I was trendy today! Really!
Today was... I dunno. Saturday. Early, a little tired. K told me today that he is going to do RNA research at UC Davis for 3 months, he might leave in July or August, not sure yet. It'd be cool if he came back to Japan with awesome English skills, but he won't be studying at GEOS when he does. No idea if I'll ever see him again, really, which is kind of sad.
My 6pm class is totally out of control sometimes. It's the one with all the crazy guys (and today with a high school girl as well) They're my last class of the week and sometimes things get a little crazy. I thought I actually had a great class today in general, but there was a weird border of laughing at me and laughing with me that was hard to judge. At one point I was modelling an activity by getting out one of my stuffed Stitch dolls and being like "Stitch, are you going to be in London at 6pm?" "Noooo." "In London at midnight?" "Uh huh!" "In London at midnight on Thursday?" "Noooooo." It is true that Deanna Talks to Stitch seems to be pretty fine stand-up comedy as far as my students are concerned sometimes.
After work and after some confusion I went to Roppongi -- for pretty much the first time EVER -- and met up with my CMU friends![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibash and puuj, the latter of whom is in town for a week working on stuff with Yahoo Japan. Seriously, I think I went to Roppongi for like 30 minutes back on my very first trip to Japan in 2001, to get my mom a Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo t-shirt, but I've seriously never been back since. As I explained to Krispy, there's just really no reason for me to go there. I'm not trendy and I don't have a lot of money to waste on overpriced "foreign" food.
After debating a bunch of places -- Jay is vegetarian so we were kind of limited in our choices; a shame because usually I find it a lot of fun to take people to yakiniku or okonomiyaki or something but most food involves meat -- we ended up at a... "Japanese dining" place, which had omurice, and Krispy got them to make totally vegetarian omurice for Jay, and he had some hayashi rice himself. The staff there gave us an English menu and I seriously couldn't figure out what the fuck anything was, so I went over to the Japanese menu and read it instead. Asked the staff guy (in Japanese) what the hell the "Nagasaki Western Turkish Rice" dishes were, and he explained it had special rice pilaf and spaghetti with either katsu, or Japanese burger, or crabcream croquettes. He ALSO specifically said to me, "Most foreigners don't like it very much." Well, he was dead wrong, it was fucking awesome, the rice was fantastic, the demiglace sauce was some of the best I've had in Japan, and the fact that it came with a salad was just extra awesome on top.
Oh yeah, we had this waiter who tried so very hard to speak to us in English. Krispy is really good at this all now (after living here 4 years). He knew the exact amount of time to let the guy bury himself in broken English before stepping in and speaking Japanese. I must learn from the master, I think.
Anyway, it was great to see Krispy again (hadn't seen him since before I went to America) and to see Jay (hadn't seen him since... uhhh.... uhh.... no idea actually). Jay has long hair now and is working on a ponytail, which is funny since I feel like everyone usually does that in college, not 5 years later. Oh well, who knows.
Tomorrow I'm not sure wtf I'm going to end up doing, thanks to rain. Was supposed to go to Yokohama. And infact will still go to Yokohama, but may not end up seeing baseball is all. Might try to catch up with Krispy and Jay again and try to play board games, or maybe on Monday. Who knows.
Also, I actually was kinda dressed up today, in knee-length jeans and a black/white flower dress I bought last winter. Kanae assured me that I looked fine but I always worry that I look stupid when trying to dress up as a Japanese person.
My 6pm class is totally out of control sometimes. It's the one with all the crazy guys (and today with a high school girl as well) They're my last class of the week and sometimes things get a little crazy. I thought I actually had a great class today in general, but there was a weird border of laughing at me and laughing with me that was hard to judge. At one point I was modelling an activity by getting out one of my stuffed Stitch dolls and being like "Stitch, are you going to be in London at 6pm?" "Noooo." "In London at midnight?" "Uh huh!" "In London at midnight on Thursday?" "Noooooo." It is true that Deanna Talks to Stitch seems to be pretty fine stand-up comedy as far as my students are concerned sometimes.
After work and after some confusion I went to Roppongi -- for pretty much the first time EVER -- and met up with my CMU friends
alibash and puuj, the latter of whom is in town for a week working on stuff with Yahoo Japan. Seriously, I think I went to Roppongi for like 30 minutes back on my very first trip to Japan in 2001, to get my mom a Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo t-shirt, but I've seriously never been back since. As I explained to Krispy, there's just really no reason for me to go there. I'm not trendy and I don't have a lot of money to waste on overpriced "foreign" food. After debating a bunch of places -- Jay is vegetarian so we were kind of limited in our choices; a shame because usually I find it a lot of fun to take people to yakiniku or okonomiyaki or something but most food involves meat -- we ended up at a... "Japanese dining" place, which had omurice, and Krispy got them to make totally vegetarian omurice for Jay, and he had some hayashi rice himself. The staff there gave us an English menu and I seriously couldn't figure out what the fuck anything was, so I went over to the Japanese menu and read it instead. Asked the staff guy (in Japanese) what the hell the "Nagasaki Western Turkish Rice" dishes were, and he explained it had special rice pilaf and spaghetti with either katsu, or Japanese burger, or crabcream croquettes. He ALSO specifically said to me, "Most foreigners don't like it very much." Well, he was dead wrong, it was fucking awesome, the rice was fantastic, the demiglace sauce was some of the best I've had in Japan, and the fact that it came with a salad was just extra awesome on top.
Oh yeah, we had this waiter who tried so very hard to speak to us in English. Krispy is really good at this all now (after living here 4 years). He knew the exact amount of time to let the guy bury himself in broken English before stepping in and speaking Japanese. I must learn from the master, I think.
Anyway, it was great to see Krispy again (hadn't seen him since before I went to America) and to see Jay (hadn't seen him since... uhhh.... uhh.... no idea actually). Jay has long hair now and is working on a ponytail, which is funny since I feel like everyone usually does that in college, not 5 years later. Oh well, who knows.
Tomorrow I'm not sure wtf I'm going to end up doing, thanks to rain. Was supposed to go to Yokohama. And infact will still go to Yokohama, but may not end up seeing baseball is all. Might try to catch up with Krispy and Jay again and try to play board games, or maybe on Monday. Who knows.
Also, I actually was kinda dressed up today, in knee-length jeans and a black/white flower dress I bought last winter. Kanae assured me that I looked fine but I always worry that I look stupid when trying to dress up as a Japanese person.
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I got to order in my native language today! Or, more precisely, I got to ask for the rest room in French; then the next staffer I saw I wasn't sure if she'd understand, so I spoke English (I made the racist assumption that she was an hispanophone rather than a francophone, which probably reflects badly on me, but I just tend not to start in French unless I have good reason to know the other person will understand me).
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I'm curious about what the knee-length jeans and black/white flower dress look like!
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"Most foreigners don't like it"? WROOOOONNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG