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it's 20 November and I'm in Seattle
and I want to have an LJ entry about what's been up since I got here but I don't feel like writing. I have spent a decent amount of time near my laptop not being productive, actually.
So let's see, my last day in Japan, as it were, I went to Heiroku for lunch (didn't tell them I was leaving), saw an enka concert, went to the au store, went home, met up with Sam and he helped call utilities people, and then I did laundry, including using the dryers at the laundromat at the bottom of the hill. Feels like this is all years ago now. While drying stuff, I went to the bakery to get my last real meal in Japan, which turned out to be bakery food, like curry bread and cream bread and stuff. Wheee. Then came back home and spent the evening packing, and throwing things away, and packing, and so on.
I went to sleep for about 4-5 hours, got up in the morning to take an early bath, because the gas company came by to shut off the gas around 10am and settle my bill. And then went to the keitai store, where I spent too long talking to the clerk about my best/cheapest option, which was not turning off the phone, go figure. Grabbed a sandwich from Wako on my way back, so technically a katsu sandwich is my last meal in Japan.
Sam came by around 12:30, we shut off the water and such in the house, and then he gave me a ride to Akabane station with my big heavy bag, which was nice of him. I rode the train to Nippori standing, then when I got the Keisei train I basically walked through half the train until I found a place to sit, and zoned out until I got to the airport. No real big deal at Narita to talk of. Flight was uneventful for the most part too. The movies on the plane sucked (I tried to watch Mamma Mia but it just looked awful), so I slept about 2 hours and spent a while reading the Wally Yonamine book I got last week, but ended up spending more time taking notes on typoes/errors in the book. Sigh. I also spent some time reading 野球小僧, the magazine Pau gave me as plane reading material.
Got off the plane in Seattle, without too much of a hitch there either, EXCEPT that I guess because I had put down "Japan" as my country of residency, they decided to check me out at the agriculture stand, and actually made me open all of my bags up. Which sucked because I did a poor job of packing. The lady kept taking things out like "is this a toy? what is this? what is this? do you have any fruit or meat or vegetables with you?" about everything, and I'm like "Uh... that's yatsuhashi, it's kind of like a wafer. Um, those are cookies. Those are sembei, that's a kind of rice cracker."
The nice part is, Carl met me at baggage claim, so I didn't have to figure out how to contact him. And then we talked together in the car for 20 minutes in Japanese on our way into Seattle, so my brain could adjust.
When we got back to the Ballard house, we ended up first going to get lunch, at the Matador because I said I wanted Mexican food (which is hard to get in Japan). Got an enchilada. IT WAS HUGE. I forgot that I shouldn't eat my entire plate of food here. Alas. We also stopped by Bartell's so I could get necessary things I'd forgotten, and then went to T-Mobile so I could get a cell number activated. Yay.
Then, I napped. Oops. It was chilly and I wanted to huddle under a blanket and next thing I knew it was 4 hours later.
Oren and Rehana both ended up deciding to come over in the evening and we all went to Thaiku for dinner, which was also good, but I'm in still in this weird "omg everyone speaks English" mode which I dunno how long it'll last.
Zach got home from CA fairly late, and the dogs came back with him too. They're groomed, which is nice, I won't have to deal with Watson being a big smelly dog this week.
I stayed up too late playing Pokemon Puzzle League. Oops. I meant to do things like write blog entries and whatnot, but basically, as I said, I zoned out. I spent a while catching up on Japanese baseball news, where a lot of crazy shit has gone down recently.
Woke up at noon today, with a goal for the afternoon of just walking to Fred Meyer and getting jeans. I got out of the house around 2, went to Adam and Rehana's, where I ate some of their leftover lunch, cauliflower and couscous, and caught up with Adam a bit. Rehana ended up walking with me to Fred Meyer, where I am sure I was pretty annoying because it turns out that my absolutely awesome perfect jeans that I love are no longer sold there. So I tried on others, and they sucked. On the other hand I found a pair of flannel pants that I love (I'm wearing them now). So comfy. But.
