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unforthSo I realized I've spent a lot of time babbling about what sorts of things I do, but not just how life is going in a more vague sense. So, in honor of my having been in Japan for two weeks (almost to the minute!) thought I'd go ahead and write a little bit about the more mundane aspects of life and how they are going. Soon, probably tomorrow, I'm probably gonna do a photograph tour of my day, which will include pictures of my apartment, which I intend to clean up today cause it's as close to a pit as it could be right now, and other photos like my neighborhood, etc.
Unsurprisingly, my apartment is small. It contains a tiny kitchen (a sink and a single stove burner thing), a half-size fridge, a microwave, a fold up desk and teeny fold up chair, a book case, a lap table, and a TV. It also, thankfully, has an air conditioner. It has a closet, and came with two futons. It's a 6 tatami room, and I find the smell of the tatami mats to be utterly delightful - I'm gonna miss it a lot. The chair for the desk is uncomfortable enough that I actually spend most of my time sitting on the floor. I just got a couple of cushions to make this more comfortable, and hope to get some more. Every morning, I put my futon away (it's a sign of how lazy I'm being today that I haven't actually done this yet) and every evening I take it out again.
I'm not allowed to use any sort of adhesives or nails on the walls, but fortunately there is a sort of ridge all around the room from which I can hang hooks, so I've managed to get some pictures up that way. One whole corner of the room is windows, which adds a delightful amount of sunlight during the day, though I wish I could do something about the pink curtains. I've already packed it with a couple of hundred books of manga, though I'm slowly learning how to resist cheap manga, especially when I know I'm going to have to carry how ever much I buy. :) The big challenge has been finding cheap and useful forms of storage space, but I think I'm almost there now.
Sharing the bathroom and shower hasn't really been an issue at all. My roommates are non-existant - I've seen only three of them and haven't actually met any of them. I keep meaning to post a little "hi, feel free to knock on my door!" note but I keep putting it off. I'm not sure why. The location is good; it's kind of noisy during the day due to the carpenter's across the street, but it's a narrow one way street that doesn't actually go any where so we get hardly any traffic. In the evenings, one my male neighbors sings opera, which is fascinating to listen to, he has a nice voice. All in all, it's a rather city existence, but I can't really hear my roommates, and my neighbors are mostly quiet (though they stay up later than me often!).
My deadline of September 1st for getting going on work, meanwhile, has produced positive results. I'm helping mom on a project, which is eating up a couple of hours per day. I've gotten back in to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
novel_in_90 without any difficulty at all; two days ago I crossed over 100 pages on my manuscript, and today I exceeded the word count for a round on my actual manuscript (including my notes, I met the goal in Round 3 before the end of the round) - I've written about 68,000 words so far. The downside is that I no longer have any clue what's happening next. Today, I wrote the last bit I had planned, which was the death of one of the main characters. Now, I forge ahead without a clue of even whether or not the good guys will win, or, perhaps more problematic, how they will win. Ah well.
Binding, meanwhile, I've been slower to start on. I didn't do it at all on Sunday, but I did a chunk of Saturday, and yesterday I sewed and glued a binding. I'm gonna put in more time today, definitely, but not until I get some other stuff done. It's strange - I put off doing the binding more than any activity, but it's not like I don't enjoy it once I'm doing. I think some part of my brain is intimidated because it realizes just how important it is that I work on that - it's by far the most important thing I need to devote time to in the coming year.
Obviously, as I've posted, I've spent a fair amount of time doing stuff. I head out most days at about 11 after deciding where I'm going, circled some interesting spots on my map, and planned out a route either by foot or by train. I've been walking a ton, though I haven't been quite stupid enough to attempt to walk everywhere. What seems to happen, though, is that I'll be fine until about 2 or 3, when the weather is at its hottest. Then, I'll sort of lose it and decide I must have been insane to, for example, decide to walk to Ikebukuro. Then, I'll assess my progress, and either keep walking (like I did on Sunday when I walked to Shinjuku) or give up and hop on the train (which is what I did while I was on my way to Ikebukuro). Tokyo is BIG, and unsurprisingly it's not really reasonable to try to get around on foot. This is exacerbated by the fact that often, I end up purchasing things, and these things are often books, and carrying them around all day has been killing my lower back and elbows. I hope this means I'm getting stronger!
