Phones and sugar

(happenings on April 7th)

Ahh, today was a much better day already. I didn't really get that much sleep but was still way better rested than on Wednesday. Today was for the most part more organisational stuff: student card, library card, general introduction to the school and its facilities, as well as getting a schedule of all available courses so I can have a look at them and test them out freely next week before deciding which I want to take. All well with that. Both of the teachers that have been kind of 'assigned' to me seem very nice, especially Taro Ogawa. He's a bit younger and very friendly, in a boyish kind of way. He seems a little bit more open than the other teachers in general, but that is probably only because his English is a bit better.

I really need to work on my Japanese,
especially if I hope to make some real contact with other students. It seems they are surprisingly much like the Finns when it comes to speaking a foreign language. There was a group of boys in the student lounge when we went there and Ogawa-san motioned to one of them, saying that whatever-his-name-was was very good in English. The boy in question looked down, grinned until his eyes vanished and I thought the corners of his mouth would touch his ears, then he said something in Japanese to the teacher, who translated: He said to ask him, if you have questions.

Not one word of English actually came out of the guy's own mouth. XD

At lunch time I went eating in the school canteen for the first time, accompanied by both of my tutors. The only 'vegetarian' meal as far as I could see was kitsune soba, traditional Japanese buckwheat noodles with fried tofu. So, as I had expected, keeping up my 'happy meat' diet will be pretty hard at least when eating at school. Because, as good as soba noodles taste, I think I would get tired of them pretty soon. Good thing is that there are many fresh vegetables to be had in the supermarket, so when cooking for myself I can start to experiment with those. The whole thing is just made slightly more complicated by the equipment in the kitchen of my lodgings.

Here in Senshinen I have until now found an amazing number of:

1 big spoon

1 small cake fork

2 small spoons

2 to 3 normal table knives

about 7 plates, all different sizes and forms

about a million toothpicks

probably roughly a kilo of sugar

I found no spices whatsoever, meaning also no salt, which was especially nice when I fried myself an egg tonight before noticing that what I had thought/hoped to be salt was sugar. Fortunately I did realize it before actually putting it onto my eggs. Well, still, fried eggs without spices?! Uhm. God thanks it seems at least the 'Hokkaido' butter I bought is slightly salted.

Otherwise the kitchen features a normal amount of pots and pans and a very high amount of chop sticks and different sized rice and soup bowls which was to be expected.

Oh yeah, no cage free eggs, by the way. At all. Only the absolutely nonplussed faces of my tutors when I asked if there might be the possibility of free range or at least penned hens' eggs. Ai: 'Do they taste differently?' I gave her the comparison of spending a lifetime in the tourist class of an airplane, without the entertainment system or the occasional toilet walks. That didn't seem to make much of an impression.

I just hope they'll never ask me to explain why I try to eat only very little meat, or rather none at all if I don't know where it comes from. I might make the top of their 'weirdest gaijin ever'-list (gaijin being a rather rude expression for foreigners, especially westerners)

Well, at least at this moment my tutors are still very interested in helping me as good as they can. With Ai we drove to all three of the Japanese mobile phone firms to ask for a prepaid mobile and I think it took us about 3 hours to find out that with none of them would I be able to send messages the someone outside of Japan. Dammit. What the hell, Japan? So, I have a Japanese phone now, and can call and be called internationally. I think I should be able to receive messages from abroad but have not confirmed that for sure yet. I cannot myself send messages internationally (I would have had to take a contract phone for that and I simply refuse the hassle)

A card for loading money coasts me 3000 yen (about 26€) or 5000 yen and has to be bought every 3 months, or the old one expires and the phone cannot be used until a new card is loaded. But, the money that might stay over from the old card supposedly adds up to the new card, which means I might be able to use that to at least call home to Germany shortly once in a while. Within Japan I can send as many mails and sms as I want for 600 yen of the card.

So. Weird.

Damn, but Ai was really great. Driving me around and explaining my situation again and again to each of the salespersons (and one of them was agonizingly persistent I should take a contract!) until I had finally made up my mind.

Oh yeah, and we also went into Jusco's in between to get something to drink!

 So, a picture of myself in front of Jusco's and some other pictures from my flight. Until next!

You can get everything at Jusco's!

 Flight into the morning

Fuji-san! (well, somehwere in the background)