Day 4

Here i am again finishing up on my 4th day of school. I like the immersion program. You even force yourself to think in Japanese, culturally, because you understand how they speak and respond. There's a student with me who keeps saying, "In m country...." blah blah blah. Shut up. Why are you here? I sometimes remind him where he's at, but it gets old. Anyway, I had my first experience washing my clothes in Japan.

What do you mean? you ask. Well, washing clothes is just a little different. One thing is the measurements. I have to get use to the metric system. Damn America uses the standard system which if you think about really has no value. If I have to educate you, then remember a foot use to be measured by the King's foot, literally. And a yard use to be from the king's nose to the tip of his finger. Anyway, I digress. So I have my measuring cup from america and trying to convert so I don't use too much soap to the amount of water for a medium load, which is about 50ml here, I think. I got thru that without an "I Love Lucy" incident. Here's the big change. Well, I shouldn't say that because my grandma use to wash her clothes in the bathtub and then hang dry. But I the dry cycle is just a spin cycle that uses the centrifugal force to spin your clothes dry. So in short, my clothes weren't snuggily warm when it finished. It was still wet and some were still in need of wringing. I had to hand my clothes outside where it had been about 30 degrees F. So it took a full day and a half to dry. Yay!

I gotta mention another funny thing if I haven't done so already. I took the bus again and noticed that the bus driver shuts the bus down at stop lights. Right. Completely off. The lights don't take long, but they shut it off. I think that's why there is a sign that says the bus is environmentally friendly.

I have to go back on the comment i made about the depressed kids. I'm not taking it back, I just want to add that they are also very stressed. I almost wanted to say something to this kid who had to run and catch the subway. When he got on, he was clenching and unclenching his hands wringing the hell out of his pants. So picture him sitting on the train. His hands on top of his knees and he's crushing the material of his pants, his eyes closed tight, and just breathing hard. Now I know thats not from his little sprint. He look like he had issues. Like i have seen people run and barely make it on the subway, and all they did was let out a breath of fresh air. No, this kid was like regretting he didn't jump in front of the subway, or not wanting to get to school or something.

Continuing on this train of thought. I watched this girl. Cute, but too young for me. :P She was sitting and just looking at other people, women mostly. She looked at them for a couple of seconds, sighed, (at least in my opinion), then made a quick evil eye. I swear. I almost laughed out loud when I saw this. So I kept watching her to make sure. She did it again. Mostly to the women who had the nice dyed hair who had the nice designer shopping bags. Yeah, not the bag itself, but the shopping from the store. Evil eye. So I got scared and made sure she didn't look at me and give me the curse.

Oh, here's another funny thing. My sister will know when I mention the Wallflower manga. But there were a bunch of guys heading home I think cause they were all walking together in the mall and they had that look the guys had in Wallflower. There were about five, but they had that thin waif look with the rock star hair, dressed like they work at the Host Club. They had a lot of young girls watching them and doing the whisper whisper whisper after they passed kind of thing The real funny thing was they were like in their own world as f they were picturing themselves walking down the red carpet and they had their eyes on the prize. They didn't look left or right just forward into space. I swear they flipped their hair too a few times.

Oh yeah, I went to the IMS building in the middle of Tenjin. It's like a South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, but 13 floors up. Very beautiful building. I'll take pictures next time. I forgot my camera anyway. I mean all the stores had the workers say "Irrashaimase" with a 3/4 bow and very understandable. This is compared to the AM/PM people who say it and you think they're saying "Sumimasen" All the customers were wearing fashionable attire and here i was in my jeans, polo and giant backpack. I went to the rainbow plaza on the 8th floor for foreigners. No not for gay people. They have a floor for foreigners who are living or visiting for a long period. They have things from internet to books in your native language. They even have books ou cn check out to use for your stay. Very helpful people. Anyway. I gotta study. Jaa ne.