The Pig Settles In

This is my third full day living in Kumamoto. It's been very nice, except that Bento and I have maybe not followed the best practice in dealing with jetlag i.e. walking for hours to run errands, and totally not taking it easy. The plus side to this is that I've gotten to know the city (or at least the important food locations) quite well. It's been pretty humid and hot, so I've been spending most of my time while in the apartment in the living room/kitchen because it's air conditioned. However, since the chairs and sofas are all upholstered in vinyl, I've been peeling myself off of them whenever I get up, despite Fujistu-san's best efforts (Fujitsu is the maker of the A/C machine...it's known as Fujitsu-sama on really hot days).

My other flatmate (Anna) is leaving today, but she's been extremely helpful and going out of her way to help us get things in order, showing us the best way into the city centre, etc. All while packing and moving and organizing her transition to a new apartment & job. On our first day here, she picked us up from the train station and brought us out to sushi (it was storming like a typhoon when walking back to the apartment, eek!). In short, she is fantabulous and couldn't have provided us with a better introduction to Kumamoto. Apparently am getting a new flatmate (an American girl) in about two week...will see how that goes. Need to learn more about the city before she gets here so that am not a chikara ga nai (incompetent) guide.


View looking left from my window: the ENEOS is a gas station, and the little blue sign on the building with the salmon-pink balconies is a local combini, Lawsons. As you can see from this picture and the one in the previous post, there are mountains that pretty much surround the city.

Have registered for my gaijin card (formally know as a gaikoku-jin...something something very long), but still need to get a bank account (ginkoukouza) at Higo bank, cellphone (keitai), a bike (jitensha) to get around the city, and maybe a bookshelf (hondana) for my room. Learning lots of new Japanese words everyday, but am far from fluent. Am sure that I've been horribly rude/grammtically incorrect many times when asking stuff in stores. Oh well. Must keep on trying. Ganbatte!

So far, have been to two shopping arcades in the city centre (Kamitori and Shimotori, respectively), Don Quixote (kinda like a mini-mall, but with a big bike shop), and about five different 100-yen shops. Mmm...100-yen shops. Bought a pig alarm clock at Don Quixote yesterday and everytime I look at it to check the time, I just about expire from it's cuteness:


It goes very well with the Kobuta no Boshi that Biku made for me. It has 6 or 7 different songs it plays when it goes off, a different one each time you turn the alarm off.

Have had a few opportunites to go out at night and meet some other NOVA/JET teachers, but every night, I've dozed off at about 9pm, falling asleep on the floor while organizing my stuff, or with my head crashed back against the wall while sitting on the couch while watching TV (the most amusing TV so far has been the commercial...have seen two Jack Bauer Calorie Mate ones so far). So maybe going out tonight to a fellow NOVA teacher's birthday shindig.

Off to Lawsons to get a notepad to write letters to folks back homes. Oh yeah, I've been looking up words in my Japanese/English dictionary, and am not sure about the usage in some cases, so let me know if I've made any mistakes.