Damnit, now I want to play Alpha Centauri... Anyways:
Jun 23: A Registered Alien
This morning I got up in time for dorm breakfast. Hooray! Today it was was some sort of stewed vegetable mixture with tiny whole fish and egg-coated tough beef/pork with rice, along with miso soup. On the whole it was fine, but the fish-flavoured vegetables weren't my favourite. >_< I met with Kabutoya-san at my room at 10 (actually more like 9:45, as he was quite early), and we went into Yokochuu to pick up my Alien Registration Card and to contract a cell phone.
I got my ARC without a hitch, and so we went to the cell phone store and asked the lady for one that had an English menu, a Japanese-English dictionary and a camera, and she replied that I could either get the 0円 ones or the 60,000+円 ones. Um, that'll be the first option, please! I'm sad that none of the middle range phones had the things I wanted, because I was kind of looking forward to paying for features I'd get excited about and then never use. ;D I unfortunately was not able to get the BRILLIANT purple phone, as it didn't have the dictionary. I settled for a pale, steely blue one after I saw that the pink option was a violent, rage inducing variety of the colour, not a soft and sakuramochi-esque one. I am having trouble navigating the menus of my phone, despite it being in English. I shudder to think what it would have been like in Japanese.
The cellphone saleswoman told us we had to wait an hour for my phone, so Kabutoya-san and I got lunch. Kabutoya-san suggested a "yokohama style" ramen shop that was in the same mall as the cell phone store. I had chashuu ramen, and it was pretty good, although a little salty and quite rich. Apparently the salt/oil are parameterized and can be lowered on request, so if I go there again I will definitely specify lower salt/oil. I enjoyed my meal anyways, and because I had bought my meal ticket when he wasn't looking, and because we still had time to kill, Kabutoya-san bought us some iced coffee afterwards. I tried to decline him paying for my coffee, but he told me that he "is much richer than me." I gave him a mock "well rub it in, why don't you!" face and he laughed. It's kind of odd having a supervisor that's roughly the same age as my friends, especially one that's so casual. I don't know how to act in the slightest...
After the coffee, we went and picked up my phone and headed back to the office. On the train I asked him where there was likely to be a large international record store, and we ended up talking about what kind of music we liked. He likes heavy metal and hard rock, apparently. I recognized most of the bands on his iPod, and we agreed that Apocalyptica, Death and Marilyn Manson are good listening. I recommended Marilyn Manson's second album (which shall remain nameless haha), as it was my favourite in high school back when I listened too his music, and he told me it was already on his to-buy list. I told him I'm more into disco and disco-influenced rock/pop nowadays, and so hopefully he won't assume I'm knowledgeable or interested in heavy metal anymore. XD I also asked about the dorm fees and such, and apparently dorm food is not actually free, but breakfast costs 200円 and dinner costs 470円, so it may as well be.
We got back to work at around 12:50, and so I worked on my book exercises until I finished. I went over to Kabutoya-san's desk and told him I was done and he looked at me expressionlessly for a second and then just said "Really?" >_< He told me that I "seem to be smart" at lunch time and so I would probably get to use some of the less basic and more exciting mathematical and probabilistic models in my work. I was glad for the praise, but I'm scared shitless of disappointing him now, so I was glad to get that "Really?", as it means I'm still doing alright hahaha. My next task is to implement some other less vanilla varieties of Naive Bayes classifiers. I'm excited, though it means I have to read a paper in the hot office. D: Today it was actually quite pleasant in there though. It was sunny and hot outside today, so I think the company must have cheated and snuck in some AC or something. Kabutoya-san says that July is often very rainy here, so hopefully that will temper the apparently rising heat a little (or it will just make everything horrid and wet while stiflingly hot). D:
After work I went directly home to get some laundry going before dorm supper. I loaded up my laundry and then went to eat. Supper today was a battered chicken breast with a shoyuu-based sauce, and some oden and something that seemed a bit like zaru-soba in a miso soup bowl. It was really, really good. I had a bit of a frustrating episode with Oohashi-san at breakfast (she probably didn't even notice), when she asked me a question and then when I didn't respond right away she just started repeating "CHIGAU NO? CHIGAU NO?" or something like that really loud while I was going "uhh.. ano..." and trying to respond while doing my best to continue smiling. D:< It's all ok after that meal though hahaha.
After supper I went and checked on my laundry, and there was something that looked like an error code flashing on the washing machine's display, it wouldn't start up again, and my clothes were definitely not done, so I was kinda hooped. I waited in the bathroom area until someone came along (I didn't have to wait long, hooray!), and then I mangled some Japanese to try to ask them what the error meant, to which they replied "Oh that machine is broken. If you load it up too much it'll stop, so you should use the one upstairs." In excellent English, of course. Damnit! I feel like such a North American only being able to speak one language!
He walked over to the Persona-3-music-room, and I was like "oh is that your room? I heard Persona 3 music coming out of it the other night". It wasn't actually his room, but rather his friend's, who told me that he just likes the Persona 3 BGM and he was listening to it on niconico. I was like "oh cool" and managed not start shouting "A! B! A! B! ABB! AB!" (a niconico in-joke) or something equally amazingly inappropriate. He knew my name and I asked him how that was possible, and he told me that he thinks we work in the same room (it's a big room, ok!?). I then remembered that I did an introduction presentation to a room full of people (twice), and that said people might remember me better than I remember them because a) there are many of them and one of me, and b) I'm a little distinctive with the beard and, y'know, BEING WHITE. :P I'm kinda dumb sometimes, eh?
They were apparently playing a German card game (score!), but they said they only had the rules in German and Japanese. I don't know if they were blowing me off as subtly as they could or expressing regret that they couldn't reasonably invite me to join. I wonder if Dominion has been localized. Perhaps if not, someone can bring it over in an empty suitcase...? :D I'm so glad to probably have some massive nerds nearby, it'd be great if I could get in on their gamezzz.
Anyways, I'm just waiting for my laundry to finish, and then I'll head to bed. I need to be as energetic as possible to survive paper-reading tomorrow. I hope that particular weakness fades away, or at least that I'm successfully able to bash it out of myself, as being an undergraduate considering honours with an interest in the theoretical and mathematical aspects of computer science, it's a bit embarrassing to be TERRIBLE at reading papers. >_< Oh well.
Wish me luck, and ciao for now!
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