Idiot's Guide to Japanese Laundry Machines

I did nothing this morning. Again. I stayed in bed till 11:30. Most of the California group and Tori and I met around 3 to go shopping. There doesn't seem to be too much else to do but shop here, to El Banco de Miguel's dismay. Instead of going to Tsukuba Center, we went to another mall this time. We took the subway one stop down. They have a train here called the Tsukuba Express that takes you into central Tokyo in about 45min for $12. That's the one we rode.

The mall was huge, even bigger than Polaris. I was surprised at how big it was. We spent 5hrs there and I barely got through half. After lunch (noodles and tenpura and mint chip ice cream!), we went to the electronic store, where I finally bought an electronic English-Japanese dictionary for about $200. Sounds uber expensive for a dictionary (this was actually the cheapest one) but they're incredibly useful and awesome. Many of the Japanese students have one, and pretty much every student who wants to learn Japanese and stays here for an extended period of time gets one eventually. You can type in Japanese or English words and it translates, and you can also write in kanji (the Chinese characters) with a stylus. Looking up kanji with a book is time consuming, and to look up compounds and their pronunciation and meaning you pretty much need a computer. It has lots of other functionalities too, but it's all in Japanese, so that's gonna take some fiddling around to figure out. I'll have to use my dictionary to translate my dictionary.

I felt really bad for the girl at the shop who was helping me purchase the dictionary. I was trying really hard, and I understood a lot of what she said, but unfortunately they were out of the dictionary I wanted (of course), so she was trying to tell me they could ship it to me, which is what I thought, but she said something I didn't understand and I think I looked confused. First she radioed for a worker who could speak English, then a customer who was walking by came and helped instead. She explained it to me, and it was exactly as I thought I'd heard. Whoops. Then, when she said something else a few minutes later, she got one of the other workers to draw me a little chart. Poor girl. I apologized profusely. But I really did understand a lot of what she said, so that was good. The problem is, I like to be sure I'm understanding, since I'm paying money and signing stuff, and then they think I don't understand at all... oh it's all such a mess lol. I can't wait to be fluent in this language.

I wanted to go clothes shopping next, to which Tori groaned, so we split and she went to the book store and other places, and I got a few shirts. I ran into some of the other girls in one store, so we stuck together after that.

After we rode the subway and I rode my bike back to my dorm (it's like 30min or so), I finally braved the washing machine. I don't really know what the buttons all do, and I think Japanese washing machines use only cold water for some reason, so I just pushed some buttons and put the soap in and it worked ok. I'm afraid to use the dryer though, cause the consequences for not understanding that are a little worse (shrunken clothes D:), so I just hung them up on my clothes line and drying rack.

I wanted to go into Tokyo tomorrow, but I don't think that's happening. I'm sure everyone's planning to do something, so I'll just hang with them again. Tori and I were lucky to meet them. It's nice to have friends to hang out with.

There was another earthquake this morning. I think that's 4 this week or something. They feel just like someone's rocking your bed. It's funny, I haven't been here that long, but they don't even phase me anymore. I barely even remembered to mention it.

Pictures! First one's of the mall. Then of me and Tori posing with the giant stuffed animals from Miyazaki's movies (famous Japanese movie director for those that don't know) Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service, and of course, Totoro and the Cat Bus, respectively. The last one's of an awesomely named coffee shop.