Friday October 20th

konnichiwa!

Mannn today has been so much fun I don’t know where to start. So start at the beginning? All right! Well, first I kicked ass in Takano-sensei’s class. He’s the one who told me I couldn’t take the writing class because I’m not good enough, but in the mean time my speech was superb *ahum* so I kicked ass! After that I saw Kenji, my tutor, when I was in the computer area and I had a quick chat with him. We were going to go to the post office and then on to city hall to pick up our alien registration cards. That’s the ID we need here. I decided to ask Kenji along as I figured otherwise I would never get to talk to him properly as he seems to make no effort at all. So in the end I got him to come along and he even came with me and Claudia to all the phone shops to ask around about available phones The alien registration means we can now purchase a phone. I need a Japanese bank account though if I don’t want a prepaid (which is a rather limited choice). So with a lot of help from Kenji we figured a few things out and my plan was to go and get a phone tomorrow. The pitfall here is that it’s almost 7 o’clock in the morning now and I haven’t gone to bed yet. WHYYY do you ask? I’ll get to that in a minute (suspension –ooohhh).

After phone shopping Kenji took me to a Gamma type shop, like a DIY shop place. I wanted a bookshelf you see, and I bought an ikea-style little cabinet thing for 7 euro (1000 yen) to put in my room! By this time Kenji had really loosened up and we were actually starting to have fun! He offered to bring my bookshelf thing up to our dorms on his scooter. How cool is that!? He drove all the way up the hill for me, how sweet haha. As it turned out, Baard (his real name is actually Sachihiro I think) and Nonoka were here as well so we had a quick chat and told them we would come over that night. So after al that we made dinner and headed off to the Amigo party downstairs. Amigo is the association for foreign students or something, and they suck at parties. No one had told us it was sort of like a eat food and be bored party. So we had dinner beforehand, then watched people eat for a while, and decided to go back upstairs. But thanks for the welcome party Amigo, really.

After a quick call from my mummy it was time to go to Baard! We hopped into a taxi and had a splendid time at Baard’s, truly. I even ate sashimi! (raw fish). For those who don’t believe me, here’s a picture, even though it’s not the clearest, but it’s true! Who would have that huh!? There are plenty of pictures to give you an impression of the night, I don’t think I can pinpoint anything specific that was so fun. The atmosphere is just really great there. There were quite a lot of foreigners there too, 3 Americans and 2 Frenchmen. (yes, that’s a lot here). We actually ended up talking with one of the American guys, Clinton, because as it turned out he even knew some of the people that were here 2 years ago, the original Dutchmen at Baards! Around 2:30 and after a lot of beers Clinton (so Clinton had all the beers, not me) thought it might be fun to go to karaoke all together. As he was calling everyone who didn’t want to go a wuss (GERRIE) we all decided to go (yes Gerrie went in the end as well – I think he was really glad he came, he seemed to have had a lot of fun :P). Baard even joined us after he had closed up his izakaya, and his wife Yokori (I think) and their daughter Nonoka came too.
I seriously think that Nonoka is going to have the shock of her life when she has to start going to school. Right now she is this cheeky little girl that has a bizarre fascination for the Dutch people living at Nishi-machi kaikan (it doesn’t matter who they are, it’s the Dutch people who live here, meaning us at the moment – though she’s shyer around girls than boys apparently and not in a weird way) and she comes here almost daily. And then she totters around the izakaya and then goes along to karaoke at 3 in the morning. She even sang a song herself! (Well – sort of mumbled a song :P). At 6 it all had been quite enough and we went home. Baard got us a taxi, and it later turned out he had even paid the taxi for us! Not everyone could fit in the taxi (there were more than 10 of us; only two were by bike) so I think he took the others home himself (he is known to do that) so as compensation or something he paid our taxi? I don’t know, it was very nice of him anyway, and we will definitely go there again, despite the fact that it’s quite far away. But now, seriously, it’s time for bed. So good morning and sweet dreams!

*yawn* ~Jenn