Nihongo-a-Go-Go :: Aimee's Journal

Blaaaaah.

Well, training has been highly demotivating. I'm not going to subside into Nova-bashing like many other employees...

I may, however, launch rather extensively into some trainer-bashing.

First off, we're randomly being trained out at the Gifu branch. Gifu (Gee-fu) is a 21 minute train ride away. It is a small, semi-rural town that is more like what people probably imagine Japan to be like - the narrow streets with spaghetti phone lines, people walking around, someone frying some unknown meat on a stick at a little restaurant by the street... you know. Your classic idea of what an asian country would be like. It's very cute. The people seem very nice.

Which doesn't excuse that it's a hell of a commute.

Our trainer is a flaming moron. He's an Austrailian who thinks he's the best thing that ever happened to this country and to the world in general. I'm not going to wax poetic about it, but suffice to say that he's a very bad trainer. He has a way of being vague, condescending, and unmotivating all at once. He makes you feel as though you're doomed to fail and incapable of doing anything right. He's a dick. He is also highly unprofessional.

I can now imitate an Austrailian accent fairly decently, and amused myself and Mandy by mimicking him for a portion of the ride home. ;)

Training itself is kinda wonky. I think I'm doing okay, but I don't know. The problem is, Nova teaching isn't like real teaching. It's... some bizarre hybrid of Western language teaching methods, Japanese language teaching methods, and pure commercialism. It's counter to a lot of things (including common sense) that I've been trained in as an ed major. So I dunno. I don't really like it, though I do like the students. I just have what's-his-name looming and evaluating, and I'd mess up and he'd tell me how bad I was. Blaaaaah!

But we are home now, after walking back from the train station in a typhoon. Which pretty much equals rain and high winds. The rain is incredible. A couple times, it would just suddenly seem like someone dropped a solid sheet of water onto us from the roofs. It's pouring, though, and the winds is blowing away.

I made some bizarre chicken. I fried it. It's probably extremely bad for us, but since today I've really only had a banana and some onigiri, I'm not too worried. The calories and fat keep me alive! :) And protein is good for me too. Anyway, it was basically chicken, butter, soy sauce, salt, and garlic salt. I sounds absoluely disgusting but it was surprisingly yummy. Who knew?

Well, we are going to figure out the garbage management situation (it is more complex than in the US, but nothing unmanageable). Good night!

Due to the typhoon, our balcony is now a lakefront property. This is a picture of the rooftop under ours, flooded over.

Hanko and Work.

Today was orientation, which was rather dull. Orientations always are though, and we did get a good lunch out of it.

I got my job placement and hours. I'm not overly thrilled with either, as I'm working somewhere way off from where I hoped to be... and about a half hour commute by train. Still, it's not horrible. I have mostly late shifts, meaning most days that I work will be from 1-9 pm. It's nice though because it means that I can sleep in, and I can chat in the mornings with people at home - 10am is only pm at home. So that's nice. Let's me keep in touch! :)

I also saw an japanese-style "pit toilet" for the first time. We wer eint he building and on the way out, we walked in and I was saying, "We can use this one-no we can't..." Mandy says I looked as though someone stole the toilet, rather than just seeing the other kind. A pit toilet looks like the first two or three toilets on this page. You squat to use it. I don't feel ambitious enough for that, especially in nylons. Fortunately, they also had a normal, western style toilet.

There are a lot of neato things in Sakae station - it's a little mall. There is an area called "Crystal Plaza" that has a neat looking fountain.

The neatest thing was getting my hanko. A hanko is a stamp that's used with your signature. It says my first name in katakana, one of the types of Japanese writing (phonetic writing used for writing foreign words). It reads top to bottom - "eh-ee-mee" In the pic, the red stamp is right side up, the hanko itself has rolled to the side. (See the full entry for the pic)

Operation Domestic Shop

Today has been very encouraging as well. :)

We walked down to the grocery store (FEEL Supermarket) and had a bit of an adventure with shopping for food. Hurrah, language barrier. There were a lot of neat things in the fresh food section that were just neat to look at. I am impressed by how well presented most things in Japan are. Like, the meats in the grocery store will be arranged almost artistically on their little trays. Some of the foods are just interesting to look at. The thing I have in mind specifically is an big, colorful octopus tentacle. It was a burgundy scarlet and just fantastic to look at. Mandy says she has no desire to EVER eat anything like that, though, so I have no excuse to buy it to photograph it. Anyway, we spent about 3200 yen (28ish dollars) on essentials like toilet paper, drinks, noodles, some veggies and fruits... just some basics. We have about a 10 minute walk to the store, so we didn't want to get too much. More than likely, we'll be making several small shops per week.

