Saturday July 12, 1997: 11pm
Well I had a pretty cool day today. I guess it didn't start off so well because I had to get up at 8, after only 6 hrs of sleep. Ugh. And when I started my run it was barely raining at all so I brought my walkman along. But by the time I got half-way it was pouring, ... and I was just a bit worried about getting the thing wet. Ah well, the walkman's fine now.
At 10:15 I met Bianca at the Musashi Koganei station (she looks just the same as in Gr. 9) and we got back on the train to go to the Asakusa area. On the way there I found out a bit about why she's over here and stuff... she's actually studying to be a teacher in Australiea, but she takes Japanese as well. And a Japanese university was offering scholarships, so her and a few of her Japanese class classmates applied -- and got the scholarships! So she's here for a year just studying Japanese at the Tokyo Gakku (?) University. The school pays for her classes, and they also give her a living allowance which is as much as I get, and I work for it! Argh!
But I'm not bitter about that. Besides, she has to pay for her room and board. She lives in an international dormitory at her uni, ,so it's pretty fun. She's got her own room and bathroom, and maybe 8 people share the kitchen and showers. Oh - they have to PAY for their showers! 100 yen ($1.20) for 4 mins!!! Yoiks. I've never heard of anything like that before.
She says that it's very relaxed at the uni... she has enough spare time. She's had enough time to travel around in Japan. Cool. But she's had her days when she just wants to go home. Gee, I hope that doesn't happen to me. She also said tht the time went so fast, and that the 2nd half of the year goes even *faster* than the first half! That's crazy! I mean, it sure doesn't seem like I've been here for 2 months already!
Hey, she told me that on Wednesday nights it's ladies night at the Kichioji movie theatres, so it only costs 1000 yen ($12). Aaah.. that's great! Maybe I *will* catch a movie sometime. And she also said that there ARE clubs in Rappongi that are good -- they're not al like the streets. Plus, she said that on Thursday nights the club called Gaspanic (great name, huh) has all drinks for 300 yen ($3.50) - wow, that's great considering there's no cover. THe thing is.. you have to stay out until 5am because the trains stop running just past midnight or something. So they usually get there at around 11 or 12, and stay through til 5. I guess I'd have to take the Friday off work if I were to go sometime!!!
Anyways, since it was still pouring when we got there, and since I was still umbrella-less for my little crime-level experiment, the first thing I didn was buy myself on of the cheap umbreallas that they sell in every 7-Eleven-type store. 400 yen ($5). Then we headed on to so many neat stores. These places are considered stationary stores, but I'm not so sure why. I mean, sure they have LOTS of stationary, but they also have load of other stuff. Like PINK HAIR. Long live the pink tie, pink dye, and pink hair!
We spent probably 2 hours looking at these stores, and buying stuff, before we went for lunch at a Key Coffee (very common chain restaurant). Sphagetts for 500 yen ($6). Not bad. Next we took the tube to the heart of Asakusa - back to where the temple is with all the tourist shops. We wandered around there for awhile. I bought some of the famous Asakusa candies - these things that look like rice crispy squares. They're OK, I guess, but not as good as rice crispy squares (or Goop Theory) for sure.
Oh oh oh - next we walked over to "Chef's City", the area where you buy anything you need for a restaurant; huge pots, bulk chopstics (thousands and thousands), chairs, tables, and, the feature -- PLASTIC FOOD!! Yes, this is the place where they make the plastic food that you see in every restaurant window! I was originally planning on buying some, as gifts for people, but they're actually incredibly expensive. So I settled on a picture instead :-)
So after the Chef's City we took the train to Shibuya where Bianca showed me the 3 story GAP. Now there something to be said about the GAP -- I was really impressed that they kept their prices the same as in Canada. And they have regular sizes (ie. not the Japanese "one size"), although this doesn't concern me too much since the Japanese once size happens to be my size too, but for most gaijin, this is a big problem. Hence, they appreciate the GAP and were there in large numbers. Anyways that was a long explanation.
Then we headed back home -- I got back to Hino at around 6 or so -- *whew* that was quite a day! I calculated how much I'd spent on transportation.. 1,700 yen!!! ($20). Yoiks. No wonder I find it a tad expensive.
Sunday July 13, 1997: midnight
Oh, I had a great lazy day today! First of all I slept in until noon! Sure, I only went to sleep at 3, but hey, I rarely sleep until noon. Then I spent the remainder of the day truly bumming around. They were *finally* showing some Wimbledon on TV - only a week after the tournament's over.. hmmm... well it was about 2 hours of highlights so of course I watched it! I tried to pick up some of the Japanese tennis lingo, ya know, so I can use it.
Hey and later on at night they were playing the movie "Bad Girls", so I watched that. It wasn't so bad watching it in Japanese, I mean, I caught the main story line (I think!)
And tomorrow I'm on holidays - that's why I could bum out. I worked up enough overtime. But tomorrow I have to do some major Japanese studying!
Monday July 14, 1997: 3:45pm
*whew*. One chapter of kanji's down. This week's homework down. 2 chapters of the "Nihongo de Hanasoo" down. And 2 chapters of vocab. from my Waterloo textbook. I'm beat!
