Back

'In Kawasaki' is back on, because I am back in Kawasaki.

Flights over went about as smoothly as could be hoped. Due to some stuff-ups with my first flight, after a lot of waiting in lines, I got put in Business Class. This was very nice, and my first time to try one of those airbeds, where the seat reclines almost flat. The massage feature was a nice touch too. :)

Woken as usual at 4:30am for breakfast, which is of course exactly what you feel like after approximately half an hour of half-sleep.

Didn't feel much as I arrived - it's hard to muster up much excitement at 6:30am when you're waiting in line for Customs - but once I arrived in Nippori to change trains, I started to feel like I was properly in Japan again. But it's so cold here! It was 4 degrees when I arrived, and quite bitingly cold.

Where am I now? Well, I can't check into my hotel until 4, so I came to an Internet cafe in Kawasaki. Six hours for 1200 yen ($15). I'm in a little, soundproof room with a spongy floor to sleep on.

Now I'm annoyed at myself for having never tried this before! I'd heard of it - Internet cafes that have spaces to sleep; on site they also have washing machines, showers, etc. It's a common thing for people who've missed their last train to kip at one of these for the night. It's also becoming more common for homeless people to stay in these places for the night, as it may be the only accommodation they can afford.

But I didn't realise they were actual rooms; I thought you just slept in the reclining chair in a little cubicle (my previous experience of Internet cafes here).

(Incidentally, I forgot how annoying it is that the Japanese space bar is about 1.5cm long, and right next to the button that changes your character input to じゃぱねせ sorry, Japanese characters. Ha ha ha...)

Anyway, I'm going out soon, to have some fun. :)

Random updates

I've been having a fun and busy month since my farewell party. I had a 'fireworks party', a day trip to Kannonzaki (down the Miura peninsula), a trip to Disney Land, a 'video games party' (everything is a party in Japan ^_^), a singles party, and a looot of food. I've worn kimono, tried calligraphy, sang karaoke, and lit fireworks.

Just looking at my diary now, I see that from September 9 until now (October 1), I've met up with people for drinks or parties or coffee, 26 times. 26!! I've met up with 34 different students, 8 different staff members, 2 friends, and met a whole bunch of new people too.

It's been rather sad saying so many final 'goodbyes', but the more I do it, the more I feel ready to leave. I often find that after I do something, my feeling is different than before I do it. For example, before I announced to students I was going to leave, I felt really sentimental, like I hated to leave. After I announced it, I felt less emotional about it; it felt more like 'oh well, this is what's going to happen'. Before - and while - I was saying my last goodbyes, I felt sad. But now, I've been saying so many, I'm not feeling as badly over each one.

Today was a good day. I met my co-worker for breakfast, met two students for coffee, and another student for dinner. That student has just done a 7-week homestay in Japan. His English improved greatly. I felt very proud of him. ^_^

I did a fair bit of Japanese study until this week. I did three weeks of Kumon and completed about 30 worksheet sets; about 20 hours of study in total. I also took several private lessons with my old teacher, and started on a new textbook studying JLPT 2-kyuu grammar. It's quite tough.

Also, I was mooching around Kawasaki as usual, and went to LaZona - the department store near my house - and the Backstreet Boys were there! There were sooo many people. They gave a free show - 4 songs - to promote their new CD. That's pretty cool!

Tomorrow will be my big 'Moving Day'. Not very much looking forward to that. Naturally I have, over the last week and a half, been cleaning and disposing of stuff, sending packages back, etc. Last night I gave a lot of my cooking ingredients and tea and coffee to random people in the guesthouse.*

Today I took some books to Book-Off (I bought them for over 10,000 yen, and sold them for 320 yen... hahaha... I would have been annoyed, if I weren't planning to just throw them away anyway). Tomorrow I'll take my printer to the school to give one of my co-workers who wants it. I have to transfer money to my Australian bank account, cancel my phone, wash clothes, take a final package to the post office, clean out my room, etc.

