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Well, I am in Japan
I think it is finally all setting in for real.
I am in a net cafe, probably the nearest net cafe to my apartment, which is to say it is a 20 minute walk. No, I am not kidding. Remember I thought I live in Kawaguchi? I actually live in WARABI. Yikes. I also won't have network at home OR a cellphone for like 2-3 weeks at this point, so I guess I'll end up here quite a bit... at least the net cafe is open 24 hours! The staff seem nice and they not only complimented my Japanese ability but they helped me get a point/time card even though I don't have a phone yet.
It is 11pm here, which means I might actually beat jet lag just by staying up late. I guess I have been up for about 24 hours straight at this point.
So, I guess I last updated at the airport. After writing that entry, I ran into C&J and went over to the gate to say hi; after realizing that the guys were just being guys and reading books and listening to music, I went off and found an A&W and stuff like that for a while. UNFORTUNATELY when I tried to boot my laptop again, it wouldn't turn on at ALL and I am a little worried about it -- and I don't have a three-prong outlet in my apartment, no joke, so I don't even know when I will have a chance to do anything with it. Argh. Maybe I can get Carl to send me an adapter with my other boxes, if I don't find one here...
We get onto the plane and I was actually sitting in the same aisle with W&D, and C was two rows ahead of me; only J was in another aisle and several rows back. That was.. interesting. W&D just drank a lot of alcohol and talked really loudly the whole time, not even watching movies. Me, I watched THREE movies! I saw a movie called Maiko Haaaaaaan! which was absolutely hilarious and awesome, starring the always-funny-but-crazy Abe Sadayo, and Shibasaki Kou and Tsutsumi Shinichi, and a whole awesome cast including a weird semi-cameo by Yamada Takayuki. It was all about a guy who basically becomes obsessed with geisha and maiko, and dumps his girlfriend to move to Kyoto... and as revenge, she becomes an AWESOME geisha and then makes him feel like a real asshat for being a real asshat.
Then I watched a movie all about yakiniku, called Bulgogi or something like that, starring Matsuda Shota's brother Ryuhei, and a variety of other interesting people. It was a slow moving movie and ended in a cooking battle, essentially. Not bad but just not really exciting. The third movie I watched was "Lucky You", the Drew Barrymore movie from a few months ago, well, really it is a poker movie that happens to have Drew Barrymore in it, which makes it into a romance film. It was sort of stupid and I don't mind having seen it as an airplane movie.
Okay, so after watching movies I walked around the plane a while, and eventually we landed in Narita, ran through immigration, ran through customs... seriously, it was all very fast. We were met by a GEOS representative, she's a Kanto-area roving substitute teacher. She didn't know J would be with us since he was heading to Hokkaido and all, heh. We gave our bags to the couriers to deliver (I actually WROTE MY ADDRESS ON THE COURIER SLIP! IN KANJI!), and then we put W on a bus to central Tokyo, and then the rest of us headed off to Skyliner to Nippori, where we met up with the Head Teacher for this area (she is really nice) and another substitute teacher.
Head Teacher took D off towards his location, and then the other four of us got on the Keihin-Tohoku line up towards Saitama. C's school is closed today for a festival in the area, so the substitute teacher who picked him up was just going to take him to the festival, heh. My substitute teacher is a really nice and very pretty Taiwanese-Canadian girl, R. She took me to Akabane, to the GEOS school where I will be teaching.
It's pretty interesting -- literally right across the street from Akabane station, in the basement. My room is actually the door across from the main door to the school. It had a "welcome to Japan" sign on it with notes for me in English from all of my students, AND my poster was up on the wall, and a lot of comments were like "Deanna - we are happy to see you - we like Ichiro too and baseball! Please teach us English!" I met the Japanese teacher at the school, E, who seems very sweet, and the other native English teacher, D, who is a tall African-American guy, and also nice. There were no students around at 5-6ish when we showed up.
R showed me my classroom, and amazingly, the teacher I am replacing, B, who has already left Japan, left me an AMAZING amount of stuff -- lesson plans, flash cards, detailed notes about EVERY student and each class. R was like "She must be the nicest person on the planet. NOBODY does this kind of effort for their successor, I swear." R hadn't ever met B before, but said "I hear that she's really sweet, amazingly nice, and reputedly really beautiful as well. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about her," and I am like "You know, there is NO way I can live up to that..."
So, the school manager called while I was there, and she was at my apartment waiting for the utilities people to show up, so R and I decided to go out there. She warned me it was a long walk but BOY was it a LONG walk when in 90 degree heat with 200% humidity AND carrying a ton of stuff. It took forever and hurt my back a lot.
