June 21st

Mistuda house

I rode in to Shinjuku by myself today. When I first got on the train, it was cramped as it always is. After Omiya station, however, I got the true japanese subway experience. I was so sardined I couldn't breath, much less move. They had guys in uniform outside the train, packing people in and trying to get the doors closed, almost like trying to close an overfilled suitcase. I suppose I had better get used to this.

I didn't learn a whole lot of new stuff in class today, and neither did most of the rest of the class, I think. We must be going though this review for the benefit of those who hadn't studied before coming to japan. Oh well. At least I'm learning stuff at an incredible rate with this kanji jusho thing... being able to read japanese is really useful towards learning it. Also, a lot of the kids in class I were being noisy in the Kanji class today, so I missed a lot of what was being said... I kinda wish they'd enforce their behavior guidelines a little more.

I bought a Soba bento for lunch from the conbini, today. Inside was a bunch of noodles and a few packages with japanese writing all over them. One was the sauce, one was wasabi, and apparently another one was an ice pack, not food. Thanks for catching that, Ryan. Soba is good, especially on warm days.

On the way back to the station, Ryan, Victoria, Tim and I stopped at the ODAKYU department store. Ryan had to leave pretty quick, but the rest of us got to stick around and ogle all the goodies... I bought a spherical jigsaw puzzle of a soccer ball, and two Famitsu magazines (finally found it!). We were looking at a bank of gashapon machines, and I was thinking about getting a particular naruto one. Went away for a little while, and when I came back, the one I wanted to get had been changed to some other thing... guess they rotate them regularly or something. Oh well.

I got back to Hasuda about half an hour earlier then I thought I would, so no one was home. Gave me some time to sit down on the porch and read Famitsu... it's a little different from magazines in the US. Let me put it this way; Denis would get over the culture shock pretty fast.

I've almost gotten used to this taking your shower before dinner thing. Today though, I was the first one in the shower. Japanese water heaters are different from gas ones, they're electric realtime heaters. This means that there's a little control panel in the bathroom, covered in kanji-marked buttons. It took me a few tries (all of them, actually), to get the thing on, and I pushed some emergency call button in the process. I didn't know what it was, though, so I was kinda surprised when Hide got sent in to check on me. Yeah.

I watched Naruto on TV this evening, and BLEACH yesterday. It's kinda different not having the subtitles, but for the most part I don't really need them any more for stuff as simple as bleach and naruto.

oyasumi.

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