I'm writing from my bed right now. It's 6:22 AM and I've been wide awake since about 5... Damn jet lag.
Well, I had my first day of work! It was cool, I've never had my own desk in an office before. It makes me feel powerful. Hehe. Ted told me what station to go to and he met me at the station in the morning to take me to our building. The walk from the station is about 10 minutes, but Ted told me that if I could figure out the route, it's only about a 15-minute walk from where I'm living to our office building, so I really need to figure that out soon because I think that would actually shorten my commute time and I wouldn't have to deal with the rush hour trains (totally worth it; you can't move at all in those trains, they're so packed; in fact, at the bigger train stations, they actually have attendants there at rush hour to just push people onto the train so it gets as packed as possible). Our building is in a really nice area, and it's also very close to the US embassy. The building's at the top of a hill and the street winds back and forth and is lined with sakura (cherry-blossom) trees. They're not in bloom now, of course, but it's still very pretty even without the flowers. There was a very cute cat sitting outside the entrance to our building and Ted said it was the building's cat. I thought he was joking, but there was actually a bed for her right around the corner, next to the door. Right inside the door, there is a very cute receptionist who deals with the mail and all kinds of stuff. Ted said if I ever needed to mail a package I could just give it to her and she would take care of it for me. Her other job is to unlock the door to the elevator so I can get up to my office on the 3rd floor. The office isn't too big, but it's more than enough room for 3 people, and we've got a mini-kitchen and bathroom, too. Work itself was not too exciting. I don't know if it was normal or not, but they didn't really have much for me to do. I think throughout the whole day I did maybe 2 hours worth of work, and I kept asking if there was anything else I could do, but Ted just kept saying "Not right now." Shino had the day off yesterday, so I didn't get to meet him, but he'll be in today. I'm excited to meet him because I don't want to only speak English all the time at work.
My Japanese has gotten way better since last time I was in Japan. I feel like it's a huge difference. I'll find myself walking down the street and thinking in Japanese, which is bizarre and awesome at the same time.
For lunch Ted took me to a place called "Coco" something. It's a curry restaurant chain, and their curry is absurdly spicy for Japanese curry. Usually you can get like the spiciest curry the Japanese offer and it's no problem. They're very ama-guchi here (means "sweet-mouthed"). But at the Coco place, they have levels 0 through 10 of spiciness and Ted got level 2. That made me suspicious since he had told me the night before, as he was eating kim-chi, that he loved spicy food. So I went for level 1. I could barely handle it. I took one bite and almost immediately started sweating. I read on the menu that they actually don't allow you to eat levels 6 through 10 until you've proven yourself and eaten a whole plate of level 5. And from there you have to just go up one step at a time. One of my classmates when I studied abroad here tried to get to level 10, but I don't think he was able to get to it before we returned to the US.
Speaking of eating Kim-chi with Ted, I forgot to tell you about that evening. It turned out Ted's friend who was going to have people over was busy that night, so it was just me and Ted. We went to a small new bar near his apartment and had a few drinks, and then went to eat some food along this small alleyway that was lined with little yakitori places. Yakitori means grilled chicken. They cook it on a stick and at most places you can get just about any part of the chicken imaginable, so it's best to not get an English menu for fear you won't want to eat anything. Anyways, we got some chicken, which was great, some squid, which was okay, and some octopus, which was... chewy...
It was a great experience, though. Really fun. And at small places like that, where you're sitting at a table with like 4 other groups of people, everyone tends to be really drunk and really friendly, so we had a very good time.
Alright, It's about time for me to get ready for work! Signing off...
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