きちゃったぞ

Well, at some point yesterday, whoever had an open Wi-Fi access point took it down. It disappeared suddenly, and I lost my Internet connection. As it turns out, though I think I may have mentioned this before, I can’t get my own Internet connection until I get a cell phone, which I can’t do until my alien registration card (外国人登録証明書) arrives. But only mostly! They’re going to issue me a interim not-card (仮外国人登録証明書) that will perform the same function as the card until a month from now when I will go get the card itself.

I’m going to wander around town for a while today and see about finding an open Wi-Fi hotspot. It appears to have stopped raining, so I should be able to walk around and just check my laptop every so often. I am suspecting that my best bet is by the 電気屋 (Fry’s) or down by the school.

Oh, apparently, the school has an active judo (wrestling) club. And kendo (sword-ing), kyuudo (archery), and a “free guide club”. Obviously, I have no idea what that last one is. This school is so amazingly massive that they have their own high school.

メロンパン・オタク

Title reads "melon bread fanatic".
Some people were curious what melon bread is. Me, 100￥, and my D80 have set out to answer this question for you.
Melon bread is so named for its shape, not its texture, taste, or filling, as you might think. It tastes nothing like any kind of melon I've ever tasted, certainly not honeydew melons.
Keep in mind that the pictures melon bread is the three-for-a-dollar dollar-store variety. It's certainly not a good representative of the food, but I ate all the other examples before I could take pictures of them, and this one didn't last long enough to see its picture uploaded.

Nom.

My アパート

Here's a little photographic walkthrough of my apartment. It's small, but very livable. I like the porchy area. Needs a grill, though. In addition, I'll be posting random pictures to http://picasaweb.google.com/jinkside/AroundKyoto if you're interested. Now then, time to go brave the Japanese banking system. Hopefully, I can get a routing number.
Oh, and it turns out I have to have a phone number to get an Internet connection, so I have to get a cell phone. I won't always be able to borrow this guy's 'Net connection.

カラーボックス: The Construction

I imagine in my mind this post's title being read in a deep, masculine voice something like Killstick: The Reckoning, Shopping Mall: Zombie Fragfest IV, or Oh God It's the Flood: You're Screwed. That in mind, here's a picture of a cardboard box:

So I went down to Jusco (Wal-Mart, but spelled with a J because it's Japanese. Or something) and got a scrubby, some suction hooks, and a カラーボックス ("karaa bokksu"). I'm not entirely certain what it is. It cost $9.50 and is, I think, a shelf. Like, an Ikea shelf. JDIC says it means "color box", but it doesn't even return anything on Sanseido or ALC. Go figure.
Anyway, I'm going to try and put it together. I fully expect at least one explosion, and possibly a lemur.

Taking it out of the box, I'm a little impressed with it. For ten bucks, I get chipboard? I'm used to Wal-Mart's polyboard crap. The thing's theoretically rated to hold 5kg (11lbs) per shelf, but I bet I could stand on the thing when it's completed.
The downside to this is that the screws squeak really loudly on the last couple of turns, in addition to being arm-wrenchingly difficult to put in. I'm putting some cooking oil on them in the hopes that it will make this a bit easier.
It didn't.
All was going to smoothly until I realized that I put the top board in one of the middle spots. Fortunately, I realized this right as I finished putting in the second screw holding it in place instead of later, when I would've had to take out 12 screws.
Okay, eight screws down, and I've got the little crappy paper things in the back. I was going to leave them out in the spirit of my カラーボックス not taking itself too seriously, but then I realized that they are probably an integral part of its stability. Oh, and that I need to buy a real screwdriver. Multi-tools are great as a backup, and they get the job done, but... There are 16 more screws now that I wish I didn't have to use a multi-tool on.
Aaaand it's 2:30. Wanna guess what I've done with my day?

Forgot to get soap.

メロンパン

I think I have a melon bread addiction.

Japan: Land of the Wow, That's Close

If you take a look at this map, you will see that my apartment is in just about the best location ever.

• There's a grocery store with amazing prices that's pretty much on the other side of our building.
• There's the Japanese version of a Wal-Mart crossed with a shopping mall across the street.
• There's a six-floor Japanese version of Fry's Electronics down the road in a straight line. It's less than ten minutes on foot.

The school is also close to here, as I said in my earlier post. I've marked all these places on my Kyoto: Important Places map on Google. They may not be important to other people, but they should be of immeasurable help to people in my position.

Google Mapped

If you were to click on this link [removed for privacy reasons], you might see roughly the path I take to get to school. Or you might just see the area around where I live. I'm about to test this.
Edit: It looks like it does what I want it to. You'll notice that the path clocks in at just under 4,000 feet, which means I'm less than a mile's walking distance from the school. Psh, and they say it's ten minutes by bike.
As it turns out, there's a department store very close by that's really more of a shopping mall. It's convenient, in any case, 'cause they have food and most things that you might wish to buy. Joshin's, the 電気屋 is much farther away, though I have not yet found it on Google Maps.

Kagome: It's not from Inuyasha!

I actually saw this post's title in one of their advertisements.

