First.

Jun 8 & 9: Travel, Meeting Kabutoya-san and Getting Introduced to Home

This post is an amalgamation of a list of things to write that I kept and what I thought of while typing this up, so please forgive me if the order deviates from chronological, and if it's a bit-non sequitur.

Travel was pretty uneventful on the whole.  Security was quick to get through, and I was easily able to buy like 2.5L of water and some snack mix for something like $12.  Thanks YVR...  I found my gate easily, so no worries there.  I noticed that relatively frequently people would go up and talk to the gate attendant behind the desk, so I went up to ask if I needed to do anything like check in again or something.  When I got up there, the lady said "Hello Mr. Sumi."

Um, what?

I guess I looked confused, because she explained and it turns out she was the same lady as was at the check in desk, and I had already completely forgotten her face. D:  Boarding was quite uneventful, and the seat beside me was unoccupied, so the girl two seats over and I both used it to dump stuff and to put our trays on when we got up.  Very useful.

Once we got going, I checked the in-flight movie selection.  They had two episodes of K-ON!  Hahaha!  I didn't watch them though (they were episodes 1 and 2 of season 2).  The guy in front of my to my left had brought his own, ahem, entertainment.  At first I thought I saw Aozaki Aoko in it, but then I realized it was a different sort of show entirely.  Ooer.

The in-flight meals were pretty good.  The lunch meal was black pepper beef chow mein, or teriyaki chicken on rice.  I chose the chow mein, and I was delighted at how highly edible it was.  For a drink I had something JAL specific called like "SKY RELAX" or "SKY FRESH" or something, since it was supposed to be an uncarbonated yuzu drink.  It was pretty good-- not too sweet-- and it had that unplaceable viscosity of flavour that Japanese drinks sometimes have.  For breakfast they served curry-pan from Saint Germain.

I watched The Green Hornet on the plane.  It was kinda meh.  It had some funny moments, but mostly when they weren't really trying too hard for it.

I got off the plane and went through immigration without a hitch, and moved to the baggage claim area.  I heard what may have been a monkey at animal quarantine.  It was making a lot of "ook ook hah hah" noises, but they weren't quite unmistakably monkeylike.  There was a dog that was moving like it was barking, but the noises were really wierd for a dog...  My baggage came relatively quickly, and I didn't have to walk far to get to where Kabutoya-san picked me up.

Kabutoya-san speaks English quite well!  I was not expecting this, but it was handy, since it took us from about 3pm to 7:20pm to get from Narita to my dorm, and we were able to chat to pass the time.  He told me about Japanese cellphones being "Galapagos" or "garake", which means that Japanese phones are diverse, but the species are extant only in the isolated Japanese market.  He also says that Yokosuka has a regional specialty JACKET, called "sukaja", a portmanteau of Yokosuka Jacket (and I didn't even shout "EROKAPPA" when he said it!).  I hope I'll see one in the coming days (sukaja that is.

We only had to take one train from Narita to Yokosuka-Chuou and one bus from there to my dorm, but it's quite a ways to go, and the bus went reaaaaally slow.  Once we got to my dorm Kabutoya-san showed me around it for a bit, introduced me to the "dorm mother" and showed me a bit of the neighbourhood before leaving.  Kabutoya-san seems quite nice and rather casual, which may have to do with the fact that he's only 28 (the casual part).  I've not met him in a work-setting yet, however.

My dorm is quite a ways out from anything.  6 buses come here from Yokosuka-chuou, but they all go along the same one-lane road (per direction) that is intensely slow, so it takes about half an hour or so to get here from the station.  My dorm is very close to the Ikkizuka (一揆塚)bus stop though, and apparently there is a bus that will go from the stop to my workplace in 10 minutes!  The location of my dorm is pretty good.  It's definitely suburban, but it has a lot of useful stuff nearby.  It's literally like 40 steps to a Yokosan supermarket which I was scoping out until a lady told me they were "no open" haha.  They had ~600g bags of decent looking cucumbers for about 250円, so I hope getting veggies will not be a problem.  There's also a large drugstore nearby and (most importantly, perhaps) a LAWSON STATION!  Yeaaahhhhhhh!!!

The dorm is very communal style.  My room is a decently sized room (I'd say it's about 60% of mine at home) with lots of cupboards and a large 3-pane window with a screen.  The window looks onto the back of a bunch of houses, but at least there's a tree as well!  The dorm has a dining hall where I can eat breakfast and supper if I sign up in advance.  The dining hall has a microwave oven that, of course, sings to you when it's done.  I don't have any cooking facilities whatsoever in my room (not even a sink).  The bathroom is like a public one, but it's very clean and not far from my room.  There's also a little laundry area with washers and dryers near the bathroom.  Bathing is also communal.  We have an ofuro and stools and little showerheads and stuff, so I'm going to need to get used to bathing around other people.  Apparently one student "was not able" to do this in the past and moved to a different dorm.  As cool as having your own bathroom is, that seems a bit much to me.  I took a shower last night, and there were two other people there and it was totally fine, so I don't think it's going to take much getting used to.

