The Queen meets the Tsar
During the day saturday I went to the Ichigaya area to attempt to open up a bank account. (Ichigaya is where Hosei is) I had heard it was really easy to open up a bank account at Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank so I went in there to figure out how to do so. It took me quite a while to figure out that the bank was closed. Apparently all banks are closed on the weekends. What had thrown me off is that the lobby was open since the atm's were there. Also, atm's are only open certain hours in Japan. Usually until 5 pm on weekends and 10 pm on weekdays. This makes no sense to me, since atm's require no human workers, but "when in Rome". So I decided since I couldn't open up a bank account at least I should figure out how to get money from my bank account back home. Much easier said than done. Almost all the Atm's accepted international Visa cards, but that function was not available on the weekends. Only during the bank hours of 9-3pm Monday through Friday. So I was kind of worried since I didn't know how I could get to a bank in a while with the free time that I don't have during 9-3. I went up and down one street in Ichigaya looking for atms and all of them didn't accept international cards. I knew that there was a Citibank atm somewhere near Shinkjuku station and I was prepared to find it. I say prepared becuase Shinjuku is, I think, the largest station in the world. And even with directions, a place that large is impossible to find anything. But I had time so I was ready. I was about to board the train home (shinjuku is on the way from Ichigaya to the Tsutsujigaoka stop) when I saw a little atm booth that said "We accept International Cards". It was pretty much like a movie, where the main charachter finds something in the least expected place. I'm not sure what the fee was exaclty but I don't think it was that much, plus the US dollar gained quite a few yen the other day. So the exchange was better than a month ago.
Saturday night we went to this club called "Lexington Queen" because we had heard that a lot of famous people go there while in Japan. It took us forever to find it. We went up and down the main street of Roppongi looking for this place. All the while being harassed by every bouncer to go to their club. It gets pretty old, it's not like I'm going to go to your club if you surround the group I'm in with other bouncers. Anyway, so we finally found the place and it looked promising at first. On the walls they had pictures and signatures of all these famous people. But then we went inside and it was really small and shady. It was good times though. I'm not sure why anyone famous would have wanted to go there, but apparently they all do. The walls inside were covered with poloroids of famous people. I wasn't too impressed by the place, but oh well. I think it may have been a gay bar, but no one is really sure. Long story.
This morning I got up early to do some more studying. Since today I was going to into a russian class here and attempt to talk to the teacher to see about joining the class. I wrote down a bunch of stuff to remember and thought I had the most of it down. So I went onto university and waited outside the classroom getting more nervous. When I was waiting this japanese girl kept on smiling at me, and since odds are I had met her before I went over to say hello. Atilla was there as well, and of course she remembered him. She then told us about how she was going to be a TV host later in the afternoon. She had her uniform with her. It was this little sailor school girl outfit. She even had gloves and a sash. We never found out what kind of show she would be hosting, but Atilla was convinced it was some sort of talk show like Oprah maybe.
So I went into the russian class about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. I said Здравствуйте (hello) to the teacher and after that all my russian left me. Although she asked me if I was russian and told me that she thought I was russian at first because of my accent. So that is exciting. I pulled out all my notes and looked like a moron as I tried to figure out how to tell her who I was and what I was doing there. Luckily she is really nice and understood what I was saying. She then had me do some grammar excercises to see where I was in russian. Doing the whole class there was only one other student in there and apparently that is the norm. Right before class ended 2 other students showed up because they were late or something. The entire class was either in russian or japanese. Which is really tiring on the head. Becuase anything I didn't know in russian I had to say in japanese. When I couldn't understand the russian, the other student would tell me it in japanese. Which actually I understood it all. Even though this class will be very hard, I think it will be a very good practice for japanese and russian. If my brain doesn't explode.
After that class I ate some lunch and went onto the next class. Which was Japanese 4. The teacher is really vague (of course) and most of the time I had no idea what he wanted. But after the russian class, it all seemed really easy. Thinking in Japanese and English is 100x easier than thinking in Japanese, Russian and English. After Japanese 4 was Japanese 3a. I made the mistake by sitting the closest to the teacher. So every single example was used on me. Since the teacher already knows that I don't like Bush she would ask me questions about bush for examples. Pretty funny.
