An Erasable Pen... Amazing!

Today was a much better day. I had my first amount of that thing called 'fun'. Here in Japan I mean, it's not like I've never had 'fun'. We met our advisor in the morning, and after we headed back to Tsukuba Center where the big mall is. By bus of course, because we needed to buy big things. I finally figured the bus system out, so it is no longer evil.

Tori decided to take another Tori shortcut (she took a wrong turn the night before which is when we got lost on the bikes) and got off at the wrong bus stop about a mile or so away from the mall. This other girl from OSU that was with us and I stayed on the bus, and we found her at our favorite store, Jusco, about 40min later. Jusco is officially awesome, because you can buy anything there. Also, I've been promoted to the directions person. Since I have a good sense of direction. Thanks for that Dad, since Mom's genes clearly had nothing to do with it.

I got to go clothes shopping today :) It was fun. Well for me at least. Tori didn't like it so much. I ended up buying a shirt and a purse at Jusco. I have now discovered Japanese fashion and I love it. We ran into the Americans from California at The Gap and we talked there for a bit. Then we ran into them again at Jusco. I swear I wasn't stalking D: We got lunch at this big food court there, and I ate Subway. I know, it's American food and I'm in Japan, I should be eating Japanese food. But I've been longing for a sandwich. It was turkey of course (me and my turkey sandwiches). Ordering was a little scary, but I think I managed fairly well (ok, so the girl spoke a few English words too, that helped).

We eventually wandered into this store called The Loft. Are those in America? I can't remember. It was full of school supplies, makeup, household items, and stationary. For the record, the Japanese are infinitely better at stationary than us. All of it was beautiful and intricately detailed. I bought some folders and a calligraphy pen... and then we discovered the awesomeness that is... er, friction pens I think they were called? They're pens and highlighters that are erasable. I know what you're thinking, "lol whatever, we've had those in America forever." I have some of those at home, and they really don't work too good. This thing is awesome, it erases it completely and utterly. It's not really the soft eraser material, more of a hard rubber. I don't think we have erasable highlighters in America. I just wish I'd had this pen when I made all those mistakes on all the paperwork I had to fill out...

Oh, and a side note for Rachel. I got Harry Potter 3 in Japanese at the book store :)

Another side note... I would almost consider going all the way to the mall just to use the toilets (I waited to use the bathroom till I got there). They're very nice in the nice department stores, naturally. It's like heaven. They're pristine of course. They have the nice Japanese Toto toilets (western style) with the heated seats and butt washing capabilites. Not that I used that :P The stalls even have a seat for a baby, toilet cleaning liquid you can put on the toilet paper to wipe the seat, and the sinks have soap and a dryer. Heaven.

Anyway, we were at the mall for about 4-5hrs, and in the end we went back to Jusco to buy the big things. I got a big umbrella, some more hooks, a drying rack, a face towel, some more mats for the floor cause it's gross, a desk top plastic drawer thing, and a big four drawer plastic dresser thing (they're expensive here for some reason, this was the cheapest I could find and it was $30). We met two other international students there, from Britain. That was cool. They were buying big bulky storage things too. So we all lugged our stuff towards the bus, it was quite a sight to behold. All of us gaijin (foreigner) and our giant boxes. We passed a older foreigner and his Japanese wife on the way. He smiled when he saw us. I think he knew exactly what was happening and what we were going through and was amused by it. I don't blame him, we looked silly.

The bus was a little awkward. My huge box took up a whole seat, so I stood up, not wanting to take two seats. It was fairly crowded, and I'm sure we annoyed all the Japanese people. I could feel the stares. At least I finally figured out what bus we were supposed to take. My room is quite a bit more organized now. I was able to put all my clothes in the dresser thing and empty one of my suitcases. I used the big box that my dresser was in as a computer table since it's the right height (ghetto lol). Tori and I decided to go to the dining hall for dinner after we dropped off our stuff, which turned out to be a good decision. All the international students from various California schools had also decided to come to our dining hall for dinner, including the girls we met before (at the mall twice, I swear I wasn't stalking). There were about 10 or 12 of them. So we sat with them and made friends and talked with them. In English of course. It was really nice to talk fluently with other Americans, especially after having so many issues communicating with Japanese people. But I know I'm here to learn the language and I have to put effort into it and try and blah blah blah...

We spent about an hour at dinner, and I met another girl who loves The Office as much as I do. She saw The Office t-shirt I was wearing that Jill gave me :) She was just as sad as me when we discovered we couldn't watch the new season online on hulu or nbc.com cause we're not in the US. After dinner about 5 of us went to see this one kid's room nearby. Apparently he got lucky and got one of the rooms with a private bathroom. It was a lot nicer than mine. But he said he had found dead cockroaches on the floor when he moved in. Yuck. I'd like to attempt to move, but informing all the school offices and government offices of my change of address would be a nightmare. The building was slightly cleaner, but was still infested with bugs anyway. Also, today my advisor said that my residence area (Ichinoya) is the best of the three areas (well lesser of the 3 evils really). That's rather sad to me. That a rathole like this could be considered best of anything.

Speaking of address, here's my current address, since I apparently made a mistake in the zip code in my email. There's an extra 0 in the end of my zip code.

Ichinoya shukusha 01-117

(University of Tsukuba)

2-1 Tennoudai Tsukuba-shi

Ibaraki-ken Japan 305-0006

Also, since a few people seemed to be concerned about it, you can share this blog with anyone you want. If I wanted it to be private, I wouldn't have posted it on the internet. Thanks for the comments by the way. They made me happy :)

A few pictures today. The first is my requisite picture of Okura Hotel, taken just for Rachel (inside joke people, sorry. It's basically a hotel that was mentioned in numerous examples in our textbook, and it's become legendary to us now). The second is of me (in Jusco of course!) trying on a Carter-san's wife-like giant white hat (also an inside joke. A rather large hat one of the actors in our textbook's video series wore, to "protect her from getting burned by the sun"). Third is of Tori in a visor hat that looked like a lampshade that I forced her to pose with. And the last is me being snobby with my new cane umbrella. I tried to look haughty, but I was sorta laughing. All I needed was a monocle...