feels more awake?

Guess whose luggage just got delivered?

Whoohooo!!

I actually heard the wheels of the suitcase being rolled along the brick sidewalk and thought that must be it. But I lowered my expectations in case it wasn't. But then the doorbell rang. :-)

8:09pm

Guess what's black and white and wrinkled all over?

My suit and shirts! Actually the suit is pretty okay, but I gotta iron these shirts again. As in, I'll iron them for the first time after Janette ironed them back at home and then said, "these will probably need to be ironed again, but that's okay cause it's fun!"

Ha ha. Good joke there, Janette.

Well, it's ten times more fun than not having clothes to iron.

Just gotta find the ironing board and iron.

frank and matty

2:05am JST Monday 31 March 2003

Wow.

I cannot fucking believe it's 2am.

I'm at a loss to capture all the hilarity of hanging out with Frank and then hanging out with both Matty and Frank. Frank is hilarious. He's from Jersey, has spent years in the army, fuckin' loves his country, says the USA is the Capital of The World, grills the shit out of his students, especially on race issues (e.g.: "If you go to the US, you better not go to the south cause they will kill you."
" ... why? ..."
"Because you're fuckin' asian, man, they hate asians and they'll kill you!"
"... but that is not fair ..."
"you're damn right it's not fair, so why do you hate the Chinese and Koreans?")

Brutal. I wonder if he likes the Jim Roam Rome whatever show.

There's more. I shoulda had a fuckin' tape recorder. I can tell that I won't likely be watching my language here.

Matty is a Brit, pale and tall and has to duck signficantly to go through any doorway in the apartment. He gives me three weeks before I start liking asian girls. (I'm like "no way.") He likes Christina Ricci over Ally McBeal, and harasses Frank for Frank's patriotism. "They's been nothing goo to come outa new yok except the Beastie Boys."

Matty also likes Eminem; we're going to go to the show presuming I can get the night off.

Oh, but you know what? They both laugh when I said I assumed I'd be working at the Nova location closest to my apartment. Frank does work there, but he's an anomaly in that regard. Matty has to commute like 45 minutes to work each day. Frank wakes up 40 minutes after Matty has left so they can both be at work at the same time.