Once again, not a whole lot to say about these days. I didn't end up going out and doing anything exciting, although I did go into downtown Yokkaichi with Charlie for dinner last night. He took me out to a Chinese place. It helps that he speaks Chinese. There were actually a lot of Chinese people on the street there, too. It wasn't exactly a great neighborhood, but we were okay.
I did get out some to do shopping and such, but otherwise I've mostly been at home preparing to leave. I'm going to do one last bit of shopping this morning at Book Off and see if I can find a couple of good mangas with Charlie's help. I haven't bought any yet, but they've got really cheap ones, and reading will definitely help to improve my vocabulary.
After that's done, I'll get to the train station around 11:00 for the 11:13 train, and start my journey back home. It should take roughly 25 hours. That's a long trip. I've got three train rides, followed by three plane rides and a car ride before I get home. I'll be bringing my two suitcases, which each now weigh in at about 48 pounds, and my backpack, at about 25 pounds. At least the weight is a little better distributed than when I came to Charlie's house, but it'll still be a pain lugging it all around.
Okay, I'm going to finish up the last-minute packing (like with this laptop) and head out. It's been fun here in Japan. I hope to return someday. Bye!
Showing posts with label yokkaichi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yokkaichi. Show all posts
Days 31-33: Living in Yokkaichi
The past few days have been pretty slow as far as noteworthy events go. I've been mostly spending my time at my friend Charlie's house, but I've also gone around and seen some of the local town. Charlie works during the afternoons and evenings, so I'm mostly left to my own devices. Monday was mostly spent recovering from my trip to Tokyo, but I also went out shopping for a couple things to use around the house, like soap, and some milk and cereal for some cheap breakfasts that should last all week. Later that night, we went out to a bigger shopping mall and got some more food for various meals.
My arms and shoulders were extremely sore from Saturday through Monday night, because of lugging around about 100 pounds of baggage. I didn't mention it before, but it did make Akihabara a little less enjoyable than it could have been. I mostly tried to ignore it anyway. They're still a little tight now, but it's not too bad.
On Tuesday, I sat in on one of Charlie's English lessons with a couple of small boys. He seemed like a pretty good teacher, and the kids were alright. It was pretty fun to watch. I participated a little bit, but there wasn't much for me to do. His boss wants him to teach by pure immersion, so I couldn't practice my Japanese with them, either, since I was supposed to be speaking English only. His boss was a pretty nice woman, though, and we talked for a while in both English and Japanese. She even took us out for a light lunch at the shopping mall's cafe.
After all that was over, I went to Book Off, a used book/movie/game chain, and got a couple more Japanese games: Lunar: Silver Star Story and Remember 11: The Age of Infinity, for PS and PS2, respectively. I already own Lunar in English, but it was 500 yen, so I couldn't pass that up. Remember 11 was also 500 yen, and it's a visual novel I've been playing in English with a fan translation patch, so when I saw that I could purchase it legally, I had to do that. I try to get my games legally whenever possible, but that game hadn't been possible until now.
Today, I've mostly just sat at home. Charlie went out to work around 1:30 and got back around 9:00, and in the meantime I've done a bunch of cleaning for him and played games. I doubt anything exciting will happen in the rest of tonight.
There's a chance I'll go out to see Ise Jingu before I leave, but that sort of depends. It's a 90-minute train ride to get there, which I really don't feel like doing, and it'll also cost another 4000 yen or so, which is basically the rest of my entire budget, aside from the train fares to get back to the airport and go home. I haven't decided for sure one way or the other if I'll go.
Miscellaneous stuff:
My arms and shoulders were extremely sore from Saturday through Monday night, because of lugging around about 100 pounds of baggage. I didn't mention it before, but it did make Akihabara a little less enjoyable than it could have been. I mostly tried to ignore it anyway. They're still a little tight now, but it's not too bad.
On Tuesday, I sat in on one of Charlie's English lessons with a couple of small boys. He seemed like a pretty good teacher, and the kids were alright. It was pretty fun to watch. I participated a little bit, but there wasn't much for me to do. His boss wants him to teach by pure immersion, so I couldn't practice my Japanese with them, either, since I was supposed to be speaking English only. His boss was a pretty nice woman, though, and we talked for a while in both English and Japanese. She even took us out for a light lunch at the shopping mall's cafe.
After all that was over, I went to Book Off, a used book/movie/game chain, and got a couple more Japanese games: Lunar: Silver Star Story and Remember 11: The Age of Infinity, for PS and PS2, respectively. I already own Lunar in English, but it was 500 yen, so I couldn't pass that up. Remember 11 was also 500 yen, and it's a visual novel I've been playing in English with a fan translation patch, so when I saw that I could purchase it legally, I had to do that. I try to get my games legally whenever possible, but that game hadn't been possible until now.
Today, I've mostly just sat at home. Charlie went out to work around 1:30 and got back around 9:00, and in the meantime I've done a bunch of cleaning for him and played games. I doubt anything exciting will happen in the rest of tonight.
There's a chance I'll go out to see Ise Jingu before I leave, but that sort of depends. It's a 90-minute train ride to get there, which I really don't feel like doing, and it'll also cost another 4000 yen or so, which is basically the rest of my entire budget, aside from the train fares to get back to the airport and go home. I haven't decided for sure one way or the other if I'll go.