After class I went home and tried to look at this russian stuff again. Luckily there are 2 exchange students from russia and one from uzbekistan that have all offered help. It's more of a rescue mission than help though. ha.
Tomorrow is the class day of death. As my first class will be at 9:30. Which means I'll have to leave here about 8:30 probably. And then I won't be done until 16:40. Tomorrow is the first day that we have the 9:30 class. It is an e-class done simultaneous with a class in UC-Davis. So that is pretty neat. It is about christianity in modern japan. Since I am a dork, I find that kind of stuff interesting. But it's a 2 hour long class, so I don't know how interesting that will be. After that is "Families and Sexualities in Japan" or as Atilla calls it "Sexual Feelings". It's the first presentation so it should be interesting.
Saturday night we went to this club called "Lexington Queen" because we had heard that a lot of famous people go there while in Japan. It took us forever to find it. We went up and down the main street of Roppongi looking for this place. All the while being harassed by every bouncer to go to their club. It gets pretty old, it's not like I'm going to go to your club if you surround the group I'm in with other bouncers. Anyway, so we finally found the place and it looked promising at first. On the walls they had pictures and signatures of all these famous people. But then we went inside and it was really small and shady. It was good times though. I'm not sure why anyone famous would have wanted to go there, but apparently they all do. The walls inside were covered with poloroids of famous people. I wasn't too impressed by the place, but oh well. I think it may have been a gay bar, but no one is really sure. Long story.
This morning I got up early to do some more studying. Since today I was going to into a russian class here and attempt to talk to the teacher to see about joining the class. I wrote down a bunch of stuff to remember and thought I had the most of it down. So I went onto university and waited outside the classroom getting more nervous. When I was waiting this japanese girl kept on smiling at me, and since odds are I had met her before I went over to say hello. Atilla was there as well, and of course she remembered him. She then told us about how she was going to be a TV host later in the afternoon. She had her uniform with her. It was this little sailor school girl outfit. She even had gloves and a sash. We never found out what kind of show she would be hosting, but Atilla was convinced it was some sort of talk show like Oprah maybe.
So I went into the russian class about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. I said Здравствуйте (hello) to the teacher and after that all my russian left me. Although she asked me if I was russian and told me that she thought I was russian at first because of my accent. So that is exciting. I pulled out all my notes and looked like a moron as I tried to figure out how to tell her who I was and what I was doing there. Luckily she is really nice and understood what I was saying. She then had me do some grammar excercises to see where I was in russian. Doing the whole class there was only one other student in there and apparently that is the norm. Right before class ended 2 other students showed up because they were late or something. The entire class was either in russian or japanese. Which is really tiring on the head. Becuase anything I didn't know in russian I had to say in japanese. When I couldn't understand the russian, the other student would tell me it in japanese. Which actually I understood it all. Even though this class will be very hard, I think it will be a very good practice for japanese and russian. If my brain doesn't explode.
After that class I ate some lunch and went onto the next class. Which was Japanese 4. The teacher is really vague (of course) and most of the time I had no idea what he wanted. But after the russian class, it all seemed really easy. Thinking in Japanese and English is 100x easier than thinking in Japanese, Russian and English. After Japanese 4 was Japanese 3a. I made the mistake by sitting the closest to the teacher. So every single example was used on me. Since the teacher already knows that I don't like Bush she would ask me questions about bush for examples. Pretty funny.
After class I went home and tried to look at this russian stuff again. Luckily there are 2 exchange students from russia and one from uzbekistan that have all offered help. It's more of a rescue mission than help though. ha.
Tomorrow is the class day of death. As my first class will be at 9:30. Which means I'll have to leave here about 8:30 probably. And then I won't be done until 16:40. Tomorrow is the first day that we have the 9:30 class. It is an e-class done simultaneous with a class in UC-Davis. So that is pretty neat. It is about christianity in modern japan. Since I am a dork, I find that kind of stuff interesting. But it's a 2 hour long class, so I don't know how interesting that will be. After that is "Families and Sexualities in Japan" or as Atilla calls it "Sexual Feelings". It's the first presentation so it should be interesting.
posted by Scot @ 21:02
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