In any case, the stuff is a fruit and vegetable blend and is surprisingly good. Back in the states, it's about $3 for a 20oz bottle, I think. I picked up a 1L carton here yesterday for $1.80, making it slightly cheaper than water, depending on the brand.

My 1L carton of Kagome

"21 vegetables, 3 fruits"

A Field of Butts

We went to the mall yesterday and I saw these butts. I couldn't not take a picture, so... Also, the models have articlated fingers. That is to say, the models that have hands; those models can hold things and whatnot.
Also, this is one of the prettier shrines I saw on the way to the supermarket, where I got some rice and other basics. 醤油 is soy sauce, by the way. Pronounced "show-you".
As for the swastika: don't worry. The Japanese are not secretly Nazis or anything. The swastika is a symbol for rebirth and has been a part of the Buddhist religion for longer than Germany has existed.
(Edit: Josh has informed me of some stuff that's prompted me to poke around a little more. Upon further research - read that as "Wikipedia" - I've discovered that it has a sackload of meanings, partly because it was developed independently all over the world. It apparently happens naturally when you start weaving baskets or something)

Next up is the two girls who have been assigned to keep me out of trouble. They've done a pretty good job so far, and one of the them has a Wii and Brawl. Can you guess which one?
And as far as I can tell, yes, all Japanese girls wear this much makeup. But they do so in a fairly decent manner, as you can see.

And there's my rice cooker. Paid $65 for that thing. It was the cheapest one they had by about $20, and I think I saw one for $500, but I may be confused. It makes rice, and it's tasty, so I'm not complaining too much. Actually, it keeps it edible overnight, too. Biggest improvement over the $10 one you buy at Fred Meyer: Teflon. The bowl is nonstick, which makes it much easier to get rice out of.
By the way, that rice cooker is sitting on top of the washing machine. I'm going to see if I can find some of the cubes - like Jes has in her room - here or maybe try and convince her to send me some.

Blogspotted

I've got the whole thing in Blogger now, and it's all mostly the way it was before. You should see some changes, but I think the biggest improvement is that you can leave comments now.
I can't get the formatting right. If I change it so that borders look right in IE, they stack in Fx. Blargh.

Pictures

I promised pictures, and I've been sort of holding out. Posting pictures was a pain before, but now it's only a sort of itchiness. Here you go!
The picture on the far left is the bathroom as a whole. I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the bathtub is above my knees and the toilet has both a bidet and a "derrière", which apparently means "spray water all over my ass and make things difficult" in French. Those are the little knobs on teh side of the toilet. Also note that the soaps are in pumps instead of those stupid little bars and bottles that nobody likes. If you do, you're a bad person. I recall that they Engrish'd something like "We are the caring of the Environment for you!"
Then there's the center picture. That shower head is the best ever. Seriously. It feels exactly the way I've wanted a shower to feel my entire life. Oh, and there's the retractable clothes line. Kind of cool, if you're into that kind of thing.

Two more things, quickly: notice that this whole mirror is steamed up, except for a nice, useful portion of it? Yup, the mirror is heated, and this picture was taken a few minutes I got out of the shower.
Not much to say about the right-most picture. It's Kyoto.

First post!

I'm trying out using Blogger to do this, 'cause doing it by hand in Notepad is getting old.

Two prongs? も一つ、お願いします！

Checked out of the hotel today, and they hailed a taxi for me. The taxi took me to Kyoto Gaidai, where I was supposed to meet someone "by 10:00". I ended up having quite a discussion with Tetsushi YAMADA, who... does something at the front gate. I'm not being secretive, I just have no idea what his job is. He's a pretty decent guy and he speaks better English than most of the Japanese I've encountered so far. Most Japanese people seem to recognize just about any single English word I throw at them, so I can use English words when my vocabulary fails me, such as trying to describe a "TV cord", because "coaxial cable" doesn't quite convey the same... I'm-not-looking-for-a-technical-term.

Anyway, as it turns out I got there an hour and some change early, so they told me to wait in the resource room. So I drop my stuff in the resource room and see a line of computers. Yay! Finally, I'll be able to go Internet something! Alas, it was not to be. KUFS apparently has their own domain, and none of the standard guest accounts worked. Oh, and my laptop was at 7% charge, with nary a three-pronged plug in sight.

Which brings me to my next point: grounded plugs. What the hell happened here, Japan? In the hotel room, there was not a single three-prong outlet to be seen. But you can imagine that. I mean, they must have just not redone the wiring since, say, World War II. ... ... Or something.

Except there's not a single one in my whole apartment. Eh? Eh? Surely the Japanese recognize the risk of electrical surges and whatever else grounded plugs are good for.

In the end, I discovered that two of the outlets in my apartment do, in fact, have a ground. It's a screw. Under the plug itself. To use it, you have to go to a 電気屋 (something like Fry's, but scaled down to Japanese-size) and pick up a converter. The converter has a little two-pronged fork on the end of a six-inch wire; the whole assembly looks like somebody's trying to rig up a VHF antenna for their TV through the wall with only one terminal once it's all done.

