JAPAN'd
It's just past midnight of my fourth day in Tokyo as I'm writing this, and all four days I've been drunk...? Well, at least for dinner. Apparently I'm a victim of the Asian glow, as evidenced by the 15 or so people every night who feel the need to point out how beet-red I am--as it turns out, it's quite noticeable from 20 feet across the room. :( Today I moved into the apartment here on the Buddhist temple, and at dinner with the temple family, after having half a cup of beer and a quarter cup of sake, I accidentally gave into this passing urge to giggle at absolutely nothing. Eventually, said giggle turned into a prolonged guffaw, and I'm sure the temple family had at this point made a mental note that, No, don't ever let this Hans kid near alcohol, EVER AGAIN.
Oh my God. Japan. :<
Snaps, they fed us blowfish and I'm still alive! There was also toro. And of course the nihonshu, which tasted really sweet (unlike the sake from two nights ago that tasted like rubbing alcohol) ...Basically the whole dinner consisted 90% of stuff I've never had before, and I was pretty content with life. (There was another nihonshu later in the course that I didn't get to try though, for reasons that can be deduced from the first paragraph.)
Umm as far as my room goes, it is quite cozy? The existing furniture and curtains here are absolutely dreadful (if I were a gay interior decorator, I'd have jumped out the window by now; instead I just whine about it on LiveJournal), there are stains on the walls that I'll need to wipe off before I start putting my stuff in place, it looks like one of the closet doors got a hole in it because there's this piece of fabric covering a corner (I was thinking of covering it up with something slightly less ugly, but I think I'll just paint over it with acrylics to match the colour and pattern of the rest of the closet door--put my Beginning Painting skills to some sort of use) and somebody wrote/drew a bunch of crap on the refrigerator ("ICECREM SHOP", with an "A" floating above the "E" and "M", plus arrow. Either somebody living here before was not a native English speaker, and the next tenant corrected them, or it could be the same tenant who wrote it in a night of drunken stupor, and later correct themself), but it's got its own kitchenette and toilet (sorta--the toilet is right outside the door and nobody's going to use it besides me), the room itself is actually quite spacious compared to what I had been prepping myself up for after all the horror stories of Japan's lack of square footage, and I've got more closet space than I know what to do with (so far I've been using the top shelves to hide the more offensive-looking crap that came with the room).
Billy (guy living below me) assures me that the 20,000 yen rent a month for this place is actually all going towards utilities, and that the rent itself is pretty much free, save for the two times a week where we teach somebody in the temple household English, and when we tidy up the temple a bit (it doesn't look like I'll be able to wear a hakama for this after all, but we'll see!).
I want to talk trash about some of the people on the CSU International Program here, but they probably read this. :( But actually, most of the people here are quite tolerable, if not downright enjoyable (interpretation left to the reader!), and hopefully they're not talking trash about me in their LiveJournals? All Japanese guys are at least 40% gay, but we all knew that already.
I probably won't start smoking here even though it appears to be The Thing To Do next to excessive alcoholic consumption, but maybe I'll try a cigarette once while I'm indoors, just so I can say that I smoked indoors and it was completely socially acceptable.
Here's my shopping list:
coffee table
computer desk
beige tablecloth
computer chair
resting chair
floor pillows
bed pillow
ladder
bookends
scissors
bathroom cup
hair dryer
trash can(s)
laundry basket
tylex
laundry detergent
slippers
router
jet black DS
TV with DVD player
paint supplies
The Clear Skin Regimen works and my life is forever changed. Too bad I've got no energy to do apply it to anywhere besides my face. Oh well; Japanese onsen will just have to wait (until my body decides to finally move past adolescent puberty, or something).
In conclusion, I played with
((TLDR))
