Wednesday

Well,

It's dawning on me how difficult it is to completely uproot yourself and move to a country where you don't understand anything that's going on. Even such a simple task as finding bandages for my knees, or finding some rope to hang my laundry seems to take a good number of hours. Last night I got "directions" from one of the Americans in my building for the electronics store, so I could finally go and set up my internet. After riding around all morning looking for the store I finally gave up and got some lunch.
Now with lunch, I am faced with an entirely new problem. First, checking to make sure I'm not ordering some pork or chicken dish, two- making sure there isn't "hidden meat" in it. Third- making sure the meal doesn't cost too much, as I'm not sure when I'm getting paid. So, riding my bike through the covered shopping distict, I saw a small stand selling round little balls of some sort. So I locked my bike, went to the shop and said "Nikku dame?" or, "meat, bad!". At which the girl at the counter giggled and signalled one of the guys over who looked at me, looked at the little brown steaming balls and said "octopus". Well, that settled that. I ordered the little octopus balls, got some sort of japanese gatorade out of a vending machine and rode off to find a bench to eat on. I popped open my little plastic box and set to with my chopsticks. I picked up one little ball, about the size of a round egg, covered in chopped green onions, some sort of white paste, and fish flakes, and sat there with it in my mouth for what seemed like forever. I had overlooked the piping hot nature of the cakes, and could not chew them, or I would unleash more of the heat which was so burning my mouth. slowly I managed to swallow down bits of it, rather like a snake trying to shift about some object in my mouth without actually chewing it. I was more careful with the next seven. Though being rather bizarre, and full of chunks of little pink octopus, they were rather tasty and now I am quite full for 500 yen.

So, I think I'll head back to my apartment, knock on everyone:s doors, see if anyone at all is home to help me with internet and telephony. Or, if they will answer their doors when I ring. I guess we'll see.

I went in to my school yesterday, a few teachers tried to show me around but didn't speak much Englsh. The principal told me not to come back until Friday, because all the English teachers are out and there will be no one there to help me around. I tried to tell them I could just work on Japanese and work on my self introduction at my desk, and they asked me if I could do that at home. So, I believe if later I want to take my vacation days I might have to tell them off for it. I mean, I know that the other teachers at school aren't doing anything at their desks but at least I would be able to see some familiar faces everyday. Ahhh well. back to harass my apartment building.

Allison