A Song of Ice and Snow

Saturday was a nice, sunny day. That evening, I was to go to Olga's boarding house for dinner. However, I had more time that day, so I headed for the Posful area.

I got to Posful and went to the game store. They, too, didn't have FFXI. The guy I talked to said they could order it, but it'd take a couple of weeks to get here. He then suggested that I try to order online. I had already been thinking about that option sadly, so I just nodded my head and wandered off. I did pause to grab some really cool-looking advertizements for upcoming games, then realized I had another question for the guy: where can I buy a keyboard? Playing any MMORPG tends to involve some chatting, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to be using the software keyboard with a controller. He directed me to a store called 100-Man Volts ("Man" being written in kanji and meaning 100,000,000), about as far away from the big Geo store as Posful was, though in another direction. Since the network of cross-walks in this busy section of town was a little weird, I decided to hit 100-Man Volts before Homac (where I intended to buy a coaxle cable).

100-Man Volts is clearly the place for electronics in Kushiro. They had TV's, computers, cell phones, washing machines (don't picture an American washing machine; these are about two feet wide, three feet long, and two feet tall, designed to go on a countertop), and a whole bunch of other stuff. I found the computer accessories department, netting myself: a webcam w/ microphone and cheapy headphones; a mouse for my computer (since touchpads suck); a USB keyboard for the PS2; a router so that both PS2 and laptop could be online at the same time; and (after getting help in finding them) a coaxle cable for the TV. Score!

I left the store and paused to put most of the stuff in my bookbag. At that point, I realized that my router hadn't left the store with me. I vaguely recalled one of the two guys handling my order at the cash register (there were two people at every register) had said something about the router and "outside", then circled it with a red pen on the receipt. So I grabbed the attention of one of the store's traffic monitors, and with his help I discovered that some items were received through a second part of the store that is accessed from an outside door. So I went there, gave 'em my receipt, took a number, and after a few minutes was given my router. Yay!

After that, I had no reason to go to Homac, so I headed home. At one point, I was waiting for the light to turn at an intersection so I could cross the road, and figured that if I turned left, I would be able to make my way home, so... I tried it. It turned out that that that was not the case. About the time I realized that I wasn't gonna be able to meet with Olga in time if I backtracked, I came across a large Co-op on a large hill and realized that although I had ended up on the right side of the Kushirogawa, I had been somehow travelling away from the college and my apartment. I got some help from the workers at a nearby gas station in calling a cab (I hadn't thought to learn any cab numbers) and took the cab home.

I had about half an hour before I needed to leave, so I figured I'd set up the TV and the mouse. Mouse went fine -- its scroll wheel even lights up! However, although the TV was set up with a coaxle attachment, the wall has something else. That struck me as explaining why there were like three kinds of TV cables at the store.

So I ordered FFXI via Amazon.co.jp and went to meet Olga. Se walked up to her boarding house, where I met a couple of the other people living there and discovered that they're all students at my school. Tomoki (the guy whose name I had thought started with Tama, and who paid for the eating/drinking the previous Sunday) was also invited to dinner that evening. We ate and talked, and it was good. After dinner, we kept talking, and in fact talked until after Chie's husband came home, right up to about 11:30 PM. It was a lot of fun. ^^

Back to 100-Man Volts

Turned out that Olga also needed to go to 100-Man Volts. Her grandmother has an American diabetes machine that goes on her wrist and uses AAAA batteries. You can't get AAAA batteries in Russia, so she wanted to see if she could get some here. So we walked to 100-Man Volts on Sunday. It was nice having company. However, none of my pants were dry, so I was wearing a skirt and unfortunately for me, it was the first day with snow around here. There was also wind, so my legs got really cold.

When we got to 100-Man Volts, I exchanged my cables and we went looking for the batteries she needed. That was where the fact that the Japanese have a different naming system for the same batteries turned out to be really, really bad. Neither Olga nor I knew what exactly an AAAA battery looked like. She ended up buying what I thought was correct, with me promising to check the internet when I got home. We then took a bus towards the train station, figuring that that was closer to our domiciles than the shopping district and thus a much shorter walk home.

Buses in Japan work differently from American ones; you don't pay a flat fee when you get on and then go however far. You get on at the back of the bus and take note of the electric sign at the front. It's got a list of numbers, 1-something (24 on the buses here), and under each number is another number. The first number represents what stop you boarded on; the second number is how much you can expect to pay for how long you've ridden. There's a minimum price, and after a while the tab goes up, depending on how far you've gone. You pay as you get off. In case you don't have change, 1,000 yen bills can be exchanged for coins automatically at the front of the bus, from which you pay the correct amount.

Olga and I split near the school, headed for our respective domiciles. When I got home, I looked up those batteries and found out that they were indeed the wrong kind. I then hooked up my TV and started cleaning in preparation for the next day. Somewhere in the middle of cleaning, I went looking at tables at Mega Outlet (nearby furniture store) and discovered that they were more expensive than I wanted to pay.

Monday... and Posful AGAIN. Blarg.

Hiroko came over yesterday morning so that I could help her find out the course request numbers and times for the classes she wanted to take at UAF. We did that, and then (as suggested by the above title) I went back to Posful. On Saturday, I had seen that one of the stores there was selling tables like what I was looking for for 1,980 yen -- a much better deal than the tables at Mega Outlet.

This time, I decided to go by bus. The snow that had fallen on Sunday had been about as wet as snow can get and still be snow, and a combination of weather patterns had led to massive amounts of ice -- as I had suspected would happen. So I went towards downtown and made my way to the bus stop Olga and I had gotten off at the day before. We hadn't actually gone as far as the station, because we didn't need to. I located the bus stop across the street and affirmed with a couple of other ladies waiting for the bus that it did, indeed, pass by Posful. Yay!

Took the bus to Posful, got the table, got a couple of folders to use for holding stuff like receipts and bills, and went back to the bus stop to go home. I was glad I was taking the bus; I had thought the table top was plastic, but it turned out to be wood. That's good, because it means the table is sturdier, but that makes it heavier, too.

I spent yesterday evening goofing off instead of doing kanji homework like I should have. Yay!

Japanese Town-Building

So today I had two classes, geography and traditional music. Traditional music was about like it always is (though I feel like I'm becoming more proficient with the koto). This week, because of the weather (it rained and hailed today on top of the ice), we didn't go anywhere. The teacher told us about Kyoto.

Kyoto, in case you don't know, was the capitol of Japan before Tokyo was. It wasn't the first capitol of Japan, either. For some reason, Japan has a history of moving its capitol around. And when the Japanese choose a location for a capitol, they base it on Feng Shui (pronounced fuusui by the Japanese). We got a lesson in the basics of fuusui today, as well as a description of how it came into play with the building of Kyoto. We then watched a cheesy, informative video on it.

I came home between the two classes instead of going to the Gaiken room, because Amazon indicated that my FFXI would get here between today and Thursday. Even if I hadn't arranged it to be COD, I don't think they'd have left it in the mailbox, so I'd like to be here when the package gets here. ^^ That way I can get it and start installing ASAP.

Now that it's past the time when they'll deliver mail, it's time for me to go get more food supplies.

Realizations of the Period

1) Japanese dramas are more like what we'd call melodramas.
2) Japanese kids' shows are pretty much the same as American kids' shows, but sometimes they get a little scary. To be fair, the same could be said of some American kids' shows.
3) I need taller shoes, like hiking boots or something, if I am gonna walk around in snow.
4) Japanese cheesy, informative videos also include cheesy, brightly colored 3D renders they use to give you a virtual walkthru of whatever the topic is, just like American ones.