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Oh my gosh I have been surprisingly busy.
Seriously, I don't know how long I'll sustain this but the last two days have actually been action-packed rather than the boringness I was expecting them to be. I just staggered into my house semi-drunk at 2am, which should give you an idea of exactly how not-expected this is.
Yesterday started fairly early, and I was in Jiyuugaoka by 10:30am for an interview at an international school. I followed that up by finding a totally random restaurant in Shibuya and getting fairly decent omurice, while still wearing my suit and all. Continued the suit trend back to Akabane, going to the au shop and getting my cellphone plan changed back to teigaku data (though not until next month). And while STILL wearing my suit I went into Viva Home, failed to find a heater there, went into Ito Yokado and got a mini fan heater there, also finally a Yokado point card.
I also did something totally Japanese and BOUGHT SLIPPPERS FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF WALKING DOWNSTAIRS IN THE MORNING. No, really. I don't generally wear slippers in the house, just socks, but every morning it's been killing me to walk barefoot on the floor to go down to shower, so now I have slippers. Fear me.
I spent the afternoon chilling out here, but that turned into playing some PP and catching up with some people on email/IM (which I am still totally behind on). Made plans for a day or two of my Seattle trip later this month which also made me very happy.
Ran off to the train station around 6:30 so I could get to Nishi-Waseda a bit after 7ish to go play volleyball! Intervoll happened to have a Feb 6th session and the next one isn't until April, so good thing I could go. I didn't recognize that many people when I first showed up, jumped in on a warmup with some people after getting over my initial crowd-shock, and then there was team randomization.
My first team was pretty awesome in terms of me having a lot of fun. There were two Russians (a guy and a girl), one guy from somewhere else in Europe, another American girl, and a Brazilian dude. Everyone spoke English except the Russian girl, and the Brazilian guy was not old, not condescending, was left-handed and a FANTASTIC volleyball player. Seriously, this team lacked all of the issues I generally run into at Intervoll. We didn't win most of our games but I honestly didn't give a shit. Go figure that the first time I enjoy a team, it has no Japanese people on it? My second team was ALL Japanese except me, but that only went for literally like one game before the session was over. I saw several people there that I recognized from some past volleyball games but was too shy to really say anything to them. Did run into my friend (?) Mayumi who was like "long time no see!" and I told her I was in America for the winter and she told me she went to Mexico for 3 weeks. Dang.
I transferred trains in Ikebukuro and opted to get out and go to my favorite kaitensushi place in west Ikebukuro, and you know what? I hadn't eaten dinner and I hadn't been to this place in forever and I swear I GORGED on sushi. Had 9 plates. It was all freaking fantastic and of course I paid like $12 for it :) Also stopped into the arcade for one game of Pop'n! Long time on that too.
Boy, did I ache when I got home though... I really played my guts out at volleyball.
Saturday I woke up in a WORLD of pain and ache, which got a little better after a shower... one good thing about the sit-down shower is that the room kinda turns into a sauna. But man, what I wouldn't give for a backrub today.
I ended up going over to GEOS around 3pm -- I was on the way to the post office and it made sense to stop by. I got to meet the new manager and got to see a few of my old students, and I also saw Bernard, my replacement... turns out today was his last day in Akabane! No joke! The school is closing at the end of April so they're replacing Bernard with a substitute teacher who will effectively be transitioning students away. Holy crap. I looked at his schedule and a lot of my old students are gone, which made me feel really sad. And my old classroom actually was TOTALLY empty and apparently was being used as a training room for a while. Also, the new manager is really nice. She invited me to come to Bernard's going-away party tonight.
One of my old students gave me the flu, I swear. Silly 16-year-old is all like "I JUST GOT OVER THE FLU! I'M TRANSFERRABLE!" and I'm like "if you are contagious please do NOT breathe on me like that STOP IT"
So I finally got out of there, went to the post office and all, and it was like 4:30 by then so rather than getting a big lunch I just got joutendon at Tenya. Did some grocery shopping at Ito Yokado on the way home, finally... I bought fruit! I hope it's okay.