The exciting thing we found on the way there was a store called Book Off ("No, you book off!"). It's a used book, movie, and cd place. So they had just rows and rows and rows of used manga (comic books). All the Shoujo (girl) comics were on one lassively long aisle, and all of the Shonen (boy) comics were on the next aisle. I picked up a few pretty ones. It's weird; pretty much all bookstores here have manga here, where int he states they didn't. And they're often HUGE manga sections, even in small bookstores. Everyone reads manga.

We picked up lunch at a little place next to the grocery... Read the rest of the entry to see my lunch!

I got this. I'm not sure what it's called (please post if you know), but it was delicious. It was a flavored sticky rice with flakes of seasoning and some pickled vegetable mixed in, and then it was shaped and wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. It was only 105 yen (around a dollar American) and really filled me up. Mandy got something that looked a lot like lo mein but tasted much better. It was weird... very flavorful! So lunch was excellent and cheap.

On the walk there, we also randomly had an Indian man on a bike stop us and ask us out to coffee. We didn't really want to, but we were polite and took his name and phone number. I don't think we'll call, but it was better than doing the "I don't talk to strangers thing." It's true though: non-Japanese really do sort of cling to each other. In this case I'm not sure if it was that or that he thoguht we were cute. He looked older, though. Mm.

W00t.

Today was pretty darn cool.

We learned how to ride the subway, which was an interesting enough experience. The ladies at information, though they spoke English, were completely unhelpful with telling us how ot use the ticket machine, which is completely in Japanese. We sort of winged it, though, which seemed to work. It was a very short ride to the Sakae station, where we got off and walked about 10-15 minutes to the Volks store.

The Volks store was... hobbyist mecca. I'm not going to go on about it, since it would bore most of the people reading it. Suffice to say that I was absolutely floored by the selection and wonderful things available to view and purchase. We will definitely be returning. Mandy fell in love with the floor model of a limited edition, sold out doll. She told me when we got home that she would trade me for him.

We have had our second night of chicken ramen that doesn't taste like chicken. It comes in little pucks with the seasoning already on, rather than in a packet. I also ate kiwi yogurt today, which was unusual and refreshing.

Tomorrow is our last day before we have to start work.

I am a lot like a little kid now, in terms of reading. Like a five year old, I will attempt to quietly sound out any writing that I see. I'm sure it's annoying to Mandy, but it's good for me.

We noticed yesterday too that we live relatively near an adult store. It doesn't pretend to be subtle, it has multicolored signs and blinky lights. For your amusement, here is "SexyWorld!"

We came, we saw, we conquered, we went home, and now we're not going out again until tomorrow.

Today was vey successful, I feel. We went to Nagoya Station and looked around for the passport center - we needed to get new photos taken for our alien registration card. That took a little while, but the information desk ladies happily spoke English. I liked that. :) Because of that, we found what we were looking for (which otherwise would have taken us considerably longer). My new picture is not good, but it is MARKEDLY better than any of the others, I think.

Nagoya station is really pretty neato. The stores there are very cool and full of cool things! Someof the fashions here are really gorgeous. Mandy and I stopped and looked int he window of this one store for probably five minutes at this outfit. I read the articles and prices, and they were rather expensive! But they were very very pretty. Most of the restaurants have plastic displays of the foods they serve in their front windows, along with the prices. That seems like areally great thing for those of us who don't speak Japanese.

Mandy and I make a good team. I can read katakana and hirogana, the two phonetic writing types. Unfortunately, I'm still at the point where recalling and saying takes a lot of my attention, so I have to read aloud and sometimes I don't really know what I'm saying. So I'll be trucking along "Kah-ru-doh-jee-n" and Mandy will be listening and repeat the word "Cardigan." It's very nice. Mandy is also a good navigator. So she navigates, I read and speak a little. I'm going to try to learn more.

The Ward office was... a little difficult to find. We're a bit confused on the naming conventions of the roads around here - we're not exactly sure if they don't name their streets, don't post their names, name the intersections, or what. Mandy thinks they might name intersections. It makes navigation hard not knowing.