Tuesday July 15, 1997: 10pm
Last Thursday I had to lead the daily meeting again -- so to save myself the embarassment of messing up, like I did last time, I decided to choose a topic that I knew the vocabulary for - Ottawa. And it went really well! I even cracked a joke, and people GOT IT. That was neat.
Wednesday July 16, 1997: 10:30pm
Geese, today when I was walking to my calligraphy teacher's place I practically stepped on a metre and a half snake, and didn't even notice until I'd gone right past it and THEN heard it hiss. I was just blanked out so I hadn't been paying attention where I was going, but *that* sure brought me back down to earth! Im still trying to figure out if I actually stepped on it or not...
Oh, it was so hot today. Lately the average day is hot enough to think "Wow, it's actually kind of hot out". At least, that's what I think. Oh, and it's not like this place cools down at night - nuh uh! It never goes lower than 26C, even at 2am. That makes for hot weather, let me tell ya.
Thursday July 17, 1997: 9pm
Well I found out what exactly I got into when I told my boss that I would develop the UI for the network copier along with my other work... wow. Uh, it's actually as much, maybe even more work thatn the scanner UI! Ok, so I went and effectively doubled my workload - ha ha! But it's fun, and I'm pretty sure I can do it (I might have to cut down on my email, but what's new) so I don't mind at all.
Hey there was a thunderstorm tonight but it was pretty wimpy. I mean, the rain was coming down in sheets, sure, but the lightning only flashed maybe 3 times. They call that a thunderstorm?!? Wimps.
Friday July 18, 1997: midnight
Good day. Ok, well first I woke up about 2 hours late because I didn't hear my alarm ... so it wasn't a great start but anyways I still made it to the Toyoda station for 8:30. That's where I met up with Shravan-san and Hirabayashi-san, and we got on the JR to head over to the Java conference/Cosmos 97 Expo. It actually took us about 2 hours to get there because this place is pretty far away. It's quite close to the aquarium actually, so we got to see Tokyo harbour, the Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Tower, etc. again. Neat. Oh, and we took a train that is completely automatic, ie., no humans working anywhere. That was kinda cool.
So we got to the conference building at 11 or so, and wow, is this ever a cool building! Hirabayashi-san tells me that most big conferences are held there. Hmm.. there were lots of people - none that ressembled anyone from the CSC though - weird.
We decided to split up and meet again at 12:30 for lunch... but Shravan-san and I stuck together so we ended up looking around... We were in the exhibition room, which consists of company's booths. Like.. well, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Sharp, Adobe, Fujitsu, Hitachi, etc etc etc.
Now I had expected that there would be some English things hanging around somewhere because it is, after all, and International Conference. Umm... but no, *everything* was in Japanese. Every pamphlet, every product presentation... yoiks. And most of the people didn't speak English so if we wanted to ask questions then it was a bit difficult. This didn't stop Shravan-san though, who proceeded to ask loads of questions to people who didn't understand!
Oh, they were giving out tons of free stuff. I got a clock! Yeah! Perfect, because since I slept through my lousy alarm clock TWICE this week, I was ready for a new one. And this one *really* rings. Cool.
So we had lunch and then did another hour of wandering. Most of what we saw had to do with using Java for networking - not many applications hangin' around.
Hmm.. so instead of taking the automatic train back to the Shinbashi station, we took a boat! Yeah, it was really great - it maybe only took 20-30 mins, and was only 350 yen ($4). Neat-o. So, by now it was only about 3 or so, and our day was done... so instead of going all the way home to Hino, I got off at Shinjuku, where I was supposed to meet Simon (visiting home for the long weekend) at 6. So I had plenty of time to kill, which isn't very hard to do in Shinjuku! So I kind of wandered around until 6 - and surprisingly, I had no trouble meeting Simon! We had decided to meet near the big screen TV - where everyone meets in Shinjuku. We were feeling up for a challenge.
Let's see... we did a bit of shopping - there were some things he was looking for that he couldn't get in Hirooka.. go figure! Oh, we had dinner at a good restaurant for Yakisoba (fried soba noodles). Yummy! At about 10 we headed over to a pub called Dubliners, which we'd seen on our way to dinner. We wanted to go back there because we thought they might serve Guiness on tap, and well, we had to experience that.
So we get there, and wow, it's like, a real pub. Except that this place was PACKED. Like sardines.... with... gaijin! It was really, well, strange to see. It was almost more foreigners than Rappongi! And that's a lot.
So of course there's *nowhere* to sit. I'm sure that the seats have been taken since at least 8:30. Most people are standing, and most people are drinking beer; Guiness or Kilkinneys, on tap. Wow, I'm impressed.
It's kind of hard to explain why it felt so odd to be among so many foreigners but the feeling was there. And it seemed like many of them knew eachother - it's a place you go with a group, I guess. The atmosphere was really good with so much loud conversation. I like that although it makes it hard to hear. Anyways, we stayed til 11 or so, then headed on home. Neat place.
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