Tuesday, January 14, 2014

I had my first Japanese class (Level 3). From 8:50am-11:40am with a couple breaks, it was solid Japanese. I didn't know the routine, so I had to pay attention with all my might so I could catch up.

I was tired afterwards, but instead of sleeping I went to city hall with T and P to get our alien registration and national health insurance cards. We got lost on the way and stopped at the 市民会館 (shimin kaikan). We went inside the part labeled International Salon (or something like that), to ask for directions. The lady inside felt bad because the person who spoke English was unavailable, but I told her Japanese was fine. She gave us a map; we were actually only a minute's bike ride away.

So we made it to city hall, parked our bikes, and went inside. The other JCMU students who had gone earlier had told us to go to windows 2 and 4, but as soon as we entered the building, things got complicated. First of all, there weren't really any windows; just a long counter divided into numbered sections. Behind the counter was machines, file cabinets, and busy people moving around. In front of the counter were a couple waiting areas with couches and chairs, plus a few huge TV screens that would display the number of the next customer. We went to counter 2, and stopped in front of a touchscreen with three kanji-labeled buttons. Which one were we supposed to press? I looked at the applications we had filled out with the JCMU student Coordinator earlier, and based on the kanji there, said to press the middle button uncertainly. P immediately pressed the button, we followed suit, and 3 numbers printed out for us. We sat down to wait.

They called P's number, but when they saw it was us (foreigners), they had us all come up together. There was only room for two seats, which they offered to us. We obediently sat down, and followed their directions. We had to give them our passports and application forms. One of the forms we had to rewrite because the year printed on the paper was from last year. P needed help with writing her name in katakana, since she had only started learning Japanese a week ago. Several times, they sent us back to wait, then called us up again. They almost forgot to give P her passport back.

While we were waiting, there was a couple of Japanese guys (late 20s?) sitting next to us who seemed like they wanted to talk to us. They were the kind of guys with hair dyed brown, kinda of short and spiky; one of them had camouflage cargo pants. The kind of guy who looks like he rides a motorcycle (which isn't unusual for Japan, actually) and smokes. All of us chickened out though, so none of us said anything. P thought they were attractive.

After much confusion and difficulty, we successfully got our passports back and green sheets (of some sort of unclear importance), residence cards, and insurance cards (in little, clear plastic holders). We decided to stop by the library next, since the student coordinator recommended getting library cards. On the way, we got lost next to the castle moat, where we saw some swans.

Hikone castle wall and moat

P, T, and the swans at the Hikone Castle moat (not bad for a picture taken with an old school prepaid Softbank flip phone)

At the library, everything was in Japanese, but they did have an English info brochure, although some of the information seemed to be outdated. One of the librarians brought us a stack of magazines called the Hir@gana Times (http://www.hiraganatimes.com/), which was an amazing magazine with interesting and current articles about Japan, all written in English and Japanese with furigana. There were even some articles written in complete romaji. Each of us checked out some. When you check out books, they put a slip of paper in the book, with the due date stamped in red at the top. The paper has a calendar showing the days that the library is open or closed.

After the library, we stopped at Piago to shop, since it was the closest grocery store. I bought some cheap(?) salmon for 250 yen and vegetables. When I got back to JCMU, I did homework and made dinner.

Salmon, cabbage, daikon (a long, thick white radish), spinach, carrots, and soy sauce. The plastic wrapped thing is red bean paste with some sort of white, soft breadlike covering (sweet and yummy).

I heard later, from the beginner Japanese students, that when they went to city hall to do the same paperwork we did, a staff member guided their whole group through the process, beginning to end, so they had no trouble at all. >:s Why did I learn Japanese?