We walked home via Safeway, where I nearly went nuts looking at ALL THE AMERICAN FOOD OMFG. Mostly the snacks were super-tempting. However, thanks to Rehana, I filled up my basket with fruit first -- seedless grapes, which we don't have in Japan, and bananas, which usually cost $1 per banana instead of 89 cents per POUND of bananas. And I got diet rootbeer. So, I didn't buy any hugely dangerous snacks, just mostly a lot of fruit. I was astounded to see canteloupes costing $1.50 when I'm used to spending $2 just for a SLICE of canteloupe, the melons usually go for like $30 in Japan.
And when I got home, Zach was here. So we chatted for a bit and eventually ended up dragging Carl out to dinner at Chinook's. Wheeeee. That was nice. I had salmon cakes, and they had soups and salads, and we split a blackberry cobbler for dessert.
Evening, I forget, really. I found my Philly keys after searching through my stuff in the closet, and I talked to Carl a while about Japanese and other stuff, and I played Pokemon Puzzle League again, and then I played Puzzle Pirates, and there is a new expansion in the game with these new "Cursed Islands" and a friend of mine asked me to come along, so I did. I think they seem kind of dumb but it was nice to actually sail with other people again, being in a normal time zone might do that for once.
Oh, and as it turns out, I looked on Lee's website and they have actually DISCONTINUED my awesome perfect jeans, which is why I couldn't find them. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do, I guess I'll have to hunt for new awesome perfect jeans. I assume I'll weigh at least 10 pounds more by the time I leave the US anyway. Ugh. (I have to admit it was really neat seeing my weight in pounds on a scale today. It's still far from perfect, but still 25 pounds less than before I moved to Japan.)
Wow, I'm up late.
I really want to see people while I am in Seattle but I have been so totally out of it and zoning out all the time, I suck. Plus not having a car or a bicycle or anything kind of limits where I can go. But I should become more proactive... sigh...
So let's see, my last day in Japan, as it were, I went to Heiroku for lunch (didn't tell them I was leaving), saw an enka concert, went to the au store, went home, met up with Sam and he helped call utilities people, and then I did laundry, including using the dryers at the laundromat at the bottom of the hill. Feels like this is all years ago now. While drying stuff, I went to the bakery to get my last real meal in Japan, which turned out to be bakery food, like curry bread and cream bread and stuff. Wheee. Then came back home and spent the evening packing, and throwing things away, and packing, and so on.
I went to sleep for about 4-5 hours, got up in the morning to take an early bath, because the gas company came by to shut off the gas around 10am and settle my bill. And then went to the keitai store, where I spent too long talking to the clerk about my best/cheapest option, which was not turning off the phone, go figure. Grabbed a sandwich from Wako on my way back, so technically a katsu sandwich is my last meal in Japan.
Sam came by around 12:30, we shut off the water and such in the house, and then he gave me a ride to Akabane station with my big heavy bag, which was nice of him. I rode the train to Nippori standing, then when I got the Keisei train I basically walked through half the train until I found a place to sit, and zoned out until I got to the airport. No real big deal at Narita to talk of. Flight was uneventful for the most part too. The movies on the plane sucked (I tried to watch Mamma Mia but it just looked awful), so I slept about 2 hours and spent a while reading the Wally Yonamine book I got last week, but ended up spending more time taking notes on typoes/errors in the book. Sigh. I also spent some time reading 野球小僧, the magazine Pau gave me as plane reading material.
Got off the plane in Seattle, without too much of a hitch there either, EXCEPT that I guess because I had put down "Japan" as my country of residency, they decided to check me out at the agriculture stand, and actually made me open all of my bags up. Which sucked because I did a poor job of packing. The lady kept taking things out like "is this a toy? what is this? what is this? do you have any fruit or meat or vegetables with you?" about everything, and I'm like "Uh... that's yatsuhashi, it's kind of like a wafer. Um, those are cookies. Those are sembei, that's a kind of rice cracker."