At any rate, about half-way to the ward office, it started raining rather hard. Fortunately, we had brought our umbrellas. The weather is strange here. It's like 80-some degrees, humid, and raining today. We got tot he office, and then we had a really tough time getting them to give us temporary certificates of Alien Registration (which our company requires). It was supposed to be eas and painless, and Mandy ended up trying to convince them that we needed them prety much today for about 10 minutes? Meantime, I chatted with a man from West Africa who coincidentally lives two floors below us exactly. He lives with a girl from Brazil. He has a car, and buys, sells and trades vehicles. So we have now met two people from our building. More on the other one later. Anyway, the lady said we'd have to come back at 4 to pick up the certificates, which was a whole 2 1/2 hours later.

So we kicked around for awhile, looking in convenience stores and a bookstore that was down there. It was neat to see what was the same and different there. Some things that Nova told us would be expensive or hard to find didn't really seem to be - like dental products. Except floss, which was about 750 yen (near... maybe $6.75). We got a big multipack of chicken ramen, which I will be cooking shortly for our dinner. Yay, cheap staple. I'm proud of myself for sounding out as much as I did today. I'm getting much quicker. Though I must admit, I am surprised by how much is in katakana (the phoentic writing type used to write foeign words, like English).

We picked up our certificates and headed back to the building... where we were met by an old Japanese lady who lives across from us. That was strange. She wanted to talk, and I told her that I only spoke the tiniest bit of Japanese. And she just kept talking and talking... she seems very nice and very intrested, but I felt bad because I mostly kept saying things like, "I'm sorry, I don't understand" and then other things that were just minimal things like "I am from New York, I am American" "I live there *points*." Thinking on it now, I probably should have introduced myself and given my name. But it just totally eluded me. Well, I'll see her again, I'm sure, she just lives across the way. I hope to eventually be able to talk to her a little bit and have some idea of what's going on.

The shower this morning was strange. I am very glad to have short hair, because Mandy had a really hard time of using it. I am providing a picture and more below...

Okay, to continue. Here's a pic, labelled so you can follow what I'm saying.

To shower, you actually stand beside the tub, rather than in it. You shower more military style, turning it on to rinse yourself and off while you're lathering.

All right, first of all, here's what you do to use it:
~Turn knob #1 to turn on the gas.
~Crank handle #2 to spark pilot. (The black rectangle below is a little window where you can see the blue flame when it catches).
~Back to knob #1, set the temperature. There is basically warm to hot, and then there's also a setting for bathing where you can set the tub to heat up your water (starting out with cold water). You need to have the tub already full, though, Taka told us... otherwise it can be dangerous! I don't think we'll be using that setting much; it sounds kind of scary.
~Knob #4 controls the water pressure, I think.
~Turn knob #3 to the left to turn on the faucet (#5) to fill he tub. Or turn it to the right to turn on the sprayer head (#6).
~Use sprayer head as needed.

This sticker on the back of our door charmingly tells us not to spray the water through the grate in our bathroom door.

Today's Decree: No napping.

Well, I woke up at 8 this morning, approximately. That in itself isn't bad, but Mandy and I didn't actually go to sleep until 4. Wait, that's not quite accurate either - we went to BED at 12. We just couldn't shut up until about 4 because we were wired. Jetlag and crossing many many timezones is very rough on the body. It also doesn't help that the sun sets around 5:15 and rises at 6 am, approximately. That's a bit off from home.

Today's first adventure includes learning how the shower works, exactly. Our landlord showed us when we first moved in, but our brains were pretty well liquified by then and neither of us retained it. It may sound weird, but our shower is gas-powered and seemed indescribably complicated at the time. So that should be fun.

After that, we need to walk to the Train Station and get new passport photos to use when we get our alien registration cards. Eventhough I had an extra from before, it turn sout that we need two photos. After that, we will walk to the Nishi-ku ward office and get said alien registration cards. Well, certificates. We won't ge the cards for a few weeks yet.

The plan is to walk a lot today. I feel vaguely ill from lack of sleep.... but I'll live. :) After we do all that, we're going to go to the convenience store near the apartment and buy some food to stock our apartment with. As yesterday was the national holiday, we didn't bother to go out because pretty much everything was closed. We have been eating granola bars and Easy Mac. :) Yummy, but not particularly filling or nutritious. So shopping today is a must.

Well, I am off to figure out the shower. I keep saying I'll take a little video of our apartment, but I keep either geting busy or having the video look horrible. It's weird - on video, our apartment looks deceptively large. I'm going to try again today if I can.

