Moving

So I spent Wed and Thurs moving into my apartment and cleaning up. On Wed I took my suitcase, duffel, and backpack on the 8 bus from my temp place at shijo-omiya 四条大宮 to my new apartment, which is closer to Ritsumeikan University and right near Ryoan-ji Temple 龍安寺. I got there at 2:30, right as my landlord was arriving for our 3 o'clock meeting. Talk about good timing. After going over the important stuff I played homemaker for a few hours, then headed back to shijo-omiya 四条大宮 to go out and eat yakiniku 焼き肉 with my roommates from the temp place and another girl living there. We got it "all you can eat" for 90 minutes eating 食べ放題 (~$30) and drinking 飲み放題 (~$3 non-alcoholic, ~$12 alcohol) and it was totally worth it, because we at a lot, lot, lot (and sooooo much meat, including cow tongue トン and raw beef mixed with raw egg ユッケ, both of which were surprisingly good).

Thursday I brought the remainder of my stuff over by bike, and paid my rent for the next month as well as the deposits and whatnot (which basically felt like a stab though the heart). At night, Biggie was boring, so I went to try and find the way to the Life ライフ (this big supermarket/Target chain) near us by bike (we'd only walked there before). I bought some groceries and cooked yummy food in my apartment :)

Yesterday Biggie and I stopped by Daiso ダイソー (a big 100 yen store ~ $1) to pick up more cheap necessities, and I did one of those things that everyone knows about but never does because a) they're afraid to try, b) they can afford better, c) they didn't have my worries about transporting stuff since the have a car, or a friend with a car.

Basically, I built a "bookcase" out of wire rack and zip ties. It took a REALLY long time, but I did it. And it's very useful.

Japanese Road Rage

Does it exist? you wonder.

Wonder no longer. The one day I'm in a car here (and probably the only day for a good while yet) we see two unparalleled examples of road rage. I've never seen people this crazy in the US.

First example: we're on the highway (called highway because it's not free, according to our driver, Naoki). We run into a little bit of congestion. Turns out it's because some salaryman-looking guy decided to take the time to stop his car in the middle of the highway, get out, go the car behind him, and start violently kicking the driver side door (we were in the rightmost lane, so he had the wall on the other side of him).

Second example: a small little dispute between a pedestrian and a car that starts to turn into the road the pedestrian is crossing turns nasty when the pedestrian (an old 70+ man) decides to teach the driver a lesson. I don't know whether the pedestrian was abusing his right-of-way or not, but even though the car stopped in time, he slapped the hood violently with his free hand, then walks over to the driver door and begins to argue with the driver. They argument lasts awhile, and they're blocking traffic, so the lady driving the car behind decides to get involved and starts yelling at the pedestrian. He pulls the drivers door open. The lady from the car behind yells some more. The driver, though she apologized at first, seems to now just be trying to reason with him while defending her actions. As we turned away some sort of settlement (to a very good one from the unhappy faces all around) seems to have been reached.

Lastly, and something that I noticed quite quickly, is that cars in Japan tend to be square. Nothing at all like the predominant rounded aesthetic preference in the US.

Planes

So, the whole blog idea kind of failed before it even got started. Unfortunately, I'm just not the type to set aside time and patience to write up the days events on anything resembling a regular basis. I guess I'll just label this blog as WYSIWYG and warn people not to expect anything in terms of regularity.

So my flight plan was:

San Diego, CA -> Portland, OR -> Vancouver, Canada -> Tokyo (Narita) -> Tokyo (Haneda) -> Osaka -> Kyoto

Long, right?

I passed out on the first to flights (Portland and Vancouver) then had several hours layover till my plane departed to Tokyo, during which time I played with my iPod and discovered (20 mins before boarding) that the Vancouver airport is nice enough to supply free internet.

I didn't sleep so much on the plane to Narita Airport since a) they were playing Star Trek (the movie) and b) it was very amusing to watch Monsters, Inc. dubbed in Japanese. When I got to Narita I took a bus to Haneda Airport and arrived around 8. I knew I had to stay there overnight, and I'd read that it was possible, but I didn't know exactly how things worked, so I just picked a seat in the arrivals waiting area and stayed there until all the planes had come in (all the while hoping that I wouldn't be kicked out of the airport or something). I probably weirded out some Japanese by falling asleep slouched over my bags while waiting, but thankfully I woke up around the time a nice security officer came by and gave me a little slip of paper to fill out that was a "Request for Permission to Stay Overnight (For Foreigners)." I dutifully filled it out, and was thankful I could stay there what with my flight to Osaka being at 6:30 in the morning and all.

The security officer who dealt with me was REALLY nice. I had a suitcase, two duffels and a backpack. A little heavy, but not to troublesome to carry around. Still, he loaded my stuff onto one of those airport trolley things I've never used before. Then, even after I initially refused, he shoved another set of chairs next to mine to make a "bed" like some of the other overnighters were using. I would have been fine with just my one set of chairs like the boy the next set over, but hey, I couldn't very well break them apart after he'd taken the time to shove them together for me.



Then, I flew in the morning to Kansai International Airport (in Osaka), and from there took a JR train to Kyoto Station, where Diana picked me up and navigated me through the bus system to somewhere near my temp place (which is in a pretty good location downtown, at Shijo Omiya).