Saturday, June 14, 2014

STUDY ABROAD:WEEK 41

JUNE 9

How was today already the second to last International Cafe?? This semester is going too fast. It’s too short. I don’t know what it is. Last semester was mid-September to mid-January because we had a couple breaks. This semester it’s just a straight fifteen weeks, beginning of April to the end of July.

I hung around school after the Cafe was over, expecting that I would be going to the fitness room with Shin after his class. I didn’t know until afterward that he went earlier in the day, during 4th period. Instead of working out, we bought some dinner from MaxValu and ate at Chambre 72. Then, he wanted me to show him how to dance, so we had a brief ‘This is how you dance hip hop’ session on the roof that consisted mostly of moving with the down beat.

JUNE 10

…Manga…Dance…

JUNE 11

I have been seriously looking for apartments the past couple weeks, you know, during all my free time. The only thing I know for sure is that I want to try and live in Okazaki, and I would like a place for less than 400 a month. I didn’t have too many preferences except that it was on the second floor, or higher, had a balcony, hardwood floor, storage space, a slightly larger kitchen space than my current place, and a place to put a washing machine.

A few days ago I sent an inquiry to one of the apartment searching companies, asking if the apartments would allow a foreigner to live there. Today, I received the reply: the owner would not like to rent to a foreigner. That kind of sucked, because I really liked the place in the pictures. It had a lot of closets set in the walls, too.

But, was this my first case of prejudice?

I don’t think so. Granted, the owner knows nothing about me, I can understand why they wouldn’t want to rent out to just any foreigner. What if I couldn’t speak Japanese? Or, what if I didn’t know Japanese house customs? I’ve done my research and I’ve read about some bad cases. My contact was happy to inform me that there were two other locations in their database that would allow foreigners if I was interested. That led me to contact Akane. She lived in Okazaki and recently moved into her own apartment. We decided it was best to go directly to the apartment dealer’s, so that’s what we’ll do on Sunday.

JUNE 12

…Manga…Futsal…Dance…

Joy couldn’t come to futsal today, so I went alone. I only played with the girls today, which is fun, but they still group up too much. Once they start to spread out and get a hang of the game then I think it will be a lot more fun. I also met some more of the guys in the club, mostly third years like Shogo. They seem pretty cool. One of the guys is named Rikiya, but his nickname is Rickey, which also happens to be the same name of one of the club’s main teams: Rickey’s. I wonder if he has something to do with that.

JUNE 13

As a member of the newspaper club, Yuto asked me last week if I wouldn’t mind doing an interview with one of his juniors. He couldn’t join us for the interview, but we managed pretty well, I think. I couldn’t tell what his junior thought of my answers, and there were only a few basic questions prepared. Those basic questions were nearly over before we started, since I had sent the information to Yuto prior. I gave the interviewer more information, checking to see if there was anything else she wanted to ask about. Somehow, the topic settled on manga. I was hoping to keep that secret from the mass, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to be written off as another person who came to Japan because of manga and anime. I guess we’ll see how that turns out.


JUNE 14


…Manga… so much toning to do…

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