Japan - Day 44

So I'm pretty sure I've been here for 44 days - I'm already starting to lose count. Let's see... 6 weeks plus 2 days... So that's 42 + 2 = 44, so yeah I think that's right. Nothing like a little math to stimulate the brain :P

I didn't get up to anything overly exciting this week. On my first day off this week I woke up earlier than I normally do so I could go downtown to my Japanese lesson. I guess the saying "you get what you pay for" stands true... The lessons are free - anyone wanna take a stab at how much I'm learning? ;) Haha. I am picking up some things, but I think I might have to invest in some *proper* language classes or hire a tutor or something. The two times I've gone to the lessons I've had the same teacher - "The One-Armed Bandit" Amy likes to call him. He's probably around 70 years old, a retired English teacher (that's not saying much), and he also has one arm - he lost the other to Polio as a child I was told (both times I went). He's super nice, just not exactly the best teacher... He moves very quickly before I've really had a chance to remember what we've just gone over. Plus most of the time he likes to just sit and talk in English about what's going on. ...It feels more like I'm helping him with his English as opposed to the other way around.

Speaking of the One-Armed Bandit, Amy and I are having dinner with him this Saturday. In my class on Tuesday he said one of his friends who owns a restaurant is moving to Canada (Nova Scotia, to be more specific) in the summer and so he thought it'd be a good idea if we (and by "we" I mean "I", but I made sure to get Amy invited as well) went there for dinner so he could explain his menu in English to us. ...I guess as practice? And how can you say "no" to a poor, one-armed, 70-something year old man? You really can't.

After my lesson I wandered around downtown for a bit and looked in a few stores... I went into one of the local markets and stopped by the fish counter. Now I hate fish and wasn't actually considering buying anything but the fish just seemed so fascinating that I had to stop and look. There were so many different kinds - various sizes and shapes - it was really all quite interesting. At one point a women came up and started restocking the prawn supply. Now to say that these prawns were "fresh" is an understatement - as soon as she moved her hand away from them they literally started to try and crawl away! I'm not even exaggerating. I was pretty drawn aback - talk about getting to know your food before you eat it! That was a little too much for me. After witnessing the prawns try to run for safety I carefully started to inspect the other fish nearby to see if any of them were gasping for their last breaths. Thankfully they were all quite dead. After that I was done with the market.

Yesterday, on my second day off I got to sleep in :) I enjoy my sleep. Amy and I didn't have any plans aside from going to see a movie. Wednesdays are "Ladies' Day" in Japan, so movies are only 1000 yen, normally they're 1800 yen at the theatre by where we work. We went and saw "The Holiday" even though we'd both already seen it back in Canada before we left. I haven't seen a movie at the theatre in over 6 weeks so I didn't really care. I used to see at least one movie a week, so I was really starting to go through withdrawal. "Babel" is coming out here in three weeks or so, so I'm hoping to see it when it gets here. I know I could just download it, but I think I'll save it for the big-screen. I'm already downloading "300" because I don't want to wait until June when it's going to start playing here.

The movie experience here in Japan is something to say the least. First off, when you go to buy your ticket you actually reserve a seat! We got seats H4 and H5. Kinda interesting. The theatre only seats about 120 people as well, so it's probably about half the size of a regular theatre back home. ...Maybe that's why they charge twice as much? As for the snack aspect, while it's much cheaper than in Canada, the selection is limited to pretty much just popcorn, french fries, donuts, and crepe sticks. No chocolate or candy - Kinda sad. You also can't get butter on your popcorn, the options are salt or caramel. The caramel turned out to be pretty decent at least. Oh yeah, the theatre also had a gift shop in it - very random.

It was back to work again today, and I have to say that the "weekend" (note: Tuesday and Wednesday for me) is never quite long enough! If only I had one more day... Just one. (Okay, or like 5 but whatever, nobody's counting).

Well that's all I have for now!

-Kotoni (how my name is spelled in Japanese)