Poker Face

Edit: We're still a few days behind here.

Futons have hard pillows. I guess the taffy pillow at the airport wasn’t a fluke. First thing in the morning there was a welcome to Kansai Gaidai kind of assembly. Half the people had their language placement test right afterward, but I didn’t and wandered the campus. I thought I could use a USB key, but the convenience store on campus only had them for 2000 yen, and there weren’t any pencils I was crazy about, so I walked for 20 minutes to a department store, and had to ask someone where the USB memory was, and felt silly because the store was enormous and all I wanted was a memory stick. The man I asked about the USB key asked me where I was from, I answered and then he said, oh, you’re so skilled. Doesn’t take much, sometimes. I kind of wanted to find the stationary section and buy a pencil too, but decided that would be pushing my luck. I didn’t end up saving any money on the USB key, but the walk was nice.

I had lunch at the cafeteria for the first time, which was fun, and decided to be adventurous and sit down across from someone eating alone, who turned out to be another german who had already been there for a semester. His japanese friend sat down and we had a conversation about... mcdonald’s? I kind of spaced out for most of it. I was eating pork and egg on rice. Mmm.

I learned how to use the language lab (SWEET, SWEET IRONY) and opened a bank account, which involved reproducing exactly the same signature four times, and not writing any letters where you write the same line twice, and making sure everything is exactly the same as on your passport - capitols, commas, everything. I’m not really even sure I was in the had-to-open-a-bank-account crowd. Who knows. (Edit by a future HLA: I didn’t need to.)

I went back to my room, which is a walk, for the record - twenty minutes each way, a straight shot past a factory. I practiced some kanji and started an episode of something or other on my computer. I headed back to campus a little later to get my computer activated, and learned that bittorrent (the sweet, sweet teat of piracy and copyright violation I never cease to nurse at home and at Oberlin) is forbidden. Considering getting a seedbox (an online service which will torrent files which I can then download directly). My computer still won’t be able to connect until tomorrow for mysterious technical reasons.

After that, which was about 6, my two roommates and I set out to find the station and have dinner there, then take the train one station north and walk back to the dorm. It’s south from the dorm to the campus, and south from there to the station, and on a map it looked good, but we took the wrong train and had to go back, then got off at the right station but missed the turnoff to go in the direction of the dorms, which ended up leading us in a roundabout way through a residential area. At the station we wandered around for 20 minutes of looking back and forth between different maps and schedules and ticket prices and platforms, and it took some significant trial and error but it ended up working out. When we were finally of the train and on the right road home it was dark and we must have seemed pretty sketchy. We got back to the dorm a little before nine, and still hadn’t eaten, and most of the shops were closed.

We ended up going to a little udon shop near the dorm, with the taking off the shoes and the low table, and when we sat down waitress asked us something and no one understood so I asked her to repeat it and she asked us again and no one understood her again, so I bluffed with a firm, “yes, please,” which after the fact I was informed was very confident. So: lady gaga captions today. I had heard poker face coming out of a gas station (upcoming post? grocery store music) yesterday, and wanted to use it but “the colouring of pigeons” is just too damn good. Anyway, I picked something at random, having no idea how to pronounce it or what it was. I decided to choose something off the handwritten daily specials menu, something that translated “white child tempura.” Turned out to be little fish/mayo dumplings to be dipped in sauce. Delicious, but not much for 700 yen.

A moment of self-reflection: I think I am a little less nervous than I sometimes am. Sitting down next to a stranger? Figuring out the transit system, after deciding where I wanted to go? Talking to a waitress? Hmm. Hmmmm.