*(Actually, I had only met one of the people in the guesthouse - just saying a brief 'konnichiwa' to others I saw in the hall or kitchen - until last night. There were four of them sitting around finishing dinner, watching TV, chatting. First time I actually saw people socialising in the guesthouse. One of them offered me a snack from Hong Kong, so I got out my bottle of umeshu and offered it around. I needed to use it up anyway. I ended up staying down there for about an hour; three of them didn't speak any English at all, so it was good Japanese practice. ^_^)

I am a bit disgruntled now, because when I came back to my guesthouse, I found that the large communal garbage bin - which until today was full to bursting - was empty, and taped up, with a big sign on it saying 'Do not use'. So... what am I supposed to do now? Where are the 20 or so people in this building supposed to put their garbage? There is no information to that effect.

I am moving house tomorrow. Nice timing!! Couldn't you have waited one more day to disable use of our garbage bin? I am going to have a lot of stuff to chuck!

I shall leave Japan on Saturday morning, and go to Singapore. I'm going to Langkawi for a few days and then will return to Adelaide on Friday morning. Ja ne!!

Going back

Just letting you know I've booked my flights back to Australia and will be arriving on October 9th.

My guesthouse

I'm staying at a guesthouse now. There are about 20 girls here, mostly Japanese.

I've been here a few days. I can't say I like it overly. The worst, for me, is the bathroom, or lack thereof. The toilets are Japanese-style (eg, a hole in the ground) and not very clean. There's no soap or hand towel in the bathroom. There is no mirror. It feels dirty. The only full-length mirror is on the ground floor. I am on the third floor.

It may be good for exercise; if you want to make a cup of tea or use a Western-style toilet or iron clothes or see your reflection, you have to go down to the ground floor. If you want to wash or hang clothes, you have to go up to the rooftop.

Everything in the house is written in Japanese, and there was no explanation of rules, nobody to take me around the house and show me around. So I am figuring things out bit by bit. (At the time of writing, I just put a load of dirty laundry - with washing powder and all!! - in the dryer. !!! I didn't realise what I'd done until I'd (wasted) my 100 yen coin, and the clothes started flying around and sending powder everywhere...)

On the other hand, the location is extremely convenient and I am meeting up with a lot of people.

(By the way, my farewell party was good. Today I counted the number of presents I had gotten. I have received presents from 37 different people. 37!!!)

Done!

Yesterday was my last day of work. I was imparting a lot of information to the new teacher, and didn't actually have all that many classes myself, so it felt a bit atypical. I gave Tim Tams to every student for the last week.

A couple of former students - a mother and daughter - took me out to dinner after school, which was nice. They invited me to do a lot of things with them, and they gave me - I can't quite believe this - a real pearl necklace. !!! A real pearl necklace!! These are the same people who gave me souvenirs to take back to my family in Australia, and who invited me to see the daughter playing in an orchestra.

But a lot of students have been wonderfully generous, and I've been flooded with presents. Mostly, the students I've taught a long time, or whom I've developed a good relationship with, were the ones to give me things. So I am touched.

Here in my hotel room is a vase with a huge bouquet of pink and dusky purple roses; it must have cost over $50. The student who gave it to me is a guy I've taught for quite a while; he was fairly reserved and shy for a long time and only in the last few months have we begun to develop a good rapport. ^_^ One 6-year-old child made me a bracelet and drew a picture of my class. I got a picture from one of my 2-year-olds, too.

One lady, who previously gave me some of her homemade yuzu-shu and cherry-shu (liqueur), gave me a big bottle of homemade umeshu. Umeshu is plum liqueur - my favourite drink - and she said this bottle had been maturing for six years, so it would have a really good taste.

I'm having a farewell party on Saturday, and really looking forward to that. I love a good party. About 60 people are coming. ^_^

***

Right now I'm still staying in a hotel, but tomorrow I will move into my guesthouse. It's only a few blocks from here, so I'll spend a couple of hours tomorrow ferrying my stuff back and forth from my school and hotel to my guesthouse.

