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。