Miscellaneous stuff:
- The cereal selection in Japan is very limited. Pretty much corn flakes (frosted or chocolate), or bran flakes.
- When you buy anything, the store clerk will almost always tape the top of the bag closed for you. This does not apply in grocery stores, because by and large you are expected to bag your own purchases there after you're done.
- When people are trying to explain something, or give a somewhat-rehearsed speech or lesson (such as in church, at school, or my host family choosing their words carefully so I could understand), they tend to stress their particles (ha, ga, wo, ni, etc.). Those come up every few words in a typical sentence, so the result is that they'll say a few words at a lower pitch, then a longer, more drawn out and higher pitched syllable for the particle, then back down and up and down and up. Lots of people do this.
- People here in Yokkaichi stare at me much more openly than they did in Izumi. This isn't exactly a big city, and foreigners are pretty rare. I haven't seen any other white people besides Charlie, so we attract a lot more attention.
Day 29: To Yokkaichi and Tokyo
I left my host family's house a little before 7:00 yesterday morning, carrying my 20+ pound backpack, a 50-ish pound suitcase, and another smaller 20-25 pound suitcase. I carried all that luggage up and down at least a couple dozen flights of stairs, because that's how the Japanese train system is organized. After three separate train rides, totaling about 3.5 hours, I made it to my friend's middle-of-nowhere station, too small to even bother staffing with anyone. You toss your tickets in the bin when you get off the train, rather than actually having anything check them. It's interesting.
My friend showed up to take me to his house a few minutes later, so I dropped off my stuff and relaxed for a little while before we went out for lunch and looked around the area briefly. After a couple hours, we went to the bus station with a much lighter load to find a bus to Tokyo. There wasn't one. So we instead went to the train station, took the train to Nagoya, and from there found a bus to Tokyo. We ended up arriving around 10:20 at Tokyo station, where we walked to Otemachi station and then rode to Kinshicho station, where our capsule hotel is located. I have a couple pictures, but our particular establishment has got to be on the lower end of the capsule hotel scale. It was roughly $30-35 a night, and you get a locker about 6 feet tall, 8 inches wide, and 1 foot deep for your stuff; access to the public bath/shower; and a bed to sleep in in a box roughly 6 feet long and 4 foot wide/tall. It has a TV and radio included in the capsule, but I didn't use them. There also wasn't a door on it, just a curtain you could pull down.
After checking in, we wandered around the area for a couple hours just seeing what was here. There's a park nearby, nice and green, with a couple playgrounds for the kids and a baseball field, and we could see the Tokyo Sky Tree from just about anywhere. It's also kind of a seedy neighborhood, so there were the less desirable types of people around, especially considering we were out around 11pm-1:30am, but we didn't have any problems, and there were enough people around to be safe. Although it was actually a lot emptier than I thought it would be considering it's the biggest city in the world. The train station in particular looked deserted when we first went in.
Eventually, around 2:00, we went to bed for the night. This morning we got up at 9 and haven't done much so far, besides use the public bath. Not something I exactly wanted to do, but also not something I had much of a choice about. Either I do that or I start the day feeling even more disgusting than I went to bed feeling last night.
I have a few pictures that I'll post later when I get the chance. It looks like our plan is that my friend will head back to his house this afternoon, and I'll stay another night. If I can manage, I plan to just stay out all night and save money. If not, I always have the option of coming back to this hotel at any point. 24-hour check-in. Now we're off to Akihabara and wherever else we decide to go.
My friend showed up to take me to his house a few minutes later, so I dropped off my stuff and relaxed for a little while before we went out for lunch and looked around the area briefly. After a couple hours, we went to the bus station with a much lighter load to find a bus to Tokyo. There wasn't one. So we instead went to the train station, took the train to Nagoya, and from there found a bus to Tokyo. We ended up arriving around 10:20 at Tokyo station, where we walked to Otemachi station and then rode to Kinshicho station, where our capsule hotel is located. I have a couple pictures, but our particular establishment has got to be on the lower end of the capsule hotel scale. It was roughly $30-35 a night, and you get a locker about 6 feet tall, 8 inches wide, and 1 foot deep for your stuff; access to the public bath/shower; and a bed to sleep in in a box roughly 6 feet long and 4 foot wide/tall. It has a TV and radio included in the capsule, but I didn't use them. There also wasn't a door on it, just a curtain you could pull down.
After checking in, we wandered around the area for a couple hours just seeing what was here. There's a park nearby, nice and green, with a couple playgrounds for the kids and a baseball field, and we could see the Tokyo Sky Tree from just about anywhere. It's also kind of a seedy neighborhood, so there were the less desirable types of people around, especially considering we were out around 11pm-1:30am, but we didn't have any problems, and there were enough people around to be safe. Although it was actually a lot emptier than I thought it would be considering it's the biggest city in the world. The train station in particular looked deserted when we first went in.
Eventually, around 2:00, we went to bed for the night. This morning we got up at 9 and haven't done much so far, besides use the public bath. Not something I exactly wanted to do, but also not something I had much of a choice about. Either I do that or I start the day feeling even more disgusting than I went to bed feeling last night.
I have a few pictures that I'll post later when I get the chance. It looks like our plan is that my friend will head back to his house this afternoon, and I'll stay another night. If I can manage, I plan to just stay out all night and save money. If not, I always have the option of coming back to this hotel at any point. 24-hour check-in. Now we're off to Akihabara and wherever else we decide to go.
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