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last few days
Saturday: went to work, went to baseball game at the Tokyo Dome, the Giants beat the Carp
Sunday: went to a baseball game in Yokohama, the Baystars beat the Swallows
Monday: went to a baseball game at Meiji Jingu, the Dragons beat the Swallows
Tuesday: got a new bike, went to work, rode bike home, whee
Wednesday: confirmed lack of hot water, went to work
Sunday, after the game outside the stadium, there were these loudmouth Americans yelling "Let's go Bay Stars" in the same tone you'd usually hear Red Sox fans yelling it after a game. I was just so stunned by it (and so were some other people) that I went up to them like "Are you guys from Boston or something?" and they reacted to me in a really rude way, so I just continued walking. I'm just sad, I really had hoped to escape most of the obnoxious sorts of baseball fans when I moved here.
I also stopped by the McDonald's by Kannai station's south entrance, mostly just to buy time so I wouldn't be getting on a super-crowded train. Little did I know that the McDonald's was going to be full of historical MLB artifacts. That place was pretty amazing.
I spent the rest of Sunday doing laundry. I accidentally forgot to bring my suit jacket home with me, so it won't get washed this week, I guess... I didn't discover that until I was at the laundromat, of course.
Monday I decided to skip the Rakuten-Lions game and thus spent the afternoon writing baseball entries and chilling out and all, which worked out okay. I guess I left around 3 or 4pm to go to Jingu, and due to actually catching a Rinkai train at Akabane, it took a lot less time to get there than I thought it would, so there I was at Jingu over an hour before the game, in the leftfield cheap seats, by myself, without my big camera, not close enough to take pictures of anything with my little camera... and there's Morino catching fly balls right in front of the leftfield fence, and Kawakami and Masa Yamamoto warming up, and... and I'm just sitting there, mostly listening to these two kids behind me talking about baseball players.
Eventually my section filled up with people, and eventually the game started and the weather got relatively nice (cooler, windy), and eventually the Dragons did exactly what they did at the last game I went to: exploded for 5 runs in the first inning and batted around the entire order. I was holding up my Morino towel and he got a 3-run bases-clearing double to start off the scoring, so that was fun. Hidenori hit a home run a little bit after that. Of course, we were sitting pretty close to the leftfield foul pole and the main cheering people were a lot further out towards centerfield, so a lot of times we'd be trying to cheer and be completely out of sync with the rest of the cheering section; eventually one guy near the front of our area decided to be the self-appointed syncmeister for us all and so he'd be looking over at the other cheering section to get the timing and we'd all be looking at him. (It mostly looked really funny when we were totally out of sync on the "T"'s for Tyrone Woods, or the waving for "sore-sore-kattobase-Norihiro!")
So, the Dragons won and I had a lot of fun cheering. And then thanks to Morino causing somewhere around 6 of the 8 Dragons runs to score, he was the game hero -- and I was really hyper about him the whole game, always yelling "MORINOOOOOOOO" when he was up to bat, and holding up my towel and everything, shouting the words "let's go" and "hero" in his cheer song, and so on, so people were all like "haha, look, your guy is game hero!" That was pretty funny. Though, it was a kind of close game... 8-7, and Nori booted a play at the beginning of the bottom of the 9th, so there were guys on first and second with no outs, and... and somehow Iwase got out of it. Good for him.
I stopped by Ohtori Ramen (the place about a 10 min walk from here) for some miso ramen after the game and walked in still wearing my Chunichi jersey, so one guy's like "you're a Dragons fan?" "Yeah, kinda..." "Did you go to the game?" "Yeah! They won! 8-7 against Yakult! They got 5 runs in the first inning!" And then the baseball review was on TV so a bunch of us were talking about the Tigers-Giants game and stuff. Oh, and the miso ramen was really good too.