Now, you'd think this would work like every other such assembly ever but it doesn't, of course, because OMGWTFJAPANBBQ or something. Hell, I don't know. Anyway, you unscrew the brass - I think - screw and then slide the wire under this rectangular washer. I didn't want to end up accidentally flipping the kill-the-stupid-foreigner switch that I'm sure is hidden somewhere, so I had my kanrinrin (something of a live-in manager. Mine's name is "Gyoubu" as far as I can tell) do it. Now I have one surge protector worth of modern, grounded outlets in my apartment.

Mission complete?

Jet Lag, part I

Well, I'm in the hotel now. Have been for about an hour. I'm pretty tired, so I think I'll hit the hay.

Mom sent me an email, though, that reminded me: my first thought when I got off the plane and stepped into the terminal was "Eck, they ionize the air here. Or it could be the humidity." And my first real action while there was to go to the bathroom. I don't know if there's any significance to that, but I thought it was funny.

I'll get out and take more pictures tomorrow. I'm exhausted.

08-03-26 0605WST 2210JST - ウィル

The Five-Step Plan

Well, I'm glad that's over with.

Here's how it went getting off the plane:

1. Disembark
2. Get fingerprinted
3. Get felt up (actually just a normal pat-down)
4. Get checked baggage
5. Start failing

I'm not kidding. I went to pull money from my bank account using my ATM card, only to find that the ATM machines here won't do it. And the cash I have with me consists of $10 American. And to get to the town of Kyoto - I'm currently sitting on an artificial island about ten miles from where I want to be, if all is as I think it is - I need 3,700円, which comes out to about $35, depending on the exchange rate that day.

So an hour of wandering around with 130 pounds of luggage later, I gained a luggage cart, solicited help from about ten different people, only two of which were not Japanese, and managed to find one ATM upstairs that I can use my ATM card at. I'm told there's a department store in town that has a bank of ATMs on the seventh floor that will be very useful for me. I can't remember the name of the place, though.

In the end, I pulled $300 from my savings account. I couldn't pull out any more, or I would've tried to get more. The shuttle and hotel together will be less than $100, so I should be okay for now. Apparently ATM is not the way to go here, in spite of the fact that cash is apparently so popular.

I've got a few more minutes to kill, so I guess I'll take a couple pictures now that I'm on the ground. I've got roughly 120 pictures of the clouds, I think. Not much to do on the plane and the clouds were beautiful, especially while we were landing and I wasn't allowed to use my camera. Oh, and the Wi-Fi here appears to be MAC-limited, so I can't get online.

In the end, it ended up being okay. Phew.

08-03-26 0231WST 1730JST - ウィル

The Plane

I'm right now on a Boeing 767-300ER over the Pacific Ocean, bound for Osaka, which is in the Kansai region of Japan. I left YVR Vancouver, B.C., Canada this afternoon at 13:10PST. The captain announced that we should have about 11 hours of total flight time, which means I'll be in the air slightly longer than I've sat in airports today.

For those that don't already know, I'm going on a study abroad trip to Kyoto, where I will be studying Japanese language at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. I will be studying there for one year and coming home, hopefully to graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Japanese (broad area).

As for the flight itself, it is now 1914, Will Standard Time, which means I've got about four hours left. I have no idea what time it will be in Japan when I land, but it's going to be 11PM or midnight Will's Watch Time and, not surprisingly, Will's sleep cycle time. Hello, jet lag! Actually, I've been trying to nap as much as possible so that I can be semi-wakeful when I get there, but the seats are not particularly conducive to it. They're comfortable enough, though. I'm right by the emergency exits located by the wings, and I think they need to check the seals, 'cause this thing leaks a lot of cold air and makes quite a lot of noise in addition.

I'd been meaning to get a site-shaped thing set up for this, which will serve to help keep my family - and the other four-ish people that care - up to date on my journey. I'll try and tack at least one annotated picture with each post, though I have no intention of limiting myself with that.

Since I'm not yet off the plane, here's a list of some of the stuff I've got pictures of thus far:

• My dad, who is cool.
• YVR Vancouver terminal, where I waited for this flight
• The inside of both the DHC8 Dehaviland twin turboprop that I got to YVR from SEA on and the 767-300ER I'm in as I type this.
• The 767's got little touchscreens you can watch movies on! It's so cool! Also, they've brought us food on two separate occasions, plus a little bag of snack-things. Plus, I think I've had about a liter of Canada Dry ginger ale. Those of you who know me know my history of ginger ale abuse.
• Some of the customs forms for both Japan and Canada. It's convenient for me I'm not carrying any perfume, alcohol, or tobacco, as that is almost all they care about.

I don't intend to make future entries nearly this large, unless I find large quantities of time on transit or something. I'll have to add pictures later, probably from the hotel, as I don't have space to set up my camera safely. My laptop is already consuming the entirety of my lap-area, which is my whole workspace.

And Dean would be disappointed if I didn't put any 漢字 (kanji) in anywhere, so here are a couple of the places I've mentioned:

Osaka	Kyoto	Kansai
大阪	京都	関西

Some eggs at YVR
A fish full of soy sauce
08-03-25 1931WST - ウィル (Will)