Four days ago I finally found a gym close to home. It's less than a 10 minute walk. It's got a 52500 yen (about $500) registration fee, but then it's only 10,500 yen a month (about $90) which isn't that bad for a two story gym/spa/swimming pool facility. I want to join, but I can't do so until I get an Alien Registration Card, which I won't be able to get (I think) until I have a visa, which I won't have until I get a job. Which is to say, I need to get off my ass. Not that I expect it to be hard to find a job, there are language schools everywhere. However, while I haven't been going to the gym, I do walk every where constantly. On a typical day, I'll head out at 11, get home between 5 and 6, and will be walking or standing pretty much the entire time in between except for about 30 minutes for lunch. Some days, this means "walking to Shinjuku;" other days this means "wandering about my neighborhood," but no matter how intense or relaxed the pace, 6 to 7 hours on my feet is still definitely exercise.
Eating, meanwhile, has been interesting. First, I've been eating surprisingly little Japanese food. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. See, I don't know that much kanji - about 300 characters, which is less than a quarter of those used. Of course, kanji are used for spelling Japanese words. You know what they serve at Japanese restaurants? Japanese food, of course, with Japanese names - which are spelled, often, in kanji! This means that I can't even read the menu at most Japanese restaurants, and being me, this makes me very nervous indeed. If, on the other hand, I go to an Italian restaurant, the biggest problem I have is trying to remember what "carbonara" is - it's written in katakana, a phonetic alphabet I can actually, you know, read. So which would you go to? A place that serves food you have to pick entirely by photograph (do you know what 海老, 鮪, or 牛肉 are? Well, I would know what the last one is - it's beef - but the rest I wouldn't know if not for the fact that I'm the one who just typed them in - they're ebi (shrimp) and maguro (tuna)), or a place where you can sort out what "チキンカリー" or "マルガリタ ピザ" (transliterated, those read "chikin karii" and "marugarita piza" - get it now? Try saying them out loud - if not, it's "chicken curry" and "margarita pizza") are...needless to say, there has been a great deal of foreign food in my diet except when I could be absolutely sure what I was getting - which means there has also been lots of inari and zarusoba and, to a lesser extent, sushi in my diet. I make my own zarusoba now, all the time, I bought the sauce.
Surprisingly, though, is the extent to which the Japanese seem to dig baked goods. Everything tastes kind of different, and you get some strange combinations (yesterday I ate a pastry with a typical flaky base, with white cream, red beans, and green tea cream in it) but everything is very tasty. They use far less sugar in pretty much everything than we Americans do, and less butter too, which means that EVERYTHING is healthier. Furthermore, I've learned that being outside in the heat utterly kills my appetite. The end result is that with rare exceptions I've been eating 1500 or so calories a day. A "big day" is 2000 calories, and I'd eat less than 1500 if I wasn't making sure I get around that much. Portions are smaller in general here, too, so I get to eat a plate of actual food and some sort of small desert for both lunch and dinner generally, at least on days when I actually get out and about. I don't have a scale, so I have no idea what this means practically, but I've made taking my measurements a part of my morning ritual, and according to that I've lost at least an inch off of all of my measurements (even my hips, yay!) since I got here, which I imagine translates into about 5 pounds. I'm pretty pleased with that, and, if I dress a little carefully, I'm pretty happy with how I look. Now if only I could go to the gym... ;)
As it is, though, I end up with a fair amount of down time in the evenings. I wake up at about 9 most days, putz around in the house for an hour or two working, writing, checking the internet, all that jazz. Then I head out. When I get home, though, usually between 5 and 7, I have until about 10 PM to mess around, preferably 11 - I get tired early, but if I go to bed too early I don't sleep well and that's just annoying. So what do I do?
-Watch T.V. : I put the TV on in the background. I find whatever anime I can usually - there isn't always some on, I only get 11 channels, but between 5 and about 8 I can usually find something - and leave it on. I don't usually follow what's going on cause I'm usually doing other stuff, though I followed an episode of Naruto that was on pretty well. I also watch game shows, cause they are often easy to follow. :)
-Read: I've been working my way through One Piece, slowly but surely. I've also got the Harry Potter books (the first four) in Japanese paperback, and I'm gonna try. I've been questing for two days for メテオ メトセラ Volume 8 (brought to America as Immortal Rain) because I've been waiting for volume 8 to come out in English for about a year and I want to know what happens!!! It's one of my favorite series, you see, but it's been coming out very slowly; Volume 7 came out more than a year after volume 6 did. I got so sick of not finding it that I tracked it down on Amazon so I'd know the publisher, and I'll probably go out this afternoon and try again, but not until I get a bit more actual work done. Also, after a bit of debate, I gave in while visiting Kinokuniya in Shinjuku and bought myself two books in English. They were ludicrously expensive - two trade paperback volumes (one of which, I'll grant, is a four book compilation) ran me about $50. Still, I'm a third of the way through the compilation already (it's four Agatha Christie mysteries) and the delight it's given me to have something to read in English is, I've decided, worth the price. The other is Punctuated Equilibrium, by Stephen Jay Gould. This made me laugh, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schenker28 and I looked for Gould in most of the bookstores in Bloomington unsuccessfully, but Kinokuniya, which had only about 200 square feet of bookshelves with books in English (in a 9 story shop) had about 5 of them.
