久しぶり

internet at the homestay house has not been working well with my computer. (It's a Mac and also seems like Airport has been acting up)

I'm going into the final days of the internship and while I'm ready to get back to life in America, I'm kind of sad to go. I feel like I just finally got used to my internship routine, and getting to know people around the company. Too bad.

Also, I need suggestions for where to go on a trip from Tokyo. Dad and I are staying in Tokyo for a while, but I have about 4 days I don't know what to do with. Something with bicycling like the Shimanami Kaido Cycling Route, but closer to Tokyo (i.e. NOT a $130/one-way shinkansen ticket away) would be nice. I'm thinking we might go to Nikko or Kamakura, but other than that I'm at a loss for what to do since a trip to Hokkaido or southern Japan is not in the budget. Advice for future travel to Japan: fly into the Chubu region of Japan and leave from Tokyo (or vice versa).

A kind of weird, but not unwelcome situation came up today. Because my homestay family has to go to a wake (   :(   ), I'm going to be on my own tonight for transportation home and dinner. The president asked me this morning if there were people at the company I wanted to eat dinner with, and while I could easily think of a few, I know these people have lives and probably plans for their Friday nights, and tried to tell him that I could get dinner on my own.

The people who are in charge of me usually don't like the "I'll do it on my own" answers, and seem to get nervous when I suggest them, even if it's as simple as using the bus to get home. For example, I wanted to ship some books home and asked for a box. Now the people I asked are trying to take care of the whole process. I really really promise I can function in Japan, guys. I like getting help, but I know how busy Japanese workers are without helping me take care of my business too. ANYWAY, even though I tried to assure the president I'd be just fine, Tobisawa-san told me later in the morning that we'd be going to dinner after we got back from my newspaper visit. I don't mind spending time with people from the company at all, and I'm used to the forced interaction that usually comes from studying abroad in Japan, but I never get a say in my company plans. EVER. I try to suggest something that seems simple enough in my American mind, and then I'm told, no, we really want you to do it our way. Thankfully at lunch I was told a few other people are joining, which should tone down the awkwardness a little bit. We're going for my favorite food, okonomiyaki, too, so I'm really happy. But yiiiiiiikes, talk about "you will go to dinner and like it".

rent

looking at rent for apartments in Tokyo just for fun... the apartment rental company I found in the newspaper charges for utilities DAILY. (525 yen/day)　

things have been really busy again. this is really great and really exhausting at the same time. I had a pretty fun week at work. Thursday I went to the Tokyo Gas Showroom and the "What is gas?" Museum (trust me, way more fun than it sounds), and Friday I got a tour of newspaper companies in Tokyo (the Gas Energy Newspaper, Tokyo Newspaper Reporter's Club, and Mainichi Newspaper Company buildings). Unfortunately, the cheap heels I bought before I left just aren't at all supportive or helpful for gallavanting around Tokyo trying to keep up with Japanese businessmen.

Friday night I went to a local bar with the homestay mom to meet with her gospel group. Saturday was the Hundred Lantern Festival that Bushu Gas and the interns participate in every year. Sunday I volunteered with another intern at the International Junior Soccer finals. We gave the medals to the first, second and third-place teams.

More on this later I hope. I keep trying to write down things I want to post later: more on these events and how this country just does not take care of themselves--they never drink water (only juices and tea), go to the bathroom or stop to cool off in the high-humidity, persistently high 80-90 degree weather. Yikes.

Good night. Turning off the air conditioner before I go to bed :(

＼(^o^)／

I just went to the bookstore to buy Miyabe Miyuki's Brave Story. I looked at the first page and could understand the first sentence without any help. That's a first for me with Japanese novels.

Also found floss for under $5. Victories all around.:)

long time, no update

I've been typing my these entries into Word for the past few days because of lack of Internet, and although I have Internet at work, I have no time to upload them there (and I also forgot to put the Word file from my computer on flash drive ><). I've been using my free time for getting a start on the Japanese version of my final report, researching internships, jobs, and fellowships in Japan, and also looking into reservations and activities for when my dad gets here. My experience with Japan is if you don't by the tickets or reserve something for a trip a month in advance you probably won't get to go if its a popular event.

I have learned something else valuable from this internship: Never assume two groups are keeping each other informed, even though they're supposed to. I recently told the workers from the Saitama government that I'd volunteer to help at the International Junior Soccer Tournament that's taking place at Saitama Stadium. After talking with them I was pretty sure they'd inform my company of this and let them know I was going to stay at one of the Saitama worker's houses (where another intern will be staying) because it's a little far. I happened to mention it today, and they had no idea about it. Whoops.

If the next house has a nice internet connection then I'll upload the rest of the entries tonight. For now, I'm getting back to work.

testing... let's see if i can update from my phone

おはよう〓
Trying to send an email from my phone to see if it'll post to the blog. It'd be really great if the emotes/顔文字 showed up, too.