Finally convinced myself to do some significant amount of unpacking and cleaning here in my house. I'm still not done, but I was being really lazy about it these last few days.
And then I went back to GEOS to meet up for the party...
It was at an... Asian fusion place, for lack of a better description, a hole-in-the-wall place in the basement off of Lala Garden. There were actual foreign waitstaff and the cuisine was anything from Thai to Indian to whatever. We had an appetizer platter full of bizarre spicy stuff, and a spicy noodle salad, and spring rolls, and chinese spinach with spicy sauce, and pad thai, and cashew chicken, and I forget what else. We were doing 4000 yen (around $40) for all-you-can-eat-and-drink... I had two beers and two cassis orange drinks and by the end of it was pretty tipsy. We had 6 people total, a small party... Bernard, my other former coworker Kazumi, one of Kazumi's students whose name I forgot already, my former (B's current) student Tatsuya, and were joined by the manager after a bit. It was actually a good size to have everyone talk and since Kazumi's student is Sprint 3 it gave me justification to talk in Japanese a lot. Woo.
After dinner Tatsuya wanted to do karaoke, and Bernard was up for it, so we convinced Manager-san to come along and went to Big Echo and did karaoke! That was pretty fun. I actually ended up singing a lot in English due to the way the group was going... the manager was really impressed that I was doing Japanese songs though. She actually picked 羞恥心 and I sang it with her, which was just nuts. Bernard picked Kiseki (yay for another English teacher who actually is willing to pick Japanese songs) and then that spurred me to put in a bunch of baseball songs. We wanted to end with something nuts like One Week or End of the World As We Know It, but they didn't HAVE those, so our final song of the night, totally drunk at 2am, was Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeeeeah.
So, yeah. We sent the Saitama folk off in cabs and then Tatsuya and I walked home... well, I walked home, he chickened out and also took a cab from the west side of the station. He said we're gonna go to a baseball game together this year. Would be fantastic if that actually happened. (He also tried to invite everyone over to my house to hang out, but I'm like "it's too cold, dude")
Good times.
Manager-san actually told me to please come visit her again sometime, so even though it's really weird to go back to GEOS, kind of, I might try to drop by a few more times before it totally closes down. We'll see.
Yesterday started fairly early, and I was in Jiyuugaoka by 10:30am for an interview at an international school. I followed that up by finding a totally random restaurant in Shibuya and getting fairly decent omurice, while still wearing my suit and all. Continued the suit trend back to Akabane, going to the au shop and getting my cellphone plan changed back to teigaku data (though not until next month). And while STILL wearing my suit I went into Viva Home, failed to find a heater there, went into Ito Yokado and got a mini fan heater there, also finally a Yokado point card.
I also did something totally Japanese and BOUGHT SLIPPPERS FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF WALKING DOWNSTAIRS IN THE MORNING. No, really. I don't generally wear slippers in the house, just socks, but every morning it's been killing me to walk barefoot on the floor to go down to shower, so now I have slippers. Fear me.
I spent the afternoon chilling out here, but that turned into playing some PP and catching up with some people on email/IM (which I am still totally behind on). Made plans for a day or two of my Seattle trip later this month which also made me very happy.
Ran off to the train station around 6:30 so I could get to Nishi-Waseda a bit after 7ish to go play volleyball! Intervoll happened to have a Feb 6th session and the next one isn't until April, so good thing I could go. I didn't recognize that many people when I first showed up, jumped in on a warmup with some people after getting over my initial crowd-shock, and then there was team randomization.
My first team was pretty awesome in terms of me having a lot of fun. There were two Russians (a guy and a girl), one guy from somewhere else in Europe, another American girl, and a Brazilian dude. Everyone spoke English except the Russian girl, and the Brazilian guy was not old, not condescending, was left-handed and a FANTASTIC volleyball player. Seriously, this team lacked all of the issues I generally run into at Intervoll. We didn't win most of our games but I honestly didn't give a shit. Go figure that the first time I enjoy a team, it has no Japanese people on it? My second team was ALL Japanese except me, but that only went for literally like one game before the session was over. I saw several people there that I recognized from some past volleyball games but was too shy to really say anything to them. Did run into my friend (?) Mayumi who was like "long time no see!" and I told her I was in America for the winter and she told me she went to Mexico for 3 weeks. Dang.
