Friday, October 26, 2012

Top 3 Reasons for Not Writing Blog Posts

3. Stuff is either not interesting or too complicated.

2. Teaching sucks up all of my English skills.

1. "Meh" is not a good attitude for writing blog posts. "Meh" is probably the best attitude I can come up with at the moment.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Hiroshima!

At long last I am finally free of Ark and checked into my Hostel in Hiroshima. Training starts on Tuesday, so I will probably spend the weekend reading the pre-training materials and shopping around for more business clothes. And pumps. Real pumps.

Of course, Hiroshima is a beautiful city, and I think there will be lots to do here. One thing I definitely want to do is check out one of the churches on Sunday. There's also a cool-looking art gallery downtown. Wonder whether I'll have time to make it down to Miyajima and the floating gate...

The hostel is very clean and new-looking. Mostly like a really nice college dorm. Pics will come later. However, I do have to admit that the four-bed dorm is slightly smaller than my own bedroom back home. Apparently, things ARE tinier in Japan.

Already met a nice French man in the lobby studying Hiragana. I told him in French that I spoke a little french, but rather badly. :)

I did get a little nostalgic for Innoshima on the bus going over. I kept thinking, "Goodbye Ikuchi bridge! Goodbye cafe I never went into! Goodbye Daiso! Goodbye freaky weird dinosaur!"

Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Suit

Well, I've got a job interview in Hiroshima on Sunday, which is good news overall in my job search. However, I've spent the last few days worrying about how I'm going to find a suit (at least one), since I didn't need to wear a suit at Ark and consequently didn't buy any before I left. :P Planning...It's never about what you think you'll need.

This morning I'm happy because I managed to drive over to the mainland and buy a suit!

That doesn't sound like much, I know...But to do that I needed to A) decide which city and which store to go to, after receiving conflicting advice from several different people, B) navigate over two bridges and through an intersection with several bypasses, where many of the signs were in kanji, and C) communicate with a salesclerk where our pool of common words ranged at about 5.

This could have gone horribly wrong in so many ways...But actually it turned out to be really easy. Turns out I CAN drive over freeways in a foreign country. And the store was easy to find and had good selection--and helpful people, even if we didn't speak each others' language.

So I ended up going to a more upscale place to get a more expensive suit, but overall it was worth it. $200-$250 is what you'd expect to pay anyway, and more importantly, they had my size! Every department store I've been too has been swamped in mediums and larges, so good luck finding anything smaller than a size 9 in the suit section. Maybe no one can wear those sizes in Japan so the smalls sell out super quick?

I finished much earlier than my estimations, so afterwards I drove down the road a bit and had lunch at a shopping mall, where I also found a few gifts to take home. I didn't even get lost on the way back!