Tuesday, I got up early and Sam picked me up and we went to the station to meet up with a guy from the TOF trucking firm, the company of the driver who hit me. We had tea at the coffeeshop while the guy explained to Sam about how the truck worked and the wide turns it makes and things like that, and we talked about some random other stuff; it turned out this guy transferred here from Hokkaido, from Tomakomai, and I was like "oh! Komadai... Koshien... Ma-kun..." yeah, I'm a big dork. Also, it's really kind of cool having a professional translator as a friend. Sam kept saying that I'm really good at Japanese and I kept thinking "GOD NO, I SUCK". I mean, it'd be like, I'd understand what TOF guy said, and I'd know what I wanted to say, but I'd be unable to form the right sentence in Japanese, and then Sam would say something, and I'd think, "THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO SAY!"
Anyway, the TOF guy wanted to take care of getting me a new bike that day since that's the difficult part of the insurance arrangements. So we walked down to where the bike shops on my side of Warabi station are... only THEY WERE ALL CLOSED for some reason. So, the TOF guy called his company and had someone search the internet for more bike shops in the area, and they found one on the other side of Warabi, so we walked all the way there. (Funny part is, I'm still not THAT fast at walking, so I was totally lagging behind the whole time, walking like half a mile or more to this other bike shop.) The shop was a Bridgestone shop, and Sam basically looked through the bikes and picked out one for me; I trust him more than me trying to find one since I'm sort of dumb about these things. He picked out another mama-chari bike, though this one has 3 speeds and a stable kickstand and nicer brakes and a back rack and all. It's silver-gray instead of blue. I had to fill out another bohan toroku (anti-theft bike registration) form and TOF guy's like "Whoa! You can write kanji!" and I'm just like "er... well..."
After that, he left to go back to his work and we took the bike back over the Warabi bridge, and went to my bike parking garage, where Sam helped me explain the circumstances of the accident and the new bike and all, and the garage guy said "oh, sure, no problem" and made me a new bike sticker. I parked the bike in my normal spot. It seemed heavier moving it up the stairs than my old bike did.
Sam was going back to Akabane so I bummed a ride from him, and I went to work, getting there TWO MINUTES LATE. Heh.
Work was ok. A lot of people didn't show up -- maybe they took an extended long weekend, since Monday was a holiday here? I dunno. I spent a bunch of extra time talking to people as a result -- like if I'd planned a lesson for 4 people and only 1 showed up, the lesson wouldn't take as long, so I'd just do more free chat afterwards. It was interesting, at least.
One of my students, the afternoon one, said that she thought I am a very good teacher because I try so hard to learn about the students and about Japan; I had run into her at the train station a few weeks ago and she said it made her really happy that I said hi to her and knew her name and asked about her job and all when I saw her. What's funny is that I can't imagine NOT doing that, so of course I don't think that makes me any better or worse a teacher.
I decided to ride my bike home after work. It went ok. I just rode on Sun Road and didn't go anywhere special; after I got home I walked to the katsudon place instead of riding there, and I had katsudon. It was yummy.
Wednesday I woke up and found out that I indeed had no hot water (I had taken a cold shower on Tuesday, but I hoped that the deal was more like, since my next-door neighbor moved, maybe people had accidentally shut off the wrong gas?). I decided to do something I remembered trying years ago when I once didn't have hot water -- I boiled water on the stove and tried to make a warm-ish bath to soak in, instead, but I didn't really have enough time to boil enough water, so I ended up taking a lukewarm bath really. I also noticed that the hot water remote control was flashing "A1-06" instead of the temperature, so I have this feeling it's just some sort of error with the hot water heater. Still, it sucks.
I ran into Duane at the train station and we rode to Akabane together. He's weird. I told him about my apartment issues, like how I want screens on my windows, and a fixed airconditioner, and he said "Well, except for the hot water, I think you're screwed... and in terms of hot water I bet you're still screwed for a while."
