ダニエルの冒険

As I started walking home today, I passed a truck with a message in the window saying “be back soon”. There was an old man sleeping, in his work jump-suit, across the front seats. A lady in the truck ahead of him dozed. Both had their engines on. I walked down one more block and looked down a side street. A yellow Beetle was stopped outside a house with flashers and engine both on. Down two more blocks and I walk past a small house with its garage open onto the road, as it is every day. A car is parked inside with about two inches free on one side. The car hasn’t a scratch or a speck of dirt visible. I’ve seen the people who live in this house… the woman is at least 80 and about 4 and a half feet tall. Just past the house, an SUV with blue LEDs shining from under it overtakes a bus. I’m glad I decided to walk on the side of the road with the footpath.
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Things I’ve accomplished today:

• Put together a somewhat final draft of a speech.
• Get private lesson homework complete for tomorrow.
• Put off extra homework yet again. That’s not really an accomplishment…
• Cleaned up the apartments for the inspection tomorrow, which we were told about today.
• Finally uploaded photos to Flickr from the last three weeks.
• Spoke some game-development talk with some developers during lunch.
• Decided on plans for Saturday (7am~10am travel to Tokyo. Meet Yukine at 11am).
• Decided on plans for Sunday (Go to the Edo-Tokyo Museum with Daisuke).
• Got some shopping done.
• Made some dinner for myself.

You’d think after doing all that I’d have something more to say but I’m far too tired to write more than this right now!

On Sunday morning I woke up to a call from my friend Jerome. He was on his way into Tokyo from Kanagawa and would be arriving in 55 minutes. I showed, dressed, checked out, left my bag in a locker at the station (300 yen to lock it and get the key). We met up and went into an incredibly classy building next to the station. The place dripped of money and most of the restaurants (of which there were 40 or so) had pictures of their chef on the menus outside the door. A lot of the places were French so Jerome helped with the menus.
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I woke up on Saturday morning, got to the station, and got the 10am train to Tokyo via Nagoya. I had an hour to spare and I was told that the train from Tokyo to Jimbocho takes 14 minutes, so I thought I’d check in at the hotel (Sakura hotel again) and leave my bag there for the day. Well, I ended up taking a very inefficient route, and got on the express train instead of the normal train, which meant that I missed my stop and had to go back on the express on the same line but opposite direction, then change from the express and go back onto the normal again so I arrived at Suidobashi, where I changed to the Mita line which got me there. I ended up being 30 minutes late.
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This weekend my plans are as follows:

• Get the 10am train to Tokyo. I should arrive by 12.30pm.
• This gives me 1 hour to get to Sakura Hotel and back again to drop off my bag. (Bag + Disneyland rides != fun) 14 minutes each way so I should be ok.
• Meet Yukine at 1.30pm at Tokyo station for lunch.
• Go to Disneyland (20 minutes by bus I believe).
• We can buy tickets from 2.30pm and enter from 3pm.
• On Sunday, meet my French friend Jerome who I met in Ireland. He’s currently working in Kanagawa.
• We originally planned to go to the Studio Ghibli Museum but there are no tickets available this weekend so we decided to just wander around Harajuku and Yoyogi, as he hasn’t been yet and cosplayers are always great fun!

I’m just back from Wing Town. While I was walking towards the supermarket, a group of 5 guys left a shop in front of me and were walking ahead of me. “Who are these jokers?” I thought. “It’s the Japanese Village People! Look, there’s even a biker and a couple of construction workers!”
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I had my first day of my Songs class today. The level is much higher than my other classes and the guys there (they’re all guys except for one) all have great Japanese. Something I’ve noticed is that my spoken Japanese is actually pretty good as far as pronunciation and speed goes. I’m lacking in vocabulary and eloquence, but I guess I have more experience than most others. I think in general it’s difficult to break out of the language school and into the “real world” of Japan. I’ve seen the same thing in UL. I went to a party hosted by a Korean friend and all the people there were from the Language Centre. There were probably about 5 irish people in a room of 70 or 80 people; they were all Chinese, Korean, French, Spanish, Italian… basically anyone who doesn’t have English as a first language.
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I had my second private lesson today. The teacher, Kotouge-sensei, is a young lady doing a masters in education in Nanzan University. She has been to Ireland once before and was excited to meet an Irishman. She’s a great teacher and we got on well so I’m looking forward to her classes now. I’ve met all my teachers now except for one more. That’s my Friday private lesson teacher, but since I’ve asked for that class to be rescheduled I’m not sure if the teacher will stay the same.
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My finger’s doing alright since yesterday… but it still looks pretty dreadful. My usual method for dealing with things like this is to ignore it entirely until it’s fixed, so I’m not using my left thumb for anything (which is quite hard but you get used to positioning objects so that the place where most dexterity is required is available to your good hand) and keeping it covered up until it starts smelling bad.
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It’s never a good day when you can’t get to the money you need to buy a plaster for the finger you just sliced open. I stopped the bleeding eventually, with some remote assistance from home via Skype.
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