My apartment belonged to Miss B before me, and she left me a TV/VCR combo, a microwave, and a "sofa", basically a floor cushion with a back to it. It is a TINY apartment of course, and I do have a loft, but it was so hot that I didn't actually get up there. I appear to have a new futon that I need to open up sometime, though I think I might sleep on the floor tonight in all honesty. I have a washing machine on my balcony which also doubles as a dryer, supposedly. Yes, I have to do laundry outside, which is a little weird. OH, and I am on the second floor of a house/apartment building, AND there is no elevator AND the stairs are really steep. I need to post pictures someday, once I have some form of internet I can actually post from.
I sat at the apartment talking to the manager for a while, we are going to get together Monday so I can go get a gaijin registration card and all that stuff. We went to the 24-hour supermarket a half block from me after that and got toilet paper and tissues, but couldn't find slippers. Manager-san actually speaks GREAT english, thank god, and she also was impressed with my Japanese (not as impressive as R though, who is studying for the 1-kyuu, no joke). After they all left I realized that I actually don't have a shower curtain, AND my towels are all in my big bags which will be delivered tomorrow at 12-2... and... oops. After just lying on the floor for a bit calming down, I decided to try to go get stuff. The 99 yen store didn't have anything useful though so I wanted to go to Daiso, but the only one I know is in Harajuku.
I took the train by accident all the way to Tabata before heading on the Yamanote, which lost me like 20 minutes, and sadly, I got to Daiso at 9:30 and it closed at 9. Argh. So I spent 290 yen getting to Harajuku for nothing -- I ended up eating dinner at McDonald's there because I was starving but that was about it. Then I went home. 580 yen and two hours for NOTHING, really. I should go try to figure out if there is a Daiso closer to here, obviously.
OH, there is like one or two gamecenters near the station here, and the one I went into has mostly fighting games, but they do have a Pop'n, which was in use when I stepped in.
Yeah, so walking to the station I noted:
8 mins: you hit the first useful restaurants and a few shops
10 mins: hit the first 7-11
15 mins: get to the Yellow Pole, which is this thing in the middle of the road that denotes "walk this way to get home, Deanna". The net cafe is across the street from it.
20 mins: station
I think I need a bike. No joke.
Anyway, I guess that is about it. I am going to check some more mail stuff and then head home. I should be getting to see Jesse D tomorrow for about 2 hours, and going to the Fighters game in the evening, I hope. Wheee. I am really in Japan. Pretty scary, eh?
Also, I will still be scanning friends lists for the upcoming future but not really READING so if you need me to know something please tell me directly. Thanks.
I am in a net cafe, probably the nearest net cafe to my apartment, which is to say it is a 20 minute walk. No, I am not kidding. Remember I thought I live in Kawaguchi? I actually live in WARABI. Yikes. I also won't have network at home OR a cellphone for like 2-3 weeks at this point, so I guess I'll end up here quite a bit... at least the net cafe is open 24 hours! The staff seem nice and they not only complimented my Japanese ability but they helped me get a point/time card even though I don't have a phone yet.
It is 11pm here, which means I might actually beat jet lag just by staying up late. I guess I have been up for about 24 hours straight at this point.
So, I guess I last updated at the airport. After writing that entry, I ran into C&J and went over to the gate to say hi; after realizing that the guys were just being guys and reading books and listening to music, I went off and found an A&W and stuff like that for a while. UNFORTUNATELY when I tried to boot my laptop again, it wouldn't turn on at ALL and I am a little worried about it -- and I don't have a three-prong outlet in my apartment, no joke, so I don't even know when I will have a chance to do anything with it. Argh. Maybe I can get Carl to send me an adapter with my other boxes, if I don't find one here...
We get onto the plane and I was actually sitting in the same aisle with W&D, and C was two rows ahead of me; only J was in another aisle and several rows back. That was.. interesting. W&D just drank a lot of alcohol and talked really loudly the whole time, not even watching movies. Me, I watched THREE movies! I saw a movie called Maiko Haaaaaaan! which was absolutely hilarious and awesome, starring the always-funny-but-crazy Abe Sadayo, and Shibasaki Kou and Tsutsumi Shinichi, and a whole awesome cast including a weird semi-cameo by Yamada Takayuki. It was all about a guy who basically becomes obsessed with geisha and maiko, and dumps his girlfriend to move to Kyoto... and as revenge, she becomes an AWESOME geisha and then makes him feel like a real asshat for being a real asshat.
Then I watched a movie all about yakiniku, called Bulgogi or something like that, starring Matsuda Shota's brother Ryuhei, and a variety of other interesting people. It was a slow moving movie and ended in a cooking battle, essentially. Not bad but just not really exciting. The third movie I watched was "Lucky You", the Drew Barrymore movie from a few months ago, well, really it is a poker movie that happens to have Drew Barrymore in it, which makes it into a romance film. It was sort of stupid and I don't mind having seen it as an airplane movie.