I got KFC for lunch. It was actually good. Eri hung out in my classroom for a while, she's really stressed out lately. To make matters worse, her normally-adorable 5-year-old who comes in for lessons on Wednesday (the one who made fun of my arm hair last week) accidentally spilled his Coke and then threw a major temper tantrum, running around our lobby yelling "IYA DA, IYA DA" (this sucks, i'm unhappy, etc) until Hirakawa-kakaricho, who has been working with us every few days, came out and bought the kid another Coke. Heh.
My classes went pretty well, although only one of my Headways students showed up (and he was like "the other people mailed my phone saying to tell you they wouldn't be here..." I realized I should have probably asked for his/their phone email addresses, or at least given him mine, or something. Oops. Maybe next week.) so instead of doing the book lesson I prepared, we just hung out talking for an hour and a half. We were talking about movies we watched when we were kids, like Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters and all, so that was pretty fun. Of course, I always don't know whether I should feel bad for these "lessons" where all we do is talk, but whatever.
You know, I came straight home from work (I ate dinner between classes at 6ish) intending to get stuff done and go to sleep early, but here it is 2am and all I've done really is watch the sports news, and finish this entry. I asked Hirakawa to please call someone who can fix my hot water, and he said he'd see what he can do, so... I have this feeling I'll be without hot water for a while, which sucks :(
I should try to be better about writing daily LJ entries again, because once I fall behind I just don't feel like writing at all.
I realize yesterday was "talk like a pirate" day, but you see, it's hard enough getting my students to pronounce the word "pirate", so I didn't even bother.
Also, something else I don't understand is that I have been getting emails daily from recruiters lately with random jobs in random cities in America, all like "I found your resume on the web and I am looking for someone with ____ to work in ____", all of which would be fine IF I STILL LIVED IN AMERICA. I always answer like "Did you not notice the part of my resume that says I just moved to Japan?" and they're like "Oh, I didn't know if that was recent?" and I'm thinking "I JUST MOVED IN AUGUST 2007. WHY WOULD I NOT STILL BE LIVING HERE?"
I'm thinking of renaming my baseblog to "Marinerds, Dragonbutts, Baystards and Darvoids", though that might also be a bit long. I need some sort of change, though, being as I'm sort of, like, not in Seattle anymore.
Sunday: went to a baseball game in Yokohama, the Baystars beat the Swallows
Monday: went to a baseball game at Meiji Jingu, the Dragons beat the Swallows
Tuesday: got a new bike, went to work, rode bike home, whee
Wednesday: confirmed lack of hot water, went to work
Sunday, after the game outside the stadium, there were these loudmouth Americans yelling "Let's go Bay Stars" in the same tone you'd usually hear Red Sox fans yelling it after a game. I was just so stunned by it (and so were some other people) that I went up to them like "Are you guys from Boston or something?" and they reacted to me in a really rude way, so I just continued walking. I'm just sad, I really had hoped to escape most of the obnoxious sorts of baseball fans when I moved here.
I also stopped by the McDonald's by Kannai station's south entrance, mostly just to buy time so I wouldn't be getting on a super-crowded train. Little did I know that the McDonald's was going to be full of historical MLB artifacts. That place was pretty amazing.
I spent the rest of Sunday doing laundry. I accidentally forgot to bring my suit jacket home with me, so it won't get washed this week, I guess... I didn't discover that until I was at the laundromat, of course.
Monday I decided to skip the Rakuten-Lions game and thus spent the afternoon writing baseball entries and chilling out and all, which worked out okay. I guess I left around 3 or 4pm to go to Jingu, and due to actually catching a Rinkai train at Akabane, it took a lot less time to get there than I thought it would, so there I was at Jingu over an hour before the game, in the leftfield cheap seats, by myself, without my big camera, not close enough to take pictures of anything with my little camera... and there's Morino catching fly balls right in front of the leftfield fence, and Kawakami and Masa Yamamoto warming up, and... and I'm just sitting there, mostly listening to these two kids behind me talking about baseball players.
Eventually my section filled up with people, and eventually the game started and the weather got relatively nice (cooler, windy), and eventually the Dragons did exactly what they did at the last game I went to: exploded for 5 runs in the first inning and batted around the entire order. I was holding up my Morino towel and he got a 3-run bases-clearing double to start off the scoring, so that was fun. Hidenori hit a home run a little bit after that. Of course, we were sitting pretty close to the leftfield foul pole and the main cheering people were a lot further out towards centerfield, so a lot of times we'd be trying to cheer and be completely out of sync with the rest of the cheering section; eventually one guy near the front of our area decided to be the self-appointed syncmeister for us all and so he'd be looking over at the other cheering section to get the timing and we'd all be looking at him. (It mostly looked really funny when we were totally out of sync on the "T"'s for Tyrone Woods, or the waving for "sore-sore-kattobase-Norihiro!")
So, the Dragons won and I had a lot of fun cheering. And then thanks to Morino causing somewhere around 6 of the 8 Dragons runs to score, he was the game hero -- and I was really hyper about him the whole game, always yelling "MORINOOOOOOOO" when he was up to bat, and holding up my towel and everything, shouting the words "let's go" and "hero" in his cheer song, and so on, so people were all like "haha, look, your guy is game hero!" That was pretty funny. Though, it was a kind of close game... 8-7, and Nori booted a play at the beginning of the bottom of the 9th, so there were guys on first and second with no outs, and... and somehow Iwase got out of it. Good for him.
I stopped by Ohtori Ramen (the place about a 10 min walk from here) for some miso ramen after the game and walked in still wearing my Chunichi jersey, so one guy's like "you're a Dragons fan?" "Yeah, kinda..." "Did you go to the game?" "Yeah! They won! 8-7 against Yakult! They got 5 runs in the first inning!" And then the baseball review was on TV so a bunch of us were talking about the Tigers-Giants game and stuff. Oh, and the miso ramen was really good too.
Tuesday, I got up early and Sam picked me up and we went to the station to meet up with a guy from the TOF trucking firm, the company of the driver who hit me. We had tea at the coffeeshop while the guy explained to Sam about how the truck worked and the wide turns it makes and things like that, and we talked about some random other stuff; it turned out this guy transferred here from Hokkaido, from Tomakomai, and I was like "oh! Komadai... Koshien... Ma-kun..." yeah, I'm a big dork. Also, it's really kind of cool having a professional translator as a friend. Sam kept saying that I'm really good at Japanese and I kept thinking "GOD NO, I SUCK". I mean, it'd be like, I'd understand what TOF guy said, and I'd know what I wanted to say, but I'd be unable to form the right sentence in Japanese, and then Sam would say something, and I'd think, "THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO SAY!"
Anyway, the TOF guy wanted to take care of getting me a new bike that day since that's the difficult part of the insurance arrangements. So we walked down to where the bike shops on my side of Warabi station are... only THEY WERE ALL CLOSED for some reason. So, the TOF guy called his company and had someone search the internet for more bike shops in the area, and they found one on the other side of Warabi, so we walked all the way there. (Funny part is, I'm still not THAT fast at walking, so I was totally lagging behind the whole time, walking like half a mile or more to this other bike shop.) The shop was a Bridgestone shop, and Sam basically looked through the bikes and picked out one for me; I trust him more than me trying to find one since I'm sort of dumb about these things. He picked out another mama-chari bike, though this one has 3 speeds and a stable kickstand and nicer brakes and a back rack and all. It's silver-gray instead of blue. I had to fill out another bohan toroku (anti-theft bike registration) form and TOF guy's like "Whoa! You can write kanji!" and I'm just like "er... well..."
After that, he left to go back to his work and we took the bike back over the Warabi bridge, and went to my bike parking garage, where Sam helped me explain the circumstances of the accident and the new bike and all, and the garage guy said "oh, sure, no problem" and made me a new bike sticker. I parked the bike in my normal spot. It seemed heavier moving it up the stairs than my old bike did.
Sam was going back to Akabane so I bummed a ride from him, and I went to work, getting there TWO MINUTES LATE. Heh.