-Play Video Games: I've been plowing my way through Zoo Tycoon 2, which is a good game for my purposes - it has long stretches of time where I set things up and then just let them run for 10 minutes, so I can read while it goes. I'm not sure what I'll play when I finish with it, though. I'm thinking of seeing if I can find it's expansions, of which there are four or five, because I'll happily keep playing it. It's a little buggy but it's entertaining. Failing that, I brought some other games with me. Civ 4 won't run (cry!) but I've got Neverwinter Nights, Sim City 4, er....the Greyhawk they made a few years ago, and maybe one or two others.
-I'm hoping to expand on "Watch Movies:" my computer has a DVD player, but flicks here are very pricey, and I'm reluctant to pay more than a few bucks for movies I ALREADY OWN. I found a place with $5 used movies, though, and I want to go back there. They didn't have a huge selection, though, so when I was there the only thing I could find that I actually wanted was the first Harry Potter movie, which is thus the only flick I own. This needs to be rectified. I might breakdown and spend $10 on a copy of the first Pirates movie and the first Spider man movie, but I'm still deciding. I mean, I've bought them once already!!
All in all, it's a rather quiet life, but it's nice. I need to get off my ass and figure out some what to meet people, though. Sooner or later it'll make me unhappy not to. Anyway, that's pretty much all of the ordinary day to day stuff I can think of that I haven't been talking about so far. :)
Man, that ended up long!
Unsurprisingly, my apartment is small. It contains a tiny kitchen (a sink and a single stove burner thing), a half-size fridge, a microwave, a fold up desk and teeny fold up chair, a book case, a lap table, and a TV. It also, thankfully, has an air conditioner. It has a closet, and came with two futons. It's a 6 tatami room, and I find the smell of the tatami mats to be utterly delightful - I'm gonna miss it a lot. The chair for the desk is uncomfortable enough that I actually spend most of my time sitting on the floor. I just got a couple of cushions to make this more comfortable, and hope to get some more. Every morning, I put my futon away (it's a sign of how lazy I'm being today that I haven't actually done this yet) and every evening I take it out again.
I'm not allowed to use any sort of adhesives or nails on the walls, but fortunately there is a sort of ridge all around the room from which I can hang hooks, so I've managed to get some pictures up that way. One whole corner of the room is windows, which adds a delightful amount of sunlight during the day, though I wish I could do something about the pink curtains. I've already packed it with a couple of hundred books of manga, though I'm slowly learning how to resist cheap manga, especially when I know I'm going to have to carry how ever much I buy. :) The big challenge has been finding cheap and useful forms of storage space, but I think I'm almost there now.
Sharing the bathroom and shower hasn't really been an issue at all. My roommates are non-existant - I've seen only three of them and haven't actually met any of them. I keep meaning to post a little "hi, feel free to knock on my door!" note but I keep putting it off. I'm not sure why. The location is good; it's kind of noisy during the day due to the carpenter's across the street, but it's a narrow one way street that doesn't actually go any where so we get hardly any traffic. In the evenings, one my male neighbors sings opera, which is fascinating to listen to, he has a nice voice. All in all, it's a rather city existence, but I can't really hear my roommates, and my neighbors are mostly quiet (though they stay up later than me often!).
My deadline of September 1st for getting going on work, meanwhile, has produced positive results. I'm helping mom on a project, which is eating up a couple of hours per day. I've gotten back in to
novel_in_90 without any difficulty at all; two days ago I crossed over 100 pages on my manuscript, and today I exceeded the word count for a round on my actual manuscript (including my notes, I met the goal in Round 3 before the end of the round) - I've written about 68,000 words so far. The downside is that I no longer have any clue what's happening next. Today, I wrote the last bit I had planned, which was the death of one of the main characters. Now, I forge ahead without a clue of even whether or not the good guys will win, or, perhaps more problematic, how they will win. Ah well.Binding, meanwhile, I've been slower to start on. I didn't do it at all on Sunday, but I did a chunk of Saturday, and yesterday I sewed and glued a binding. I'm gonna put in more time today, definitely, but not until I get some other stuff done. It's strange - I put off doing the binding more than any activity, but it's not like I don't enjoy it once I'm doing. I think some part of my brain is intimidated because it realizes just how important it is that I work on that - it's by far the most important thing I need to devote time to in the coming year.
