Vay-cay-shon
Aug. 1st, 2008 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blodeueddI'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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 11:38 am (UTC)Even getting the ticket for the 5th was hard! The machine kept telling me "request overload" or whatever, so I had to start over 6 times before I even got a response, and by then the whole first week was sold out. ;_; Damn your popularity, original Hyoutei cast! *shakes fist* XD
no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 11:55 am (UTC)I actually got my ticket for the 17th through a friend, then got the one by luck for the 4th on the net, then I figured... well, I wanna see the original hyotei cast, so randomly tried the machine (weeks later) and got a side seat ticket on the 13th. XD I've never had luck with the stupid machines though. If 5 minutes have gone by, and I've still got nothing, its time for me to stop trying usually.
*flop* we should definitely try and hang out sometime. :3 When are you usually free? Or yanno, you could already try coming to the show on the 13th with me and try for lottery so I'm not going alone. XD
no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 12:33 pm (UTC)in high placeswho know how to use the Japanese auction sites. :DI'd totally go on the 13th, but I'm out of the country from the 8th to the 17th (Taiwan!), which is why I was so anxious to get a first-week ticket for original!Hyoutei.
For the next two weeks I'm super busy (friend visiting + the trip to Taiwan), but I normally work Mon-Fri and finish at 3. Gotta look for that second job, though... You? :)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 12:51 pm (UTC)