Akita: Week Two, Or, How I Learned to Love American Keyboards

So two days ago I moved into the apartment, WOOT, which will be mine for as long as I am here. Considering that I am basically paying nothing for this place, and it’s really large, especially for one person (I have an extra bedroom that has stuff [read, like four extra futons] in the closet and that is it), it’s great. It’s close to school, the Daiso, a couple grocery stores, not too far from the station…etc.
It’s been interesting living in a city where tourists rarely come. In the grocery store the other night for instance. Just me. And a bunch of food I couldn’t identify. It took me forever to find tofu, and I never did find the bread. I went back last night to find the bread. To go with my $10 little jar of peanut butter, which I bought at the foreign food store. I also bought pasta, just so I wouldn’t starve while figuring out what every-package-that-looks-identical-to-me-but-has-different-kanji-on-it-that-I-can’t-read-so-it-must-be-different is. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Or eat out a lot. Mostly likely the latter.

Also, no Internet at home till August 15. The English-speaking guy said that was basically the earliest I could get an appointment, since they conveniently don’t do evening visits, which means it had to be on a weekend, a holiday, or a day I take off work. Which ended up being okay, because I get absolutely a bunch of days of with this job, including five that must be taken before September. So 25 in total for the year. So I was taking the 15th off anyway, and now I get Internet then. Double score.

A couple days ago, I filled in a form (a formality, really) to request my special summer leave. This required the writing of many, many, tiny, tiny kanji. Anna had made me a sample. Tomoko-sensei told me she would do it if I didn’t want to try. But I put on my big girl pants and concentrated a lot on the many tiny lines that made no sense to me. “Oh, you tried!” Tomoko-sensei said when she looked at it. And then she took the form to the vice principle. And they laughed about it. And I’m thinking it was one of those, oh, look at the cute foreign girl trying so hard, kind of things. Hopefully.

Also also, my computer that I use at school wasn’t hooked up to the printer, so a guy came to fix it, and he printed out a page that said “OK!” and put it on my desk. Hilarious.