Obviously, as I've posted, I've spent a fair amount of time doing stuff. I head out most days at about 11 after deciding where I'm going, circled some interesting spots on my map, and planned out a route either by foot or by train. I've been walking a ton, though I haven't been quite stupid enough to attempt to walk everywhere. What seems to happen, though, is that I'll be fine until about 2 or 3, when the weather is at its hottest. Then, I'll sort of lose it and decide I must have been insane to, for example, decide to walk to Ikebukuro. Then, I'll assess my progress, and either keep walking (like I did on Sunday when I walked to Shinjuku) or give up and hop on the train (which is what I did while I was on my way to Ikebukuro). Tokyo is BIG, and unsurprisingly it's not really reasonable to try to get around on foot. This is exacerbated by the fact that often, I end up purchasing things, and these things are often books, and carrying them around all day has been killing my lower back and elbows. I hope this means I'm getting stronger!
Four days ago I finally found a gym close to home. It's less than a 10 minute walk. It's got a 52500 yen (about $500) registration fee, but then it's only 10,500 yen a month (about $90) which isn't that bad for a two story gym/spa/swimming pool facility. I want to join, but I can't do so until I get an Alien Registration Card, which I won't be able to get (I think) until I have a visa, which I won't have until I get a job. Which is to say, I need to get off my ass. Not that I expect it to be hard to find a job, there are language schools everywhere. However, while I haven't been going to the gym, I do walk every where constantly. On a typical day, I'll head out at 11, get home between 5 and 6, and will be walking or standing pretty much the entire time in between except for about 30 minutes for lunch. Some days, this means "walking to Shinjuku;" other days this means "wandering about my neighborhood," but no matter how intense or relaxed the pace, 6 to 7 hours on my feet is still definitely exercise.
Eating, meanwhile, has been interesting. First, I've been eating surprisingly little Japanese food. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it. See, I don't know that much kanji - about 300 characters, which is less than a quarter of those used. Of course, kanji are used for spelling Japanese words. You know what they serve at Japanese restaurants? Japanese food, of course, with Japanese names - which are spelled, often, in kanji! This means that I can't even read the menu at most Japanese restaurants, and being me, this makes me very nervous indeed. If, on the other hand, I go to an Italian restaurant, the biggest problem I have is trying to remember what "carbonara" is - it's written in katakana, a phonetic alphabet I can actually, you know, read. So which would you go to? A place that serves food you have to pick entirely by photograph (do you know what 海老, 鮪, or 牛肉 are? Well, I would know what the last one is - it's beef - but the rest I wouldn't know if not for the fact that I'm the one who just typed them in - they're ebi (shrimp) and maguro (tuna)), or a place where you can sort out what "チキンカリー" or "マルガリタ ピザ" (transliterated, those read "chikin karii" and "marugarita piza" - get it now? Try saying them out loud - if not, it's "chicken curry" and "margarita pizza") are...needless to say, there has been a great deal of foreign food in my diet except when I could be absolutely sure what I was getting - which means there has also been lots of inari and zarusoba and, to a lesser extent, sushi in my diet. I make my own zarusoba now, all the time, I bought the sauce.
Surprisingly, though, is the extent to which the Japanese seem to dig baked goods. Everything tastes kind of different, and you get some strange combinations (yesterday I ate a pastry with a typical flaky base, with white cream, red beans, and green tea cream in it) but everything is very tasty. They use far less sugar in pretty much everything than we Americans do, and less butter too, which means that EVERYTHING is healthier. Furthermore, I've learned that being outside in the heat utterly kills my appetite. The end result is that with rare exceptions I've been eating 1500 or so calories a day. A "big day" is 2000 calories, and I'd eat less than 1500 if I wasn't making sure I get around that much. Portions are smaller in general here, too, so I get to eat a plate of actual food and some sort of small desert for both lunch and dinner generally, at least on days when I actually get out and about. I don't have a scale, so I have no idea what this means practically, but I've made taking my measurements a part of my morning ritual, and according to that I've lost at least an inch off of all of my measurements (even my hips, yay!) since I got here, which I imagine translates into about 5 pounds. I'm pretty pleased with that, and, if I dress a little carefully, I'm pretty happy with how I look. Now if only I could go to the gym... ;)
As it is, though, I end up with a fair amount of down time in the evenings. I wake up at about 9 most days, putz around in the house for an hour or two working, writing, checking the internet, all that jazz. Then I head out. When I get home, though, usually between 5 and 7, I have until about 10 PM to mess around, preferably 11 - I get tired early, but if I go to bed too early I don't sleep well and that's just annoying. So what do I do?
