Yesterday, I had yet another orientation. This one was for all the JETs in Saitama prefecture, so it managed to be a great opportunity to hang out with all of the friends that I'd made at Tokyo orientation. The orienation itself was at least a little informative, but it mostly dealt with topics like 'understanding your contract'. Y'know, the REALLY interesting stuff.
I did have a really great time after the orientation. Most of the Saitama JETs got together and went down to a yakiniku restaurant/izakaya (essentially, a Japanese pub)-like place and had some food and a few drinks. Afterwards, Marisa and I stumbled down to the station with some folks from Kurihashi, a town just a few stops away from Satte, and stopped off at a town called Omiya on our way back. In other words, we were having a little too much fun to just go back home. So where else do the inebriated wander off to? Book-Off, of course! If for some reason you haven't heard me gush about Book-Off before, prepare yourself. Book-Off is a chain of used book stores. In addition to books, they also have CDs, DVDs, electronics, and other printed materials. It's a bargain wonderland. Last summer, I found 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' hardcover for approximately $1 US. Also, a DS lite for about $100 US. And 'The Little Prince' color hardcover for $7 US. And! And! And you get the idea.
Marisa and I had a plan to find a specific book in Japanese and read it together, sort of like a mini book club. We could help each other out with the parts we don't understand, and hopefully make it through a novel. Exhausting other options, we decided on a light novel called 'Train Main'. It's about a nerd who seeks advice from the internet on how to woo a woman who he meets on the train one night. The whole novel is written in the style of posts on the popular Japanese message board, 2ch.
After that, our group of four went to the arcade across the street and took some purikura pictures on the best purikura machine I have ever seen. I seriously need to try and get some of these on the internet, because they're amazing.
The next day at work, I happened to ask my supervisor some seemingly innocuous question about our contract which had the unexpected effect of starting the entire office on a typo witch-hunt. Since none of the Japanese employees have any real English skills, Joe, Marisa, and I were charged with going through the entire contract in Japanese and English, making sure that they accurately correspond to each other. That ended up eating up most of the time during the day.
After work, I went for an exploratory bike trip around town. Riding through the rice paddies at sunset is... beautiful. I'll be making another trip soon to take some pictures of it. I also rode my bike downtown at rush hour, so I'm sure most of the city folk got a good look at me. I figure that's a good first step towards cultural exchange. Just be visible.
I came home and played my first full game of Shogi with Joe while we waited for our internet to get fixed. Shogi is basically the Japanese version of chess with a lot of bizarre rules that would make anyone familiar with chess raise one, if not two, eyebrows. For instance, when you capture the other players piece, you can then place in on the board in any open space during your next turn. Also, when pieces get far enough into the opposing players region, they become promoted, often tripling in effectiveness. Suffice it to say, it's challenging, and about as fun as chess (see what I did there?)
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