Today I joined Kumon. The approach is to basically do lots of worksheets and lots of reading and writing in Japanese. I am not very fast at them, though they are fairly simple for me in terms of grammar. For example, my communicative and listening ability is quite a lot higher than my reading, which is slow (and I can't read many kanji confidently). As for my Japanese writing, well...

The thing is, when I have studied Japanese previously, I have focused mostly on learning new grammar and communicating with it. Therefore, I've always taken notes in romaji (eg, writing Japanese words using English letters). I've done some textbook work in which I have written a fair bit of hiragana; therefore my hiragana is not too slow. But writing kanji and katakana is not very fast for me.

Also, knowing how to say something in Japanese doesn't mean I can always write it totally accurately. For example, 'hello' is 'konnichiwa'. But in Japanese characters, it's written こんにちは (konnichiha), as the 'ha' character is often written as 'wa' in romaji. Another example is that I know to pronounce 'coffee' as 'kohi', but when I actually write it in Japanese, I have to pause - are both sounds 'long' (eg コーヒー) or only one sound long (eg コーヒ or コヒー). I can often guess or remember it right, but when I've never or rarely written it before, I do need to think about it, or check somewhere. Hence, I am slow.

So I think this Kumon approach is just what I need - very concentrated practice reading and writing. I'm also going to have a few private lessons with my original Japanese teacher.

Where I am now

Phew... I'm rather glad this week is over. Basically, I've moved the entire contents of an apartment by hand. Because I'm too cheap to use a transportation company, or even a taxi, every day I've been hauling huge loads of bags via the trains, lurching clumsily through every ticket gate, and leaving my stuff at my office.

This morning is the first morning I've neither had to move, nor work. I have a whole glorious day to do nothing. Right now I'm staying at a hotel, and I shall presently go down for a free lunch buffet. ^_^

It really is remarkable how much stuff one can accumulate in just over a year and a half. I sent a package of stuff back to Australia; I threw out about ten huge garbage bags of stuff, and I still had about 20 bags, and a very swollen suitcase, to bring.

Anyway, it's all done now. I expect to move into my guesthouse in a few days. Happily, it's only a few minutes' walk from my school and hotel, and I chose to move in one day before I have to check out of this hotel, so I can do quite a leisurely to-and-fro of bringing my bags in. My room is going to be really small - I mean, considerably smaller than the fairly small apartment I just left. So long as I can physically fit my suitcase in there, I guess it will be okay. I've never stayed at a guesthouse before. Hopefully it will have a nice atmosphere. I haven't even seen it, but I've signed up for one month.

Last night after work I went out for Nepalese curry with some students. After that, we went out to karaoke. We did three hours of karaoke, and I sang at least a dozen songs, and it was the first time I didn't sing *any* English songs. ^_^ Actually I think it may have been the first time I was the only foreigner among Japanese people. It was nice to be able to finish at about 3am, and just walk back to my hotel, without having to feel 'trapped' by my lack of train.

Tomorrow I and another teacher have been invited to lunch at the house of one of my students. She is my child student; the one I have taught the longest, and I really like her and her mum. So it's nice they invited us over. The girl was all 'onegaishimasu!', hoping we would come. ^_^

I've now been teaching my 'last' classes. That is, I taught my last Thursday, my last Friday, and my last Saturday. I will still teach Tuesday and Wednesday next week. So at the end of each class I've been giving everyone a Tim Tam. Several students have given me presents, which is really nice.

Tokyo Photo Scavenger Hunt

I had a very fun day today. Pete organised a Photo Scavenger Hunt. Basically, you get a big list of items, and go off and try to take photos of as many items on the list as possible. The team with the most items at the end, wins. We were divided into three teams. I was with my co-worker Aya. ^_^

We spent most of our time running around Shibuya, Yoyogi and Harajuku. The race began and ended at Hachiko square. We were allowed to go anywhere, but due to time restraints, we stayed in the same area (we had five hours, which sounds like a lot, but we also had a lot of items to find).

Some example list items...

