Wally Nes’ Blog

While I don’t have internet yet, I’ll write this down while they still are first impressions.Your first impressions are of what you’ve lost. Well, what’s changed really, but what I’ve lost in luxury was slightly more visible.

• As mentioned before, the dorm is pink.
• It’s far from work
• My room does not have a toilet
• My room does not have a kitchen
• My floor does not have a kitchen
• My room has no running water
• My dorm has no women

I’ll keep from making comments about work, as first impressions are hard to get on that point. People are nice, they have lots of equipment and most of all: I have but the vaguest clue what I’ll be doing here. So I won’t go into the “work” thing. Oh, and when I get a more defined idea of what I’ll be doing . . . . I won’t tell you ‘coz I’m not allowed .Now, the pink thing I can handle. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that . . . besides, it’s only pink on the outside.The long commute I can handle. Gives me time to read/study/whatever. (because I don’t have enough of that already)The resulting getting up at 6 . . . . . Not so happy with that.The toilet thing . . . . I’ll get used to. It’s only 50 metres, I’m not that big of a ninny. Besides, I lived with communal toilets for a very long time, I’m sure it’ll come back to me.The kitchen thing . . . I’ll get back to that. But seriously . . . no running water? Not even a little bit?

The floor-kitchen thing is not true btw. There’s a sink 40 metres down the hall, just before the toilets and it has 1 burner. And a microwave. See, when it comes down to it, that’s more of a kitchen than I had in my last dorm. ‘Course, that kitchen was for me . . . . and this one has to be shared by 35 people.

No women . . . . . OK, so my last dorm’s inhabitants were solely male as well, but at least women visitors were allowed. Here they can’t even enter. The only exceptions made are: The cleaning ladies (euhm . . . no) and the barmaid (High grade paper bag required)

So: There being no kitchens, there’s a cafeteria. You can have breakfast and dinner here for the price of 155 / 355 yen resp. A bargain by anyone’s standard. Unfortunately it’s quality is represented by the price. It’s not bad food; it’s just not good either. Or imaginative. I’ve had breakfast there 3 times and dinner twice and the menu included hamburger 3 times. (Yes, that’s right; I’ve been server hamburger for breakfast . . . twice)

For breakfast, they at least have the Japanese option as well. (Guess whether I picked the hamburger)

But, in truth, it’s not all that bad (he said filled with positive energy). Sanda (the town I live in) is situated quite a bit north of

1. All of this took quite a while to compute however and during that time I was able to get a number of other first impressionsWithout Kondo/Nakamura/Sato or any other nice people to help me I am completely lost in getting anything official done. Hell, I couldn’t even properly buy a 3 month ticket for the bicycle storage next to the station. And I still have to notify the bank of my new address . . .*gulp*
2. I have no social life here . . . . Whatsoever. I know 1 guy that lives here, and he’s got a fiancée so he is gone on the weekends. I met another guy, but the first thing he did after meeting me was move away (though to be honest, I probably had nothing to do with that as all he could say was: “Next week I can wake up at 7”, followed by a primeval roar)
3. I hadn’t much noticed this in Tokyo. But out here in the countryside there’s the “white-man-nod”. As far as I can tell, among the 50.000 people that make up this town, there are 4 white guys. 4. We nod to each other when we pass on the street
   “Who the white guy???”
   “You the white guy!!!”
   *insert high five here*
   I’ll be setting up a newsletter pretty soon
4. My Japanese sucks big hairy donkey balls. This isn’t Tokyo and people don’t have a little practice. I forgot to bring my Dictionary once and I will not be doing that again any time soon. I can understand most of the constructions people make now, but with too little understanding of the words they put in those constructions I’m still screwed. To give you a clue: “Bicycle Police registration, crime prevention” takes a Loooooooooong time to explain. Especially if the context is euhm . . . doing something other than buying a bike.
5. Getting your hair cut in Japan is a hair-raising (pardon the pun) experience. Seriously, do NOT get your hair cut in a country where you can only make yourself understood about 40% of the time. Even if it turns out fine, it’s not worth sitting in that chair watching them work wondering if you got your message across.

On point 2 though: people my age live here. In comparison to my old dorm (where I did have my own toilet, shower, kitchen and was close to where I needed to be) I may make friends here. How this will work is not exactly clear to me as people don’t even nod back when passing in the hallways.

Luckily there’s a growing city out here where I can meet new people and interact with them. There’s even a university here for easy people-meeting-thingies (They’ll have student bars surely).

Sanda is made up of 2 parts. Sanda (三田) and New Sanda(新三田). I live in the latter. New Sanda is a growing town . . . or it should be growing. 1 of the 2. I can’t work out which, but I live next to this huge mall. And of the line of 40-something cash registers at the supermarket department there’s often as many as 8 in use. It’s either growing or not growing, but it certainly hasn’t grown yet. If you look up a map of this place there’s big slabs of land market for residential areas . . . .devoid of numberings => still empty. As the cafeteria thing was clear early enough I’ve looked around for some nice restaurants (This is

Quote of the day:If they do this voluntarily when they’re kids, what do they do for student fraternities hazings - Random American Tourist

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Japanese (Culture), Personal, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.