Thursday 10 September 2009

First Contact part II

Embarrasing Experience #1

I'd forgotten making a fool of myself was even a possibility.

So I was getting my first batch of groceries (vegetables, fruit, noodles, juice, milk, bread, veggie oil; all for 2600 yen) and was paying. I noticed a row of small tables where other customers were packing their goods, and by the looks of it you got plastic bags from a rack on the tables. This was duly noted. The woman behind the till asked me something in the usual lightning-speed Japanese, but I'd gotten so used to hearing Japanese cashiers say a bunch of things I don't need to respond to so I just stayed quiet. She said the same thing again, slower, looking a bit anxious, before holding up a carrier back. In my nervous state, I misheard the question of 'Do you have a bag?' as 'Do you want a bag?', to which I replied yes, I did. I then proceeded to not get a bag, and walked off to one of the tables, to find to my dismay that the bags on offer were the thin ones used to packing small objects into groups, really not good for carrying all my stuff home. I must have stood there, biding for time as I tried to come up with a plan, for a few minutes, before the kindly woman opposite me motioned to a member of staff and said I looked like I needed help. I bought a bag and went on my way...

Stupid, simple errors. Just wanted to curl up and die. Something to remember, anyway. What surprised me was that the woman who helped me out, though being a kind soul for doing so, didn't smile. Not once. It was as if she was obliged to help, not that she wanted to. A worrying thought. But regardless, I guess I let my guard down. I mean, earlier today I bought a LAN cable from a gaming shop (more on them later) that was in a glass cabinet in a whole other part of the shop!

Well, it was bound to happen some time. I'll be praying that it was the last time I make a fool of myself.
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Right, anyway.

After a bit of a kerfuffle trying to find the place, Aki and I found our way here, to the Shugakukan, which is a quiant little place inside and out. The rooms are small, but pretty awesome, with sliding wooden blinds instead of curtains. The windows themselves don't open, which is shame 'cos it gets pretty hot, but I do have an aircon fan thing which makes funny noises when you turn it on and off. Took me a while to get the internet going, but that's flawless now. Also 2 small common rooms with a simple table and TV; 2 shared kitchens, one for each floor; and 25 rooms up for grabs, with a meagre 5 filled when I last checked. After meeting Ono-san, the lovely warden, and learning how to set up a futon, we head off again with directions from Ono-san to a small Japanese diner in a shopping center some 5 minutes from the Shugakukan (where I shall be buying Pokemon tomorrow!!) which was good. Made a bit of a fool of myself when trying to eat a boned slab of fish with chopsticks, but I managed. Aki was incredibly patient and more than happy to explain the best way to eat a Japanese meal.

(I think I hear tenant #8 arriving now...)

After that we explored for a bit. Aki showed me Doshisha's campus grounds, and where to go in case of emergency, before we parted ways. I now know how to use the Kyoto subway, which is surprisingly simple. It's no London, that's for sure.

So, home again I unpacked, went out, wandered, got lost, returned home, ate a rubbish meal of badly made instant soup, instant pasta and an onigiri with I-don't-know-what in it. I was asleep by 8, and I woke up this morning at 7.30.

Okay, with the introductory phase over, today I decided to properly explore Kyoto and get my mental map updated. Turns out that I CAN get to Doshisha on foot, something I intend to do for now. Japan really is the strangest place, each riverbank is like a little nature reserve, an absolute delight to walk down. And right in the middle of the city, as well. I can't tell you how I excited I was the first time I saw a stork, it was in the small stream round the back of the dorm. They're smaller than I expected, I imagine they have bigger cousins or something. The temples (which are awesome!) have hundreds of little black dragonflies, which I found myself watching for ages, and Japanese butterflies come in all these different colours to the ones I'm used to. You also get these little woodpecker things that are as common as sparrows are in Britian, and kingfisher-looking birds in the central rivers.

Bought lunch at an am-pm, with staff slightly more enthusiastic than those of the 7eleven (which is not saying much) before reading the ingredients again and finding it had bacon in it. So much for mottainai, I thought to myself as I stealthily threw it away. Could have given it to Eric here in the Shugakukan, I guess, but by the time I'd see him again it would likely have gone off. Same goes for anyone else living here, but in that case it's 'by the time they arrived'. Geez, I sure bought a lot of stuff I didn't need today.

Let me tell you about something strange that happened to me whilst exploring the Doshisha area on my own. Aimlessly wandering down the road, I was stopped by a middle-aged Japanese woman who, in Japanese, asked if the road we were on was Imadegawa-dori. I replied that yes, it was, and she thanked me in that plain, nonplussed way Japanese people use, and went on her way. I couldn't help but celebrate a little for knowing the answer and for replying in English, but as I walked down the road, smiling to myself, I couldn't help but wonder.

Why ask me?

Why me, an ignorant-looking gaijin, barely a full day in the country, and not one of the Japanese people close by (and there were a few)? What made her so sure I, and not the man just behind me, knew where Imadegawa-dori was? I'm really starting to suspect now that, with the event so close to campus, Doshisha is trying to enforce Japanese learning in its students by employing people in plain clothes to walk around the University area and search for student-looking gaijin and ask them easy questions in Japanese to check their knowledge. I think there's a good chance of that.

Now let me talk about something else: video game shops. There are a grand total of 2 in the area between here and Doshisha, one small and Leicester's CEX-esque, the other bigger and closer to Game or Gamestation size. Both are awesome.

I think it's sad that these days it's so hard to get your hands on older games on the street rather than eBay or some other such site. Not so in Japan! I found sections for the more traditional PS3, XBox 360 and Wii, as well as DS and PSP, but also then for PS2, GameCube, GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Color, Playstation 1 and SNES. The Super Nintendo! The craziness of it! It also turns out that the rumour I heard is in fact true: Japanese game shops have a non-genre-specific section set aside for Square Enix games. Must be a huge compnay over here to deserve that.

So, for those of you interested, here is the result of my gaming research. The current biggest selling games are Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii, which came bundled with a very hand USB Keyboard in the shop I checked, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (aka Monster Hunter Freedom Unite) on the PSP, the latest Inazuma Eleven on the DS (a football game series in which you create a school football team from your character's classmates and pit them against other school teams), strangely BioHazard 5 (Resident Evil 5) for the PS3, SD Gundam G Generation Wars and Gundam vs. Gundam on the PS2. They didn't do PC games at all. Japanese PS2s cost 13,800 yen for the old model (the 35000, I think), and 14800 for the newest (the 90000). It was truly beautiful to see Super Robot Wars a3 and Gundam Seed Destiny Rengou vs. Zaft II Plus on the PS2 just sitting there, not needing any kind of postage charge or waiting time or anything, displayed proudly amonst the dating sims and character song CDs (both of which are everywhere, and in huge quantities). Pokemon games tend to be set aside, as well, with Pokemon FireRed the top seller, followed by Emerald, Red Rescue Team, a never-heard-of Sky Rescue Team (or something to do with the sky and mystery dungeons), Platinum and Diamond following on. The box art is so much cooler over here. Not much hype for HGSS at the moment, but we'll see tomorrow. Both shops had boxes set out with 'Coming 12/9' stickers, so I know I'll be in luck tomorrow. Unless everyone has got it wrong and it actually means the 9th December...

That's about all I can think of for today. I'll be sure to write more when more stuff happens, so keep coming back.

Oh, a last note to leave on. A van with big speakers on the roof (and another a little time ago) just came driving along the little road outside my window, stopped, then blurted out an advertisment for the big second-hand shop near here twice, then left. Very insistent, Japanese electronics.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

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