Edit:
I forgot to mention our luggage delivery yesterday! We weren't expecting it until about 8 pm. Mandy and I both crashed in the afternoon for an hour-long nap (with pda alarm set), and then all of the sudden the doorbell was ringing! I stumbled to the door in my pjs and then fumbled with the deadbolt (which locks, it's kinda a nice security thing, but it's a real pain in the butt to get undne). I opened the door, actually expecting to see our landlord, but instead saw this other guy who was waving a slip at me with Mandy's name on it. I knew what he was saying, but I was too groggy to respond correctly. Basically, he said that our luggage was here, though it took like, 5 minutes ot get him to understand that mandy was the name on the slip. He didn't any english, and my minimal Japanese was totally failing me. He seemed very good natured, though, and seemed to think the situation enormously funny.

I felt like an idiot, because I knew how to say things like "That's her" and "This is mine" and "There are 4" and "It's here" and stuff like that. But I was just SO groggy and surprised to see our luggage already that I couldn't even figure out what the hell was going on.

We have largely unpacked, though we still need to find homes for some things. At present, we have covered most available surfaces with crap.

Morning.

Well, I woke up at the crack of dawn... 6 am almost on the dot. I watched the sun rise from the balcony, it was very pretty. In the morning light, Nagoya is still very interesting looking. It feelslike 6 at night to me, though, and like I have just taken a nap. I may have to take a nap this afternoon to keep going, though I'm going to try not to.

Mandy has become intensely interested in our city map - it turns out that at the station near the company's main office, there is an Outback Steak House. Imagine how expensive it must be!

Emi also answered our question about the toaster oven. The last setting is for Mochi (which is what I thought, I guess, when I sounded it out, I just had no idea what it was). Mochi is a seasonal Japanese food that's like a rice patty sort of thing, and when you heat it the middle swells up. She says they're good, but one little mochi has the same amount of calories and carbs as a full bowl of rice!

Anyway, I am eager for our luggage to arrive. It won't be here till 8 or so tonight though. Man! I wanna change clothes and all!

Oh, and training starts on Monday. Today is a national holiday in Japan... otherwise today we'd go to the ward office to get our alien registration cards. Unfortunately, that must now wait until tomorrow!

Hello from Japan!

I am here! (click thumbnail for balcony view)

The flight were long... but not horrible. Happily, we both popped sleeping pills and managed to sleep for about 6 hours of the longer flight. We got out of Vancouver about a half hour late and never made up the time; by the time we got to Osaka, we were about 45 minutes late. It was about 4 o'clock pm Japan time, so about 20.5 hours later than when we left! Long time....

After we went through a very very quick bit in customs, we hopped onto the shuttle train to go to Shin-Osaka, the bigger trainstation where we would catch the Shinkansen - the Mighty Bullet Train! The Shuttle train was neato, though. It was very very clean. It had been coming from one way, and Mandy and I looke din and were like "Man, we're gonna be riding backwards...." Then all of the sudden... the rows of seats swivelled around! Small thing, but it was very cool.

The Bullet Train is neat to. It had a lot of cars... and we walked through most of them because the first 10 or so are reserved seating. We had open seating in cars 1-5. But of those, only three were non-smoking (the smoking ones were gross just to walk through, yuck!). The train itself was very clean and not very crowded - the seats were comfortable. It was hard to believe we were going something like 160mph. In Nagoya (Na-go-ya) Station, we were met by our landlord, who took us back tot he apartment.

It's a nice apartment. It's big enough, though the rooms are verynarrow. The one bedroom is too claustrophobic for either of us, though, so we've moved both futons into the bigger room. The futons were an adventure in themselves, because they're basically a pile of mats and bedding that somehow go together. I stilldon't think we have them right because we have nothing to use as a reference. However, the night is warm and thye're basically acting as a barrier between us and the tatami mats. The tatami (ta-ta-mee) mats make the floor softer and the rooms more fragrant. They sort of smell like alphalfa. I think it's pleasant, though Mandy says they make her feel like a hampster. ;)

We had Easy Mac for dinner - I packed it in my carry-on. :) It's not much, but it was enough to fill me up for the night. My body is soooo confused on the time right now! It doesn't help that it gets dark early around here....

Our apartment is very different - everything is gas powered, like anything with hot water. The toilet is delightfully Western. Our landlord, Taka, showed us how to use everything, and we have instructions in a little handout on our coffeetable. Oh!! Surprise good news! We have a couch! We weren't supposed to....

One thing remains confusing. The toaster oven. The first settling is "toast" ("to-su-to") the second is cookies, I think ("kukkii") and the third..... rubber nipple? Any guesses?

View image

I'll take pictures tomorrow when it's light out.