Long time no see. (久しぶり。)

都冬
死ぬほど寒い
無日本語

残念ながら、俳句に書いた通り、このポストにはまた英語しか入っていません。申し訳ございません。

Once again, I write from my home computer, which itself lacks internet, due to the fact that I know full well that I won’t write anything once I arrive at Doshisha. It’s like something of a mental block; I sit down at a computer, and get completely side-tracked.

Hence, no posts in… what, three months?

Forgive me my busy and internet-less schedule.

As you may have guessed, it’s entered full-blown winter here in Kansai. And, for a poor desert rat such as myself, this is something of a problem.

I don’t think I’ll ever feel my toes fully again.

Although, as of this Sunday, I have made the wise purchase of two (heavily discounted) sweater jackets, which are both quite warm and cozy. One is fuzzy on the inside, and keeps me quite toasty with only a reasonable number of layers.

And here I was convinced that my fellow citizens had just resigned themselves to freezing. How was I to know clothes don’t need to be thick to be warm? We don’t deal with these trivialities in the Valley of the Sun, my friends, I can tell you that much.

Regardless, Shiga-ken continues to be the coldest prefecture in Kansai, and I continue to lament. This morning, it snowed on me all the way to the station. When I stepped outside, I actually had to stop in shock. It’s not every day I wake up to snow.

Please note that this was not pleased shock. But what can you do.

I had never noticed what an eerie silence snow creates. I wonder why that is.

… Of course, being smack dab in the middle of Otsu helps. Hard to believe we’re a prefecture capital sometimes.

In other news, since we last spoke, I have travelled to both Tokyo and Kyushu (or, more specifically, Fukuoka, due to poor planning.) Fukuoka was very nice, but Tokyo, while interesting… well, I could live without. Fukuoka was actually a bit of a shock, after living in Kyoto (or near enough); it’s built on a far wider scale than the old capital, and therefore looks a lot more like home. Or, well, I suppose, a lot more like Hokkaido. The populated areas, anyway.

On that topic. While I knew that everyone from the southern islands thought Hokkaido to be a little… rustic, I never knew that it was to THIS degree. According to the majority of Japan, Hokkaido has cows, snow, and not a whole lot else.

Although all the seasonal food lately is, supposedly, from Hokkaido in some way or form.

Oh, Hokkaido. I’d like to go to the Yuki Matsuri (snow festival) in February… but… well, frankly, I have a hard enough time dealing with the weather here. I’m pragmatic to the end.

In other news, I attended a concert towards the end of December (Dir en grey, my favorite band.) It was held in Osaka-jo Hall, which is, fittingly enough, right next to Osaka-jo (castle.) Unfortunately, the pictures I took with my phone didn’t turn out very well. It was, without a doubt, the single most spectacular night I’ve spent in Japan thus far.

I guess that’s a pretty good hint as to where my values lie. Oh well.

More recently, I went in for part-time job interview today. After searching for a couple of weeks (with the help of an job-listing website), I applied to a few restaurant jobs. While teaching English may be the stereotypical job for a foreign exchange student… it simply doesn’t suit me. In any case, all three jobs called back and left messages. One, unfortunately, wanted me to work shifts that I wasn’t too keen on, so they got turned down. Another I simply never got back to. The third, however, is the one that came through, and quite an interesting story it is.

I had just gone to get my hair cut, and was walking through Shijo with Kelly. Unknown people had been calling my cell-phone for the past few days (the jobs I applied to, silly me) and I was getting fed up. So, when the (yet unknown) third job offer called, I picked up and angrily declared that he had the wrong number, and that I was an American, for goodness sakes, he couldn’t possibly want me.

He spent a few moments convincing me that no, he had the right number, and he was from the restaurant I’d applied to.

Oh dear.

I spent a minute or so apologizing, and managed to have a conversation with him while walking along Sanjo-dori. An impressive feat, I know. He was, apparently, impressed with my Japanese, and offered to set up an interview for Tuesday. I agreed, and asked him to send me an e-mail with more information (time, how to get to the restaurant, etc.) As I couldn’t really hear him at this point due to the street noise, I likely missed a great deal of the end of the conversation, but thought that sufficient information had passed.

However, no e-mail arrived.

I waited until Monday, then called. I spoke to a man who, unfortunately, was not the man who had originally called me, and therefore had no idea what was going on. I told him I hadn’t received an e-mail about my interview, and after apologizing profusely, he hung up quickly.

I shrugged it off, assuming the job was a bust.

However, the next day, around 1:30, I received another call. It was the original guy, asking if I could come in to interview right then.

Well, of course not; I thought the plan had fallen through, and had made other plans. I told him as much (politely) and asked if another day was all right.

He said of course, and we set an interview up for Thursday (today.) And there you have it. It seemed to go well, and he’s going to be calling me back either today or tomorrow. So we shall see.

… my goodness, this got long.

And for some reason, I am incredibly tired today, and so I shall end it here.

Good night, all, and I hope to make my next post in a somewhat more timely fashion.