Right now I'm headed to Omiya to meet the other interns for a day trip to Chichibu.Today is 海の日 (Umi no Hi/Sea Day)

moving, pt 2

Today I moved to Watanabe-san’s house. It’s weird to move right as I adjust, but that’s just the way things go with homestays in Japan it seems. My room here is really big, has a TV, old manga and children’s books (yay!) and lots of shelf/drawer space to put my stuff in. There’s no Internet for me to connect my computer to (although there is a dial-up connection on the PC downstairs), but I have a nice connection at work so I can deal with this for a week.

 

Yesterday, I found out I had an interview scheduled for today. It’s a little short-notice, but I’ve survived an interview for publication at the company before and knew I could stumble through it. I really wish I would’ve asked more about the nature of this interview though because after the two newspaper reporters arrived in the meeting room, I found out I was supposed to be asking the questions. Whoops. I was able to think of a few questions on my own and ask them in Japanese the best I could, but there was still a lot of awkward silence and answers from the reporters I just didn’t really understand. I found out that if I wanted to do journalism-related work in Japan, the best route would be pursuing anアルバイト (arubaito; part-time job) translating Japanese newspaper articles to English, or be a foreign correspondent for an English-speaking news outlet. As I expected, foreigners don’t really get bilingual journalism jobs in Japan. I could tell one of the reporters was getting frustrated with how little I could understand by the end of the interview because he would say things like, “well she probably doesn’t understand right now, so please explain it to her later,” and “I don’t think she could do a public relations job.” Ironically, I understood those bits and pieces.

 

After the interview I went back to the Yoshida’s to wait until my luggage could be picked up. Noriko gave me a tea lesson before I left, and that was fun. I’m always so impressed with people who study sado, Japanese tea ceremony, because there are SO many little details to remember.

 

Tomorrow I get up early to leave by 6:45 a.m. with Watanabe-san. She usually doesn’t leave this early, but because there’s a special meeting tomorrow she has to arrive early to help prepare for it and make tea. LOTS of tea-making goes on at all Japanese workplaces it seems. Most of the time it’s prepared by the female employees. The only time guys have tea duty is when the women aren’t around.

 

Watanabe-san and I talked a little bit about what we might do this weekend. Saturday’s schedule was decided my first week at work when she invited me to see kabuki (Japanese theater). We’re also going to see fireworks after that. On Sunday we’re kicking around the idea of going sightseeing in Odaiba or Yokohama. She has family in Yokohama so if they’re free we might go sightseeing with them.

 

I really want to make a post about the baseball game and Fuji-san from this weekend because both were really fun ^^ 時間があれば、ね。

 

 

 

moving

I'm moving to a new homestay family today. For some reason I don't have to be at work until 10:30a.m., so I'm hanging out and writing while Noriko takes care of the usual day-to-day business around the house. I try to help if I can, but a lot of the time it's just best if I sit back. For example, this morning I had gathered all of my trash from the last week and sorted it accordingly to burnable items, non-burnable items, and then my plastic bottles. I thought up until this point I had an OK handle on how the Japanese trash works, but, as usual, the Japanese way of doing things is not as simple as expected.

I went to help Noriko take out the trash, and went to empty the non-burnable trash into a bag. She stopped me and told me today was only for the burnable trash. She started taking the magazines I had placed in the burnable trash and said they would go out tomorrow with the newspapers as part of the "paper" trash. My plastic bottles would be put with the glass bottles and cans would go out on their appointed twice-a-month date. No wonder she has this written out on the calendar.

My moving date is also scribbled in on the calendar here. I've finished packing, and realized that I have WAY more souvenirs at this point than I thought I would. I also thought I'd have less money, too, but I've been pretty well taken care of in that respect. I already know I can't thank these people enough.

When I do go into work today I'm supposed to have an interview and lunch with two people from a Japanese newspaper. I found out about this yesterday, and although it'll probably be fun, I'm not looking forward to feeling dumb when I don't know what they're asking. The last interview I did was with someone from Bushu Gas, and he used a lot of words that I didn't know, but were synonyms for words I did know (i.e. different words for "study," "experience," etc.). He also had the worst kata-kana-ized English ever, so when we were talking about American actors or movies he would have to repeat the name or title a bunch before I could actually make the connection. I can't even count how many times he said "Eddie Murphy" before I realized what he was talking about. Maybe this will go better, though. And afterwards I don't really have anything scheduled I don't think, so I'll probably do the same thing I do everyday--try to figure out how I'm going to get back to Japan again.

busy busy busy

NO FREE TIME HERE! EVER!

But at least it's tons of fun. :3

It's coming up on my last night with the Yoshida's, and they've just been awesome so far. This weekend we went to Mt. Fuji (and other surrounding places) and a baseball game, which I've been wanting to see since my time at Chubu University.

Details and pictures later hopefully!

It`s only 8:30 a.m. and two embarassing things have happened already. The article from the interview I had on Tuesday was not only published but sent to the entire company through e-mail, and the husband in the homestay family told the two people who work with me about my skin condition. Yay, privacy!