Jun 15: Tennis and Dinner
My morning routine went as per usual today. I got up and had Oohashi-san's cooking for breakfast; today was gobo kinpira and wieners. >_< It was pretty good as usual. I need to get up just a little bit earlier, because there's a bus at 8:29, and then the next one is at 8:54. I of course could just wake up later, but I don't like the idea of working 9:30 to 6 with an hour for lunch, even if that's what Kabutoya-san says I should do. Tomorrow I'll try to wake up and get out of the dorm just a little bit earlier so I can make the 8:29 ( I got to the stop at like 8:35 today). Since I missed the bus, I went and bought some teas to take with me at LAWSON STATION. There's not much AC at the office for energy conservation, and even the Japanese people complain about the heat. I am not looking forward to that aspect of the summer. Tonight I discovered the Yokosan sells tea in 2L jugs for 198円 regular, 138円 sale, so I think that's how I will end up surviving. >_< Is there any kind of tea that's bad for you?
At work I worked through the remainder of the Programming Collective Intelligence exercises in Ruby, and then started reading a paper on recommender systems as my next task. Learning Ruby is kinda neat, and I feel like once I get deeper into the material it will become quite interesting, but for now it's just surprisingly frustrating trying to code on a Japanese keyboard! The underscore is in a terrible place, and all the other non-alphanumeric characters are muddled up too. >_< My failure to learn the number keys properly is really showing now, because quotation marks are shift+2 (or maybe 3?) and the apostrophe is shift+7. Gah! It also doesn't help that I'm using emacs. I'm starting to get used to it a little more, and I can totally see why it's a hotkey-fetishist's wet dream. I hope I don't turn into an emacs junkie by the end of my year here. D: I'm looking forward to work tomorrow, since I don't know what I'll be doing after I finish the paper. Perhaps I'll get to go deeper into recommender systems...
At lunch I ate katsu with cabbage, miso soup and rice. I was originally going for curry, but I saw the katsu on the way, and they don't always have katsu (they always have curry), so I figured it'd be good to get it while it was there. Kabutoya-san couldn't play volleyball because he had to attend a waza (yes, as in the same waza as hisatsuwaza, don't ask me) meeting, so I played with the Co. of Kabutoya-san and Co.. Everyone here is super friendly! I hope I'm not just oblivious or something... Apparently I'm on one of the volleyball league teams for our project, but not the same one as Kabutoya-san. I'm on the same team as "another-Daisuke" (as Kabutoya-san calls him). The team is apparently called "tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu", after Another-Daisuke's laugh. I heard it today and tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu is a remarkably accurate representation (and a finger-twister)!
After lunch Kabutoya-san and I went and got my picture taken for my building access card. I look like a dork, but at least the picture is grainy enough so that I'm not glistening from handiball. D: After getting the picture taken we went down to the basement to borrow tennis equipment. The company actually has a large cache of sports equipment, including an array of mauve (if I am recalling correctly) unshaped skis. There is apparently a company ski trip (I don't know if I'm included), and I'm currently trying to decide whether I want to borrow the unshaped skis or pay for my own rentals (if that's even an option). Since my feet are apparently LL size, I don't know if it will be easy to get ski boots. >_< The tennis racquet and ball rentals were totally free, although we found out later that they do not screen the balls for quality, or at least they hadn't recently. D: It's an awesome facility to have though. Apparently there is also a weight room and treadmills and stuff somewhere, but the place is like a labrynth on the B1/B2 floors, so I'm not sure if I could get to them even if I knew the way, or knew how to use the machines for that matter (OK OK I know how to use a treadmill shut up you guys). The place is seriously confounding and I'm very glad I can just follow people all the time haha. I'm starting to be able to make sense of the 3rd floor (my floor) and how it connects to floors 1 and 2 (the lobby floors), so that bodes well for eventually being able to navigate B1/B2.
After work I went and played tennis with Kabutoya-san and different Co. There was yet another Daisuke, who is apparently 30 years old and has been married for 5 years, which is extremely scary because he looks 21, and Miata-san who is apparently 30 years old and is married (but for less than 3 years), which is extremely scary because he looks like he's in grade 10!!! Oh and Yamamoto-san, whose age and marital status I didn't ask, but she looks really young too. >_< Next time age comes up I'm going to ask how old they think I look. At tennis we didn't really play games, but rather just rallied a bunch. My specialty of hitting the ball straight into the net seems to have waited around for my return all these years QQ. The others are no great shakes either so it's all cool (except for yet-another-Daisuke-san who seems pretty good). I'm very glad I'm not a braggart and continually downplayed my experience with tennis, because I'm much, much worse than when I left off 3 years ago (surprise surprise!).
After tennis we went to the "Chinese" restaurant that I had ramen at and didn't have ramen. It was really wierd being driven there by someone who, if I saw them on the street, I would have said may or may not be old enough to drive. >_< It was also surprisingly un-wierd to ride in the passenger seat that's where the driver seat would be in Canada. I didn't ever feel like "OH MY GOD WHERE'S THE WHEEL THIS IS A NIGHTMARE ISN'T IT!?", which I thought I surely would.
The "Chinese" food was pretty good. We had rectangular gyoza, some veggie stir-fry, prawns, fried rice and mabo tofu (definitely not like how Chinese people make it haha). It was all pretty good, and I'd go back again to try more. They talked a bunch in Japanese, and they they're quick speakers so I had a lot of trouble following, but the guy who had just been at CHI talked a bunch about UBC and Coal Harbour with me. I was even able to name Cardero's for him after he said he had been to a restaurant on the water in Coal Harbour, though my first guess was The Lift. They after the meal they only let me pay 291円, but I felt that I had tried hard enough to pay more, and that to try any harder would be rude. Besides, I'd earned it after they made fun of me for half the meal over thinking Hayashi was a decent place to live! Goddamnit! I was like "It's 10 minutes from work! It only took me 2 hours to get to Ikebukuro!" and they just laaaaughed and laaaaughed. They wouldn't really say what was wrong with Hayashi, but they found it hilarious that I said it was "comfortable". I eventually asked Kabutoya-san if living in Hayashi was funny like living in Saitama is funny. He said "Whoa, you know a lot of Japanese culture!" and told me that they call it "Dasaitama" ("Dasai" + "Saitama" = Naff Saitama), but didn't end up answering my original question.
After dinner I walked home (it's quite close, maybe half the distance to Steveston) and went to LAWSON STATION, because dinner wasn't actually that filling. I had a katsu-don, which is appalingly delicious for ~500円 konbi food. Speaking of LAWSON STATION, Kabutoya-san said at dinner that "it's Robert-kun's lifeline in Hayashi". Hey man you lived in Hayashi too, and you even showed me that I've got two supermarkets, a drug store, a pharmacy and a good izakaya RIGHT ON MY BLOCK. D:<<< Jerks! (I actually find it quite funny how much they make fun of me for not minding Hayashi) Anyways, now it's time for a shower and bed, so that I can hopefully get up a bit earlier tomorrow.
Bon soir, mes amis!
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