Someone waving with both hands. It's not all that uncommon to see this; particularly young girls at train stations. But we couldn't find anyone. So a few minutes before our 'deadline', we asked some random foreigner on the street if he wouldn't mind waving his hands for a photo. Hahaha...

A live cicada. Aya supposedly photographed one - I couldn't really see it in the picture she took - but I never saw one. I heard hundreds of them in Yoyogi Park, but they really are completely impossible to find...

Someone wearing leather pants. Even at Harajuku station, we couldn't find one. But happily, the Rockabilly club was out in Harajuku. These are the dudes who dress up like guys out of 'Grease' and dance to 50s rock 'n' roll in the park, complete with ducktail hairstyles and - black leather. Score! Actually, all three of our teams went to that park and got the same guy!

A kid laughing. And, a kid crying. So every time we saw any child go past, we looked at their faces. 'Oh, all the kids in Shibuya are not laughing,' said Aya.
Then in Yoyogi, there were a lot of happy kids, and we finally got one laughing. After that, we were scrutinising all the kids in Yoyogi to try to find a crying child. They were all too happy; we pondered how we could make one cry. Fortunately it didn't come to that, and we eventually found one outside a huge toystore. Hahaha.

A shirtless man. These are very easy to find in Yoyogi Park, and almost impossible to find in regular city streets in Tokyo. Today was pretty warm, but fortunately not as hot as the last few days have been (it was really humid and stifling). In fact, it was quite comfortable weather for our scavenger hunt. ^_^

Twins. I saw identical twin girls in identical dresses. My camera was permanently on, and in my hand, and in a second I had them. We had to keep a lot of different items in our mind at all times, looking around for people wearing crocs, and someone with a tattoo, and so on.

Disney ears. All of us, independently of one another, went to the Disney store in Shibuya. Actually we got quite a few of our list items in relevant stores.

A stuffed dolphin. We looked in a lot of stores for this one! Finally we were in Harajuku and I spied Kiddy Land nearby. Score!

A couple kissing. Anywhere but Yoyogi Park, this would have probably been quite tough. But I saw a foreign couple walking hand-in-hand, and they looked quite lovey-dovey, so I kept my camera trained on them, until - yes!! - they leaned in for a kiss.

Someone walking two or more dogs. If I were in Yokohama, down at the harbour, this would have been super easy. We had to actually go to the 'dog run' area of Yoyogi Park in order to find someone. A nice man was pulling a bulldog in a cart, and when Aya asked, he invited us to come with him to the area. (It was funny to walk with him; every single picnicker and couple and family sitting nearby turned to stare as we walked past, and most of them exclaimed 'kawaii!!' (Cute!))

A bald head, taken from above. We were in a large department store, going downstairs, when suddenly Aya did a u-turn and took off up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. (This kind of behaviour was par for the course today, hahaha.) When I turned to see what she was doing, I immediately realised why - a guy with a fully shaved head was coming up the stairs past me. ^_^

A Louis Vuitton bag. This must be one of the easiest things in all of Tokyo to find. Hahaha! 'Let's look out for one as we walk,' I said, and within about thirty seconds we had a good shot.

A couple wearing masks and holding hands. Some people do wear face masks to protect against colds and flu; but this was a difficult item to achieve. So in a novelty store, we asked a random couple if they wouldn't mind wearing some children's face masks and having a picture taken. So we have a cute shot of Kamen Rider and Stitch holding hands. ^_^

87 different things to find. We got 59 of them (well, 62, but 3 were deemed 'invalid', for example instead of a picture of 'a shrine' we just had a picture of a shrine gate, etc). We got a few extra points for having 2 or more list items in the same picture, and overall our team came second, out of three. ^_^

Some of the items we *didn't* get: a cat, a couple both wearing crocs (and I looked SO constantly for this one!), a child using a vending machine, the 49th floor of a building, and the inside of a love hotel (the other teams got this!!!).

I'd love to do something like this again. Maybe I'll organise one myself some day. It really does seem better in Tokyo etc, than it would in Adelaide, mostly because people in Adelaide don't tend to run around with cameras, whereas in Tokyo you don't stand out much.