Grrrrrrr. Ok, one little rant; how difficult is it to understand the concept, that foreigners will NOT understand anything you say if you speak at light speed! What foreign person learning English has ever been fine with normal English pace + accent????? The answer is NONE! So to all the Japanese out there: SPEAK S-L-O-W-L-Y!!!! I am still learning..and trying! I promise! But when you go $%$^(*)(_^%$$£"desu"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at me....I just want to cry, or possibly lash at the next best wall (Yes I am aware I sound like an angry psychopath..I am not..I promise).
Anyway...that's over. I've had an interesting, albeit stressful few days. I've been applying for my gaijin card, only to discover today that I needed another paper to actually open up a bank account. So I had to go back to Kashiwa city hall (found my way there via landmark memory!!! I am so proud of my hippocampus!), and get that. Which was fine. Then armed with all of that I went to the post office to open the account. The woman on the counter then did exactly what I was ranting about. I actually did almost cry. She must have noticed my patience was running out, because she abruptly stopped raining high pitched noises at me and asked her colleague to help her. He - very shy and sweet tried his best with his 6 words of English. We actually got somewhere this time. After about an hour of messing about, misunderstandings, and dictionary flicking, I got my bank account sorted....yaaaaaaaay!!!! I think I deserve chocolate for that!!!!
Japanese lessons have been going OK. A little confusing, I actually learnt the most today in just one hour, than all the 3 hour lessons before. Yesterday I got called out of the lesson by one of the guys. I thought...ohhh what's this about then? He brought me to the guy who sorts out the voice recordings we had to make for exam tapes in the future. It turns out the guy is a Christian, and has all sorts of plant churches around Tokyo!! We had a quick chat about becoming Christians, and he was telling me about coming to church and meeting his family etc. It was cool! He gave me a Japanese bible, which actually has the English on one side and the Japanese on the other! Isn't that ace??? So I can learn some Jap Christian jargon now! Although I found "Jesus" is just Iesu in katakana...as if it was an english word...I find that a little odd...
I am getting used to my flat a little more as well. We've figured out how to make the air conditioning blow out hot air, which is nice..as nights get quite cold here. I have been cooking stuff too! Though I haven't quite figured out the water to rice ratio yet, so the rice kinda comes out looking like rice pudding...still nice though! Right I now feel I can have my deserved chocolate now (not as nice as German chocolate..but it has cookie bits in it which make up for it)
2 comments:
Tsugoi!! You seem to have mastered in a couple of weeks what took me a couple of years to dabble with. I got the Kyoinkai (Board of Education) to do all the bank account stuff for me, but then insisted on them paying me my salary in cash! The flat looks nice but where do you sleep? If it's on the floor, doesn't the post coming through the letterbox disturb your sleep?!
You've only just discovered this about beaurocracy! You've clearly spent far too much time avoiding it in the past! I'm jealous!
Post a Comment