My dorm doesn't have curfew!  I think this will be useful, since it also appears that, further than having no curfew, the dorm doesn't seem to know/care if you are there at all, so I can probably come and go and stay elsewhere as I please with no advance notice.  The "dorm mother" appears to leave at night.  She seems nice, but she talks very quickly and only speaks Japanese.  I'm wondering what it'll be like talking to her when Kabutoya-san isn't there...

It's pretty warm around here, and although I have an AC unit in my room, I don't know if I'm allowed to use it, with power regulations and all that.

I don't know if it was around when Jiuna was here, but there's Pasmo for transit fare now, and it works pretty much everywhere it sounds like, including in Kansai.  I think it's basically Suica, but pink.

I need to clarify with my supervisor, but I believe my work week will be different during July-September for energy conservation reasons.  I think I will have Wednesday/Thursday off and work Saturday/Sunday.

For dinner I had katsu-don and salmon onigiri from LAWSON STATION.  My suggestion (to myself) of a wine pairing was Pocari Sweat.  They went pretty well together.  The katsu-don was actually quite good, but I almost got in trouble by thinking the purple onigiri was umeboshi.  Luckily I read it and it said "mayonnaise".  Um, ew.  Dear LAWSON STATION, why does mayonnaise onigiri deserve a purple label?  I suppose I must try it at one point for science, although it's in a not quite so cold fridge cabinet and there were LOTS of them left at the end of the day (I found out today that there are in fact umeshiso onigiri, but they were nowhere to be found yesterday.  Since people actually want to eat them, I assume).  My salmon onigiri hasn't done anything to me yet, but the salmon was quite salty and therefore probably more microbe-resistant.  I sincerely hope the same is not true for the mayonnaise ones.

After unpacking for a bit, I took a shower I went to bed.  It was about 10-ish, and I didn't have any trouble getting to sleep.  I looked at a clock that was on Vancouver time and it appeared to be 4am (+/- an hour due to daylight savings throwing things off or whatever).  Mmmyeah that's about right.  A perfect time to go to bed according to my body (sorry mom hahaha).  I didn't have any trouble sleeping; I only woke up twice, once to put a shirt over my eyes to block out sunlight, and I was able to get back to sleep both times.  It's really warm here so I fell asleep just laying on top of the sleeping bag.

June 10th: Going For a Walk and Filling Out Forms in Yokosuka Chuou

I woke up at 7:20 this morning without an alarm.  I tidied and unpacked a little to let myself wake up, and then I went out for breakfast, as I wasn't supposed to meet Kabutoya-san until 11.

Breakfast today was from something-something Bread Kitchen.  It's a bakery that's super close to my house.  I had a kinpira-gobo-something-yaki (bun had thin, dense pastry, and gobo kinpira filling surprise surprise), ebikatsu-burger (it was tiny and my tastebuds did not feel that any ebi was harmed in the making) and a melon-pan (sorry Jiuna!  I can't mail them home!).  I couldn't find curry-pan, much to my dismay.  I am trying to find a shop that sells korokke, but the only ones I've seen are ones that I couldn't read in the bakery and ones in the butcher shop that I haven't taken the time to try to read.  Of note in the bakery is the presence of an entire bread rack that looks quite like something you might find in Cobs, but only contains square white loaves, and the crapton of French on one of the walls (or was it a window...?), which contains the rather poignant "Il est elegante et sexy".

With my various Galapagos baked goods (garapan?) in hand, I went meandering down the street the bus runs along past my stop and continued meandering after turning at a major intersection.  I believe I found some military somethingorother.  This put the popping sounds audible from my room at a later time in context.  I think they might have been gunshots because I heard them when I was walking past what I believe was a military complex.  Either that or it was a fenced-off area with a bunch of tennis hangars or something...  And skookum iron tower things... And worn-dirt fields...  I draw the line at grass-court tennis, but maybe there's Galapagos tennis here too...

After retracing my steps, I picked up a umeshiso onigiri at LAWSON STATION.  The staff may or may not have known quite what to make of a foreigner standing and intently watching them put onigiri on a shelf from a tray.  All probably became clear when I purchased one of said onirigi.

I went back to my room and started drafting this post in the time before I was due to meet Kabutoya-san.  He was frigheningly on-time.  Like, he must have been waiting outside my door or something because my computer clock said 11:00 precisely when he knocked.  I've heard it's not appropriate to be early, so maybe he really did wait.  We went to the drugstore where we took my picture in a kiosk outside for my Alien Registration Card application, and tried to buy slippers in a 100-yen store, but they didn't have anything in my size.