Okay, so after watching movies I walked around the plane a while, and eventually we landed in Narita, ran through immigration, ran through customs... seriously, it was all very fast. We were met by a GEOS representative, she's a Kanto-area roving substitute teacher. She didn't know J would be with us since he was heading to Hokkaido and all, heh. We gave our bags to the couriers to deliver (I actually WROTE MY ADDRESS ON THE COURIER SLIP! IN KANJI!), and then we put W on a bus to central Tokyo, and then the rest of us headed off to Skyliner to Nippori, where we met up with the Head Teacher for this area (she is really nice) and another substitute teacher.
Head Teacher took D off towards his location, and then the other four of us got on the Keihin-Tohoku line up towards Saitama. C's school is closed today for a festival in the area, so the substitute teacher who picked him up was just going to take him to the festival, heh. My substitute teacher is a really nice and very pretty Taiwanese-Canadian girl, R. She took me to Akabane, to the GEOS school where I will be teaching.
It's pretty interesting -- literally right across the street from Akabane station, in the basement. My room is actually the door across from the main door to the school. It had a "welcome to Japan" sign on it with notes for me in English from all of my students, AND my poster was up on the wall, and a lot of comments were like "Deanna - we are happy to see you - we like Ichiro too and baseball! Please teach us English!" I met the Japanese teacher at the school, E, who seems very sweet, and the other native English teacher, D, who is a tall African-American guy, and also nice. There were no students around at 5-6ish when we showed up.
R showed me my classroom, and amazingly, the teacher I am replacing, B, who has already left Japan, left me an AMAZING amount of stuff -- lesson plans, flash cards, detailed notes about EVERY student and each class. R was like "She must be the nicest person on the planet. NOBODY does this kind of effort for their successor, I swear." R hadn't ever met B before, but said "I hear that she's really sweet, amazingly nice, and reputedly really beautiful as well. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about her," and I am like "You know, there is NO way I can live up to that..."
So, the school manager called while I was there, and she was at my apartment waiting for the utilities people to show up, so R and I decided to go out there. She warned me it was a long walk but BOY was it a LONG walk when in 90 degree heat with 200% humidity AND carrying a ton of stuff. It took forever and hurt my back a lot.
My apartment belonged to Miss B before me, and she left me a TV/VCR combo, a microwave, and a "sofa", basically a floor cushion with a back to it. It is a TINY apartment of course, and I do have a loft, but it was so hot that I didn't actually get up there. I appear to have a new futon that I need to open up sometime, though I think I might sleep on the floor tonight in all honesty. I have a washing machine on my balcony which also doubles as a dryer, supposedly. Yes, I have to do laundry outside, which is a little weird. OH, and I am on the second floor of a house/apartment building, AND there is no elevator AND the stairs are really steep. I need to post pictures someday, once I have some form of internet I can actually post from.
I sat at the apartment talking to the manager for a while, we are going to get together Monday so I can go get a gaijin registration card and all that stuff. We went to the 24-hour supermarket a half block from me after that and got toilet paper and tissues, but couldn't find slippers. Manager-san actually speaks GREAT english, thank god, and she also was impressed with my Japanese (not as impressive as R though, who is studying for the 1-kyuu, no joke). After they all left I realized that I actually don't have a shower curtain, AND my towels are all in my big bags which will be delivered tomorrow at 12-2... and... oops. After just lying on the floor for a bit calming down, I decided to try to go get stuff. The 99 yen store didn't have anything useful though so I wanted to go to Daiso, but the only one I know is in Harajuku.
I took the train by accident all the way to Tabata before heading on the Yamanote, which lost me like 20 minutes, and sadly, I got to Daiso at 9:30 and it closed at 9. Argh. So I spent 290 yen getting to Harajuku for nothing -- I ended up eating dinner at McDonald's there because I was starving but that was about it. Then I went home. 580 yen and two hours for NOTHING, really. I should go try to figure out if there is a Daiso closer to here, obviously.
OH, there is like one or two gamecenters near the station here, and the one I went into has mostly fighting games, but they do have a Pop'n, which was in use when I stepped in.
Yeah, so walking to the station I noted:
8 mins: you hit the first useful restaurants and a few shops
10 mins: hit the first 7-11
15 mins: get to the Yellow Pole, which is this thing in the middle of the road that denotes "walk this way to get home, Deanna". The net cafe is across the street from it.
20 mins: station
I think I need a bike. No joke.
Anyway, I guess that is about it. I am going to check some more mail stuff and then head home. I should be getting to see Jesse D tomorrow for about 2 hours, and going to the Fighters game in the evening, I hope. Wheee. I am really in Japan. Pretty scary, eh?
Also, I will still be scanning friends lists for the upcoming future but not really READING so if you need me to know something please tell me directly. Thanks.
no subject
That's SO cute!! :D