I finally am official. I picked up my gaijin card today in Funabashi. I had some time to walk around there. I'm kicking myself for not getting out my camera more often. I found this coolest little alley way and the sun was shining and the lighting was great and I thought, 'Nah, I'll get it later, I'll be able to find it again when I'm done the rest of my stuff'. Yeah, you guessed it. I can't find it again. Everything there is so much tighter and smaller. The roads are way more narrow than around here. It just solidified what I came to realize yesterday and that's that my neighbourhood is way newer than most places.
I decided to take my own sweet time going back to Kita. Oh, and on the way there and on the way back I took the train from Narashino instead of Kita-Narashino. It took some searching but I stopped and asked for directions from a woman who just so happened to be looking at a map herself. I asked directions!!! This is a big deal. I think my subject marker was wrong, but it was a full sentence none-the-less. Every now and again more of my High School Japanese comes flooding back. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. Today it was useful. "Densha wa doko desu ka" Where is the train? She pointed to the map and said "koko" (which, as we learned from our last lesson in Michelle's language deciphering skills, means 'here') and then pointed down a road I wasn't going to go down. I eventually found the station in a tiny little neighbourhood full of crazy little shops and such. I will be returning back there at a later date to explore some more. I have digressed again.
I took my own sweet time going back to Kita, (have I mentioned that already?) and I narrowly averted disaster. I forgot that the bank closed at 3 pm. Actually, that isn't totally true, I hadn't been paying enough attention to begin with to have ever heard that the bank closed at 3. I just kind of didn't listen and then skimmed over that information on the instructions sheet from Hiromi. Michelle, bad. I got into the bank just before 3:00 and didn’t even realize how close I was until the giant metal shutter came down and the bank was left with just the bankers and me in it. Oops. I'm sure the bank lady was thinking 'Why is this crazy foreigner coming in 5 minutes before closing to open a bank account?' Tee hee. Oops. I now have a bank account and can get paid next week and will have all my bills come right out of the account in about a months time or so. For being so efficient with so many things, direct payment and direct deposit processing takes an inordinate amount of time.
On my way home I stopped to pick up a few things. Stamps were first. It was an interesting experience in cross-lingual communication. They thought I was asking for special edition stamps. All I wanted was stamps, any stamps to overseas. When I said stamp she looked at me puzzled and handed me a hand stamp with the date on it, the old fashioned wooden kind. Nope, not that. I even tried to do the action of licking a stamp and putting it on a piece of paper. Nope. I don't remember what finally got her attention so that she produced a whole page of 110 yen stamps. Yes! Yes! That's it. At which point another person who had been beside her came up behind me and said "Come, come, stamp, come" and motioned me to follow. I said "No, no, this is it, this is what a want. Kore wa sugoi (essentially This one is great, but totally a mishmash of words)". But no they were not to be deterred. So I followed, into another room, then out the door, then outside. I'm thinking this person is nuts when I see a little tent with two ladies in it. He says "special stamp, special stamp" as I'm like "Any stamp! Any stamp! No matter". So again some more confusion as to what I want but now we have the two ladies joining in our confusion. If I may make a side note here, I do have to say that as exasperating as some of the language confusion has been, all the people who I have tried to be in communication with have tried so hard to accommodate and understand me. It's quite refreshing as opposed to the exchanges I have overheard at grocery stores and such back home where the (often very young girl) person hasn't understood what the foreign speaker is trying to communicate but instead of trying to help them along they just stand there and stare like as if "If you can't use words then we can't communicate". So I am thankful for all the help and effort that all these people have put towards understanding me. Sometimes they even apologize, to which I think, 'I can't speak your language in your country and you're apologizing to me because I can't make myself understood. Alrighty then." Back to the confusion in front of the tent. I finally get them to bring some stamps up from the box and I find some rather pretty 110 yen stamps. Great. I would like like 20 of them. They have eight. More excited talk amongst them as they try to figure out what to do. Never mind. "Hachi, hachi, hai. Sugoi." Essentially, '8 is just fine.' They then feel bad that they didn't have as many as I wanted and they give me Air Mail stamps for free. So there will be about 6 people back home who get some poste love by Air Mail.
I also stopped into a little veggie stand that is always packed with people and staff that are constantly unpacking the seemingly unending supply of boxes. There is always a big truck out front being unloaded. Pretty much anytime it's open, there's a truck. I hadn't stopped in yet as it's along a road that I don't usually take unless it's late at night. Well! I've found my new place to get fresh produce. It's DIRT cheap. Most stuff that's like two to three hundred yen is under one hundred yen at this little shop. And the quality is good too. It's not all scary looking. Well, other than the daikon. It's still really nice daikon, but any vegetable that large is just unnatural and therefore is always scary. I have yet to try the daikon. I'm not there yet. But I will be. I then headed back home and chilled at my place and had a shower and called an old friend. I love that I can call from my computer and talk to a friend. How fabulous is technology? Well, it's fabulous as long as it works. My comp has taken to trying to install Publisher 2002 every time I boot up. What's with that? I have never tried to open Publisher so why would it try to install. Not to mention the fact that it's already installed!!!! Grrrr. Why I oughta. I have taken to shaking my fist and saying "Why I oughta" to my students. I have been saying it in my normal speech for ages, but I find myself doing it to students when they get all punk on me. And by that I mean, they're punks. One of my students came up to the board and erased the "2" that I had just written and then took the pen out of my hand and re-wrote it without the loopy part. She's like 9. I started rattling off in English along the lines of "What the heck, you're correcting me? You're correcting me. I don't think so. My twos are just fine thank you very much. You're correcting me? Why I oughtta..." She thought this was hilarious. Punk!