The nice part is, Carl met me at baggage claim, so I didn't have to figure out how to contact him. And then we talked together in the car for 20 minutes in Japanese on our way into Seattle, so my brain could adjust.
When we got back to the Ballard house, we ended up first going to get lunch, at the Matador because I said I wanted Mexican food (which is hard to get in Japan). Got an enchilada. IT WAS HUGE. I forgot that I shouldn't eat my entire plate of food here. Alas. We also stopped by Bartell's so I could get necessary things I'd forgotten, and then went to T-Mobile so I could get a cell number activated. Yay.
Then, I napped. Oops. It was chilly and I wanted to huddle under a blanket and next thing I knew it was 4 hours later.
Oren and Rehana both ended up deciding to come over in the evening and we all went to Thaiku for dinner, which was also good, but I'm in still in this weird "omg everyone speaks English" mode which I dunno how long it'll last.
Zach got home from CA fairly late, and the dogs came back with him too. They're groomed, which is nice, I won't have to deal with Watson being a big smelly dog this week.
I stayed up too late playing Pokemon Puzzle League. Oops. I meant to do things like write blog entries and whatnot, but basically, as I said, I zoned out. I spent a while catching up on Japanese baseball news, where a lot of crazy shit has gone down recently.
Woke up at noon today, with a goal for the afternoon of just walking to Fred Meyer and getting jeans. I got out of the house around 2, went to Adam and Rehana's, where I ate some of their leftover lunch, cauliflower and couscous, and caught up with Adam a bit. Rehana ended up walking with me to Fred Meyer, where I am sure I was pretty annoying because it turns out that my absolutely awesome perfect jeans that I love are no longer sold there. So I tried on others, and they sucked. On the other hand I found a pair of flannel pants that I love (I'm wearing them now). So comfy. But.
We walked home via Safeway, where I nearly went nuts looking at ALL THE AMERICAN FOOD OMFG. Mostly the snacks were super-tempting. However, thanks to Rehana, I filled up my basket with fruit first -- seedless grapes, which we don't have in Japan, and bananas, which usually cost $1 per banana instead of 89 cents per POUND of bananas. And I got diet rootbeer. So, I didn't buy any hugely dangerous snacks, just mostly a lot of fruit. I was astounded to see canteloupes costing $1.50 when I'm used to spending $2 just for a SLICE of canteloupe, the melons usually go for like $30 in Japan.
And when I got home, Zach was here. So we chatted for a bit and eventually ended up dragging Carl out to dinner at Chinook's. Wheeeee. That was nice. I had salmon cakes, and they had soups and salads, and we split a blackberry cobbler for dessert.
Evening, I forget, really. I found my Philly keys after searching through my stuff in the closet, and I talked to Carl a while about Japanese and other stuff, and I played Pokemon Puzzle League again, and then I played Puzzle Pirates, and there is a new expansion in the game with these new "Cursed Islands" and a friend of mine asked me to come along, so I did. I think they seem kind of dumb but it was nice to actually sail with other people again, being in a normal time zone might do that for once.
Oh, and as it turns out, I looked on Lee's website and they have actually DISCONTINUED my awesome perfect jeans, which is why I couldn't find them. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do, I guess I'll have to hunt for new awesome perfect jeans. I assume I'll weigh at least 10 pounds more by the time I leave the US anyway. Ugh. (I have to admit it was really neat seeing my weight in pounds on a scale today. It's still far from perfect, but still 25 pounds less than before I moved to Japan.)
Wow, I'm up late.
I really want to see people while I am in Seattle but I have been so totally out of it and zoning out all the time, I suck. Plus not having a car or a bicycle or anything kind of limits where I can go. But I should become more proactive... sigh...
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Are you staying with Zach? Do you think you'll be home this evening?
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(welcome back, by the way!)
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Happy return to the US, Dea..
-EBG
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Enjoy your stay in the US! :)