Monday (written Tuesday morning)
In the morning, I waited for my package. It showed up. That made me happy.
In the afternoon, I went to Shinjuku and met up with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shandrew and his wife Linnea. They came to Japan for a week or two to visit Linnea's parents, who have been working in Tokyo for the last 2.5 years or so. After some confusion about station exits -- thank god Andrew had a cellphone -- we met up for lunch, and they wanted something not too big, and very Japanese. So I figured, let's go to Osaka House and get okonomiyaki! We did, although I think the griddle was turned up WAY too hot because mine was literally on the griddle for like TWO MINUTES and got burnt. Sheesh. But aside from that it was still tasty and I think that might have been a good "eating in a hole-in-the-wall basement restaurant" experience for them.
Then we tried to find a cafe to hang out in for a bit. That part was a nightmare. It's really retarded how you can get such cheap food some places and hang out in a restaurant, yet going into a cafe pretty much requires buying a 500-yen cup of tea even if you just want to be there for like 10-20 minutes. Well, it's not really retarded, but eh. They had to leave to go off to Mitaka to see the Ghibli museum at 4pm.
I went around Shinjuku a bit after that -- bought a kanji workbook at Kinokuniya, and tried to find an arcade with a free Pop'n machine (to no avail; Pop'n 16 came out on Monday so), and then wandered back up to Saitama. I tried to get Wine to work on my laptop so I could watch the Marines-Hawks game which requires only IE6 and WMP and all, but even with all of those on there, it said "You are not a Windows machine, ha ha very funny" and quit. Grr. So instead I did laundry and ran errands like going to Lawson's to get baseball tickets (!!!!!), and got Kura sushi for dinner.
Then I watched TV -- one of the guests on SMAPxSMAP was "Jero", Jerome White, who is an African-American dude from Pittsburgh who came to Japan a few years ago to be an enka singer. No, I'm really not making that up. I'd heard about him but yesterday was the first time I actually SAW him. It was really funny, the SMAP guys just talked to him in Japanese and kept asking him to sing random enka songs and HE COULD SING THEM ALL and they were just completely astounded. Then they called Jero's sister -- in Pittsburgh -- on the phone, and he's like "Hey, you know SMAP? Guess what... I am sitting with SMAP right now. You wanna talk to Kimutaku?"
His video is really really surreal, it's like, this hip-hop guy and suddenly he busts out enka. What?
Youtube -- Jero, the American enka singer, singing Umiyuki
(The music guest was, of all groups, Toto. They sang "Africa", "Rosanna", and then some new Toto song that I didn't know. All things considered, Africa actually sounded pretty great with all of the Toto guys and all of the SMAP guys harmonizing together.
After that I watched Ainori. Kuro told the driver (half in English, half in Czech) that she liked him and thought he was cute, and he said "sorry, I have a girlfriend, we live together..." and she was like "oh. uhh. bye bye." and ran off. I wonder why that doesn't count as a confession for the show, but whatever. Also Seiji might finally not be a complete moron but he might like... the 29-year-old girl from Hokkaido. Huh. Preview for next week showed Miya being sad, I don't like the sound of that. And the new guy Umi is like... I completely forgot who he was during the show, they'd show him with the gang and it'd be like "Wait who's that guy?" Afterwards they showed a guy (Seki) who was on Ainori a loooong time ago, the first Ainori marriage, but he is apparently divorced now? Yikes. He also lost 50kg since then.
There's a Proposal Daisakusen drama special TONIGHT at 9pm and of course I can't watch and GRRRRRR!!! How retarded is it that I moved to Japan and if I want to watch doramas I still have to BT them?
On a final note, GEOS asked me to decide by April 3 whether I want to renew my contract, since it's up on August 3. I have to write them a note in the next week or two with my decision.
In the afternoon, I went to Shinjuku and met up with
shandrew and his wife Linnea. They came to Japan for a week or two to visit Linnea's parents, who have been working in Tokyo for the last 2.5 years or so. After some confusion about station exits -- thank god Andrew had a cellphone -- we met up for lunch, and they wanted something not too big, and very Japanese. So I figured, let's go to Osaka House and get okonomiyaki! We did, although I think the griddle was turned up WAY too hot because mine was literally on the griddle for like TWO MINUTES and got burnt. Sheesh. But aside from that it was still tasty and I think that might have been a good "eating in a hole-in-the-wall basement restaurant" experience for them.Then we tried to find a cafe to hang out in for a bit. That part was a nightmare. It's really retarded how you can get such cheap food some places and hang out in a restaurant, yet going into a cafe pretty much requires buying a 500-yen cup of tea even if you just want to be there for like 10-20 minutes. Well, it's not really retarded, but eh. They had to leave to go off to Mitaka to see the Ghibli museum at 4pm.
