Vay-cay-shon
I'm officially on vacation until the 18th! *cheers* The first thing I must do, though, is make curtains for the sewing room. M-P arrives on Monday, and I would be a very poor hostess indeed if I made her sleep in a ground-floor room with no curtains when the south wall is pretty much just the sliding doors leading outside.
So it seems that over the past few months, I developped a social life when I wasn't looking. Which has led me to the unavoidable conclusion that I really need to get a second job, because while "semi-full time" is great in that it means I finish work at 3 p.m., it doesn't earn me nearly as much as I'd like. Plenty to survive on, but going out and doing stuff (not to mention that I'm no longer in central Tokyo, so I pay more for transportation) costs money, and I really want to start exploring the country and Asia more. There's Taiwan coming up, and I have a 5-day holiday in October. It looks like I can get a ticket to Hong Kong on those dates with my Aeroplan miles (and still have enough left over for at least another flight someplace!), and I recently met a girl who, like me, wants to travel around Japan on weekends, so...
I'm still on my tenimyu high, what with a 3-gaijin demachi on Tuesday, the show on Wednesday, and another (5 gaijin, this time!) demachi last night. Too bad no one walked right by us this time! Still, it was fun, and I met new people! And thanks to Lindsay and Rebecca, I now know how to use the infrared thingy on my phone! :)
Speaking of my phone, I've been getting the hang of typing on it. My old phone pretty much sucked*, so I never really bothered to do much with it, but this one is SHINY! and GREEN! and the keypad is so much easier to handle. The whole phone is more comfortable to hold, also. And did I mention it's GREEN? :D Anyway, I was browsing through the menus the other day and found the mail templates -- there's a Gundam one! XD I can also watch tv on it, but I haven't tried that yet. I've been taking videos, though.
B2 was visiting my parents' house the other day, so I had a Skype date with both my brothers, during which I proudly showed them my phone.
B2: Heh, your phone looks funny.
Me: *insulted, thinking he was mocking my Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty ornaments* It's cool!
B2: It looks funny!
B1: All phones in Japan look like that.
Me & B2: What do you mean, "like that"?
B1: I mean they look like that!
Me: Uh, it's a Japanese phone, so yeah? *still not getting it*
It wasn't until a couple of days later, when a coworker brought in some of her old phones for the kids to play with, that I understood. I guess Canada is about 2 years behind Japan on cell phone design or something, because her phones from 4 or 5 years ago were very similar to many I saw when I went back home last summer, i.e. much rounder and with much smaller screens. The new ones here are all pretty rectangular.
The kids have been having a lot of fun with the phones, and I was choking back laughter today when I watched two of them have a conversation "over the phone" which went something like this:
Y: Hello, my name is Totoro! What's your name?
H: My name is Dust Bunny. What's your name?
Lather, rinse, and repeat at least 10 times. XD Ah, those kids just kill me, sometimes.
* I was mostly to blame, for not knowing what to look for in a phone two years ago. I'd never had one before coming to Japan, and G was so anxious to get them as soon as possible that I more or less picked the first one I saw.
So it seems that over the past few months, I developped a social life when I wasn't looking. Which has led me to the unavoidable conclusion that I really need to get a second job, because while "semi-full time" is great in that it means I finish work at 3 p.m., it doesn't earn me nearly as much as I'd like. Plenty to survive on, but going out and doing stuff (not to mention that I'm no longer in central Tokyo, so I pay more for transportation) costs money, and I really want to start exploring the country and Asia more. There's Taiwan coming up, and I have a 5-day holiday in October. It looks like I can get a ticket to Hong Kong on those dates with my Aeroplan miles (and still have enough left over for at least another flight someplace!), and I recently met a girl who, like me, wants to travel around Japan on weekends, so...
I'm still on my tenimyu high, what with a 3-gaijin demachi on Tuesday, the show on Wednesday, and another (5 gaijin, this time!) demachi last night. Too bad no one walked right by us this time! Still, it was fun, and I met new people! And thanks to Lindsay and Rebecca, I now know how to use the infrared thingy on my phone! :)
Speaking of my phone, I've been getting the hang of typing on it. My old phone pretty much sucked*, so I never really bothered to do much with it, but this one is SHINY! and GREEN! and the keypad is so much easier to handle. The whole phone is more comfortable to hold, also. And did I mention it's GREEN? :D Anyway, I was browsing through the menus the other day and found the mail templates -- there's a Gundam one! XD I can also watch tv on it, but I haven't tried that yet. I've been taking videos, though.
B2 was visiting my parents' house the other day, so I had a Skype date with both my brothers, during which I proudly showed them my phone.
B2: Heh, your phone looks funny.
Me: *insulted, thinking he was mocking my Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty ornaments* It's cool!
B2: It looks funny!
B1: All phones in Japan look like that.
Me & B2: What do you mean, "like that"?
B1: I mean they look like that!
Me: Uh, it's a Japanese phone, so yeah? *still not getting it*
It wasn't until a couple of days later, when a coworker brought in some of her old phones for the kids to play with, that I understood. I guess Canada is about 2 years behind Japan on cell phone design or something, because her phones from 4 or 5 years ago were very similar to many I saw when I went back home last summer, i.e. much rounder and with much smaller screens. The new ones here are all pretty rectangular.
The kids have been having a lot of fun with the phones, and I was choking back laughter today when I watched two of them have a conversation "over the phone" which went something like this:
Y: Hello, my name is Totoro! What's your name?
H: My name is Dust Bunny. What's your name?
Lather, rinse, and repeat at least 10 times. XD Ah, those kids just kill me, sometimes.
* I was mostly to blame, for not knowing what to look for in a phone two years ago. I'd never had one before coming to Japan, and G was so anxious to get them as soon as possible that I more or less picked the first one I saw.