-Watch T.V. : I put the TV on in the background. I find whatever anime I can usually - there isn't always some on, I only get 11 channels, but between 5 and about 8 I can usually find something - and leave it on. I don't usually follow what's going on cause I'm usually doing other stuff, though I followed an episode of Naruto that was on pretty well. I also watch game shows, cause they are often easy to follow. :)
-Read: I've been working my way through One Piece, slowly but surely. I've also got the Harry Potter books (the first four) in Japanese paperback, and I'm gonna try. I've been questing for two days for メテオ メトセラ Volume 8 (brought to America as Immortal Rain) because I've been waiting for volume 8 to come out in English for about a year and I want to know what happens!!! It's one of my favorite series, you see, but it's been coming out very slowly; Volume 7 came out more than a year after volume 6 did. I got so sick of not finding it that I tracked it down on Amazon so I'd know the publisher, and I'll probably go out this afternoon and try again, but not until I get a bit more actual work done. Also, after a bit of debate, I gave in while visiting Kinokuniya in Shinjuku and bought myself two books in English. They were ludicrously expensive - two trade paperback volumes (one of which, I'll grant, is a four book compilation) ran me about $50. Still, I'm a third of the way through the compilation already (it's four Agatha Christie mysteries) and the delight it's given me to have something to read in English is, I've decided, worth the price. The other is Punctuated Equilibrium, by Stephen Jay Gould. This made me laugh, for
schenker28 and I looked for Gould in most of the bookstores in Bloomington unsuccessfully, but Kinokuniya, which had only about 200 square feet of bookshelves with books in English (in a 9 story shop) had about 5 of them.-Play Video Games: I've been plowing my way through Zoo Tycoon 2, which is a good game for my purposes - it has long stretches of time where I set things up and then just let them run for 10 minutes, so I can read while it goes. I'm not sure what I'll play when I finish with it, though. I'm thinking of seeing if I can find it's expansions, of which there are four or five, because I'll happily keep playing it. It's a little buggy but it's entertaining. Failing that, I brought some other games with me. Civ 4 won't run (cry!) but I've got Neverwinter Nights, Sim City 4, er....the Greyhawk they made a few years ago, and maybe one or two others.
-I'm hoping to expand on "Watch Movies:" my computer has a DVD player, but flicks here are very pricey, and I'm reluctant to pay more than a few bucks for movies I ALREADY OWN. I found a place with $5 used movies, though, and I want to go back there. They didn't have a huge selection, though, so when I was there the only thing I could find that I actually wanted was the first Harry Potter movie, which is thus the only flick I own. This needs to be rectified. I might breakdown and spend $10 on a copy of the first Pirates movie and the first Spider man movie, but I'm still deciding. I mean, I've bought them once already!!
All in all, it's a rather quiet life, but it's nice. I need to get off my ass and figure out some what to meet people, though. Sooner or later it'll make me unhappy not to. Anyway, that's pretty much all of the ordinary day to day stuff I can think of that I haven't been talking about so far. :)
Man, that ended up long!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 04:52 am (UTC)Good luck with finding a fun language job!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:33 pm (UTC)Peace, Love and Unagi,
-Sara-
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 04:53 pm (UTC)I think you should say hi to the random opera singer!
Congrats on all the walking and losing weight, etc etc.! I'm back at the gym (basically the same weekend + T/W/Th schedule we were doing before. But Tuesday and Thursday I go to step or core aerobics classes, and they've bee really good and exhausting. Plus the music mix this year is really good -- my teacher is going to burn me a copy. There's a sweet remix of Mamma Mia, among other things. I don't know where he gets this stuff. I am the same weight I was at a month ago when we last were going to the gym regularly, so it's good -- I didn't do so well in August with exercise. Oh yeah, this last weekend I went to Brown County with Zora, Viscous, and a bunch of other people, and went on a 3 hour hike or so. Jonie was exhausted at the end, and seemed pretty tired out the next day too, like me.
I've managed to slightly reduce my amount of playing Final Fantasy recently, because of getting ready for Vienna, etc. But man, that's a great game.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 12:23 am (UTC)If I knew where the opera singer lived, I might, but there are a lot of apartments all around me, and sound carries well.
I'm so jealous of the final fantasy playing, sigh.
Lastly, yesterday I was walking by a store in a mall and it was blasting Dancing Queen, and I thought of you. ;) It made me laugh.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 03:35 pm (UTC)Have a wonderful time!
-K