I transferred trains in Ikebukuro and opted to get out and go to my favorite kaitensushi place in west Ikebukuro, and you know what? I hadn't eaten dinner and I hadn't been to this place in forever and I swear I GORGED on sushi. Had 9 plates. It was all freaking fantastic and of course I paid like $12 for it :) Also stopped into the arcade for one game of Pop'n! Long time on that too.
Boy, did I ache when I got home though... I really played my guts out at volleyball.
Saturday I woke up in a WORLD of pain and ache, which got a little better after a shower... one good thing about the sit-down shower is that the room kinda turns into a sauna. But man, what I wouldn't give for a backrub today.
I ended up going over to GEOS around 3pm -- I was on the way to the post office and it made sense to stop by. I got to meet the new manager and got to see a few of my old students, and I also saw Bernard, my replacement... turns out today was his last day in Akabane! No joke! The school is closing at the end of April so they're replacing Bernard with a substitute teacher who will effectively be transitioning students away. Holy crap. I looked at his schedule and a lot of my old students are gone, which made me feel really sad. And my old classroom actually was TOTALLY empty and apparently was being used as a training room for a while. Also, the new manager is really nice. She invited me to come to Bernard's going-away party tonight.
One of my old students gave me the flu, I swear. Silly 16-year-old is all like "I JUST GOT OVER THE FLU! I'M TRANSFERRABLE!" and I'm like "if you are contagious please do NOT breathe on me like that STOP IT"
So I finally got out of there, went to the post office and all, and it was like 4:30 by then so rather than getting a big lunch I just got joutendon at Tenya. Did some grocery shopping at Ito Yokado on the way home, finally... I bought fruit! I hope it's okay.
Finally convinced myself to do some significant amount of unpacking and cleaning here in my house. I'm still not done, but I was being really lazy about it these last few days.
And then I went back to GEOS to meet up for the party...
It was at an... Asian fusion place, for lack of a better description, a hole-in-the-wall place in the basement off of Lala Garden. There were actual foreign waitstaff and the cuisine was anything from Thai to Indian to whatever. We had an appetizer platter full of bizarre spicy stuff, and a spicy noodle salad, and spring rolls, and chinese spinach with spicy sauce, and pad thai, and cashew chicken, and I forget what else. We were doing 4000 yen (around $40) for all-you-can-eat-and-drink... I had two beers and two cassis orange drinks and by the end of it was pretty tipsy. We had 6 people total, a small party... Bernard, my other former coworker Kazumi, one of Kazumi's students whose name I forgot already, my former (B's current) student Tatsuya, and were joined by the manager after a bit. It was actually a good size to have everyone talk and since Kazumi's student is Sprint 3 it gave me justification to talk in Japanese a lot. Woo.
After dinner Tatsuya wanted to do karaoke, and Bernard was up for it, so we convinced Manager-san to come along and went to Big Echo and did karaoke! That was pretty fun. I actually ended up singing a lot in English due to the way the group was going... the manager was really impressed that I was doing Japanese songs though. She actually picked 羞恥心 and I sang it with her, which was just nuts. Bernard picked Kiseki (yay for another English teacher who actually is willing to pick Japanese songs) and then that spurred me to put in a bunch of baseball songs. We wanted to end with something nuts like One Week or End of the World As We Know It, but they didn't HAVE those, so our final song of the night, totally drunk at 2am, was Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeeeeah.
So, yeah. We sent the Saitama folk off in cabs and then Tatsuya and I walked home... well, I walked home, he chickened out and also took a cab from the west side of the station. He said we're gonna go to a baseball game together this year. Would be fantastic if that actually happened. (He also tried to invite everyone over to my house to hang out, but I'm like "it's too cold, dude")
Good times.
Manager-san actually told me to please come visit her again sometime, so even though it's really weird to go back to GEOS, kind of, I might try to drop by a few more times before it totally closes down. We'll see.