I rode the bus to Yokosuka-chuou with Kabutoya-san, and it appears it's a monstrously slow bus in both directions. D:  On the bus he said that once we got to Yokosuka-chuou we should eat.  He asked me about food and stuff, and about if I like ramen and burgers and stuff.  I said I liked all of them, and he asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch.  I just said I'd eat whatever he wanted, since I'm interested to try out whatever.  To this he said "Oh OK I think we'll eat at Burger King.  Do you have Burger King in Vancouver?"

...

"Oh yes we do have Burger King." *smiles*  Haha oh my.  Anyways, at Burger King I had a grilled teriyaki burger and some onion rings with Calpis and Kabutoya-san had the same with Coke.  Once we started eating he said we had to wait for an hour since the ARC people were going to be "resting" until 1pm.  He continued to talk a little about this until his vocabulary shifted from "resting" to "the people who will do the ARC do not want to work from 12am to 1pm".  Sounds quite like our government workers, but I think he may have meant 12pm. (I didn't actually hesitate after he said we were eating at Burger King, btw)

I didn't relish (derp) the prospect of spending an hour in Burger King, so I asked if I could go to a department store to buy slippers, and Kabutoya-san said it was a "very good idea", so we did.  Maybe he didn't like the idea of bumming around in Burger King for an hour either.

At the department store we again had trouble finding my size of slippers (LL size, apparently), which is the reason why I am currently sitting at my desk wearing boxers and a wifebeater with azure crocs and white socks.  D:< Don't judge me it's warm here!  It turns out I may be allowed to use the AC, as I checked with Kabutoya-san and he said yes before giving an explanation that got a little turned around in the middle, but sounded a bit like "we wouldn't do that to you".  In the interest of conserving energy I'm going to avoid using it until I really need to.  For now, my 150円 2L jug of water from LAWSON STATION is keeping me chillin' in my manties.

I also bought a pillow and case, as well as what I believed was a bed covering sheet judging from the picture on the package, but appears to be a duvet cover.  Who the hell has a box-shaped duvet!?  Or a bed cover that goes over the bottom of the bed for that matter.  It even looks wrong for a futon cover, so I think it really is for a duvet...

The ARC bit went without event, really.  I'm very glad to have Kabutoya-san around, as jumping in headfirst with immersion in another culture and language is great and all, but maybe not so much with government forms.  I will get more opportunity for jumping in headfirst if I don't get deported for saying that my name is 23-Heisei and my employer is Sumi Daisuke.  We also requested and some wierd paper that is basically all my passport and ARC info printed out on Yokosuka City Hall letterhead with their stamp.  This was a great idea, as it turned out we were able to open my bank account today!  Yokohama Bank turned us away saying we needed an ARC and our little blue paper wasn't legit enough for them, but the JPBank (post office) figured we were alright dudes and let us open one, in which I deposited 1000円 as my first deposit hahaha.  I'm definitely a great customer and their trust in me in accepting my non-ARC-backed application has definitely paid off for them thus far.  Tee hee.

We then tried to get a cellphone for me.  Kabutoya-san said that he guessed I should get NTT DoCoMo since I'm working for NTT.  This proved a little difficult as we were unable to find a DoCoMo store.  The first mixed store that sold DoCoMo phones had only ultra-welfare ones, and the second one told us I needed an ARC.  Kabutoya-san took no for an answer this time, so I won't have a phone until the 23rd or after.  Oh well, it'll give me time to think about what sorts of features I need on the phone, which is good because when he asked me on the spot I panicked and said I didn't need a camera, which is silly.

After that Kabutoya-san and I parted and I took the snail bus back to the dorm (I can read 一騎塚 now), where I promptly took off most of my clothes and started getting in contact with all of youuuuuuuuuuuu. <3

I'm actually mostly unpacked at the moment of this writing.  There are only a few things that remain in my suitcase, but I've started a shopping list, and one item definitely on it is clothes hangers!  I've folded everything neatly in my closets so they don't get wrinkled.
Also, there are quite a few foreigners here!  I see white and black people all over the place.  Not many, but usually I won't go too long without seeing one.  I don't remember that being true of my previous trips to Japan.

It's now 6:30pm and starting to get dark and I'm starting to get a little hungry, so I think I'll go get something small at LAWSON STATION to tide me over for the bus ride back to Yokosuka-Chuou, where I will investigate either the Pepper Lunch or the Tenya, if I can find either and if either is open.
I'm thinking of taking the train back to Tokyo tomorrow.  If I am naturally getting up early and have no other obligations until Monday, then I think it's a perfect time to go.  I want to do more research before I meander around Yokosuka, since I think it's easier to get stuck in a residential neighbourhood in Yokosuka, and there are less pictures of where transit things go.  Now that I've broadcast this on the Internet though, I'm definitely going to get stuck and lost in a residential neighbourhood in Tokyo.  >_<

Anyways, see you all lateur, mes amis!  Vous etes toutes elegante et sexy!