Work was ok. A lot of people didn't show up -- maybe they took an extended long weekend, since Monday was a holiday here? I dunno. I spent a bunch of extra time talking to people as a result -- like if I'd planned a lesson for 4 people and only 1 showed up, the lesson wouldn't take as long, so I'd just do more free chat afterwards. It was interesting, at least.
One of my students, the afternoon one, said that she thought I am a very good teacher because I try so hard to learn about the students and about Japan; I had run into her at the train station a few weeks ago and she said it made her really happy that I said hi to her and knew her name and asked about her job and all when I saw her. What's funny is that I can't imagine NOT doing that, so of course I don't think that makes me any better or worse a teacher.
I decided to ride my bike home after work. It went ok. I just rode on Sun Road and didn't go anywhere special; after I got home I walked to the katsudon place instead of riding there, and I had katsudon. It was yummy.
Wednesday I woke up and found out that I indeed had no hot water (I had taken a cold shower on Tuesday, but I hoped that the deal was more like, since my next-door neighbor moved, maybe people had accidentally shut off the wrong gas?). I decided to do something I remembered trying years ago when I once didn't have hot water -- I boiled water on the stove and tried to make a warm-ish bath to soak in, instead, but I didn't really have enough time to boil enough water, so I ended up taking a lukewarm bath really. I also noticed that the hot water remote control was flashing "A1-06" instead of the temperature, so I have this feeling it's just some sort of error with the hot water heater. Still, it sucks.
I ran into Duane at the train station and we rode to Akabane together. He's weird. I told him about my apartment issues, like how I want screens on my windows, and a fixed airconditioner, and he said "Well, except for the hot water, I think you're screwed... and in terms of hot water I bet you're still screwed for a while."
I got KFC for lunch. It was actually good. Eri hung out in my classroom for a while, she's really stressed out lately. To make matters worse, her normally-adorable 5-year-old who comes in for lessons on Wednesday (the one who made fun of my arm hair last week) accidentally spilled his Coke and then threw a major temper tantrum, running around our lobby yelling "IYA DA, IYA DA" (this sucks, i'm unhappy, etc) until Hirakawa-kakaricho, who has been working with us every few days, came out and bought the kid another Coke. Heh.
My classes went pretty well, although only one of my Headways students showed up (and he was like "the other people mailed my phone saying to tell you they wouldn't be here..." I realized I should have probably asked for his/their phone email addresses, or at least given him mine, or something. Oops. Maybe next week.) so instead of doing the book lesson I prepared, we just hung out talking for an hour and a half. We were talking about movies we watched when we were kids, like Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters and all, so that was pretty fun. Of course, I always don't know whether I should feel bad for these "lessons" where all we do is talk, but whatever.
You know, I came straight home from work (I ate dinner between classes at 6ish) intending to get stuff done and go to sleep early, but here it is 2am and all I've done really is watch the sports news, and finish this entry. I asked Hirakawa to please call someone who can fix my hot water, and he said he'd see what he can do, so... I have this feeling I'll be without hot water for a while, which sucks :(
I should try to be better about writing daily LJ entries again, because once I fall behind I just don't feel like writing at all.
I realize yesterday was "talk like a pirate" day, but you see, it's hard enough getting my students to pronounce the word "pirate", so I didn't even bother.
Also, something else I don't understand is that I have been getting emails daily from recruiters lately with random jobs in random cities in America, all like "I found your resume on the web and I am looking for someone with ____ to work in ____", all of which would be fine IF I STILL LIVED IN AMERICA. I always answer like "Did you not notice the part of my resume that says I just moved to Japan?" and they're like "Oh, I didn't know if that was recent?" and I'm thinking "I JUST MOVED IN AUGUST 2007. WHY WOULD I NOT STILL BE LIVING HERE?"
I'm thinking of renaming my baseblog to "Marinerds, Dragonbutts, Baystards and Darvoids", though that might also be a bit long. I need some sort of change, though, being as I'm sort of, like, not in Seattle anymore.