I went around Shinjuku a bit after that -- bought a kanji workbook at Kinokuniya, and tried to find an arcade with a free Pop'n machine (to no avail; Pop'n 16 came out on Monday so), and then wandered back up to Saitama. I tried to get Wine to work on my laptop so I could watch the Marines-Hawks game which requires only IE6 and WMP and all, but even with all of those on there, it said "You are not a Windows machine, ha ha very funny" and quit. Grr. So instead I did laundry and ran errands like going to Lawson's to get baseball tickets (!!!!!), and got Kura sushi for dinner.
Then I watched TV -- one of the guests on SMAPxSMAP was "Jero", Jerome White, who is an African-American dude from Pittsburgh who came to Japan a few years ago to be an enka singer. No, I'm really not making that up. I'd heard about him but yesterday was the first time I actually SAW him. It was really funny, the SMAP guys just talked to him in Japanese and kept asking him to sing random enka songs and HE COULD SING THEM ALL and they were just completely astounded. Then they called Jero's sister -- in Pittsburgh -- on the phone, and he's like "Hey, you know SMAP? Guess what... I am sitting with SMAP right now. You wanna talk to Kimutaku?"
His video is really really surreal, it's like, this hip-hop guy and suddenly he busts out enka. What?
Youtube -- Jero, the American enka singer, singing Umiyuki
(The music guest was, of all groups, Toto. They sang "Africa", "Rosanna", and then some new Toto song that I didn't know. All things considered, Africa actually sounded pretty great with all of the Toto guys and all of the SMAP guys harmonizing together.
After that I watched Ainori. Kuro told the driver (half in English, half in Czech) that she liked him and thought he was cute, and he said "sorry, I have a girlfriend, we live together..." and she was like "oh. uhh. bye bye." and ran off. I wonder why that doesn't count as a confession for the show, but whatever. Also Seiji might finally not be a complete moron but he might like... the 29-year-old girl from Hokkaido. Huh. Preview for next week showed Miya being sad, I don't like the sound of that. And the new guy Umi is like... I completely forgot who he was during the show, they'd show him with the gang and it'd be like "Wait who's that guy?" Afterwards they showed a guy (Seki) who was on Ainori a loooong time ago, the first Ainori marriage, but he is apparently divorced now? Yikes. He also lost 50kg since then.
There's a Proposal Daisakusen drama special TONIGHT at 9pm and of course I can't watch and GRRRRRR!!! How retarded is it that I moved to Japan and if I want to watch doramas I still have to BT them?
On a final note, GEOS asked me to decide by April 3 whether I want to renew my contract, since it's up on August 3. I have to write them a note in the next week or two with my decision.
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Meanwhile, I'm stuck in a place that's not even in top 10 anymore.
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Is four months' lead time typical in Japan? I thought they didn't commit to hiring you until sometime in July last year; why do you owe them so much more notice than they gave you?
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In reality they can't stop me from just up-and-quitting and giving one or two weeks' notice; the only thing they can "do" is not give me my end-of-contract $1000 bonus.
I still don't understand how it works in this company, because a lot of Japanese staff WANT to quit and GEOS won't let them.
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And not much related to this entry, but I'm excited about all the baseball stuff you've been able to do recently, and the connections you're making, and think it would be cool if you could get a job related to baseball here. I guess I'm trying to say good luck and I think that you should go for it.
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Also if you are thinking about renewing, I wonder if there is a way to transfer to another school that's not so doomed?
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The earlier post about a baseball job does too, but I get the idea this has occurred to you and you're thinking "If anyone had a way they wanted to hire me, they would have said so by now." (Which may or may not be the case.)
Best wishes, whatever you do.
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Weird
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I have the big stuffed Taiko you gave me sitting in the living room by the TV so I see him much more now. He reminds me of you!
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I finally watched that you tube video. WOW! What an amazing voice!
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