October 9, 2009
ellagoesglobal
Righty…so much has been happening in the last 4 or 5 days, it’s unreal! I’m not entirely sure where to start, I guess from where I left off would be the best plan. Most of it has been academic, such as just about surviving a placement test, opening a japanese bank account, lectures (PURELY IN JAPANESE COMPUTER JARGON might I add!), various meetings, and orientations etc. Also, Karaoke. To be honest, the last few days have had their ups and their downs. One of the major ups being that I finally bought a guitar, and one of the major downs being that now I have virtually no money to live on. Japan is TOUGH.
Monday! Right, I got up so early, about 7am, to get myself ready to meet with Matt and his lovely tutor Akie-san, in order to go and open a bank account. I was kind of dreading that, as my tutor Murakami-san was unavailable to help me open the account, and Akie-san was going to be helping Matt, soooo I was possibly going to have to open it myself. Alone. In Japanese. With the Japanese bankers speaking in ridiculously polite ‘keigo’ Japanese (which to those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a form of the language which shop assistants, bankers and hotel workers use to speak to customers, and if you understand regular japanese, there is a very high chance you won’t be able to understand keigo.). So BASICALLY, I was pretty screwed. But it turned out in the end, that we couldn’t open a bank account that day anyway, for a reason I never learnt. However, we did spend nearly an hour, standing around in a circle looking expectantly at one another, saying “So…what now?”. At which point I went back to my room, to despair for a while at the lack of organisation around this place.
When my despair had finally tapered off, I decided to head in to Kichijo-ji, a town about 4 stops away on the train. I had one thing on my mind – GUITAR. There’s nothing quite like a good old razz on a guitar to cheer you up. So, I headed off with Matt and Fran, to this lovely town. We have to change once on the train, at a place called Musashi-sakai, and I ended up getting lost in the train station. For a good 10 minutes if not longer. Matt and Fran have both got a special card that just lets them straight through the barrier, and I got left behind. I then managed to get through another barrier, but it turned out I’d gone through the wrong one, and the machine had eaten my ticket. Flustered and alone, I ended up having to go to the information desk and ask in very broken japanese “I NEED TO GET TO KICHIJOJI, HOW?! Please….” haha. The man was so kind, he gave me the money to get the train.
Anyway, we finally managed to get to Kichijoji, and…it was pretty much just like anywhere else. Pretty, and lovely! Lots of neon signs, but beautiful. Just like the rest of Tokyo really. After much wandering around and getting lost, we decided to ask someone where the guitar shop was, and there was a very sweet girl who lead us all to the guitar shop, and asked me really sweetly “Gitaa ga suki?” which means “You like guitars?” she was too cute. Anyway. This was where love blossomed for me. I couldn’t quite prepare myself for the intense happiness I felt as soon as I walked in the shop. Guitars everywhere! Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase, I fell in love with a cheap and cheerful red acoustic, who I have now named “Ichigo” which is japanese for Strawberry 
and she set me back 12,000 yen. Which is about £80, but I did get a case, a tuner, a capo, a DVD on how to play guitar (haha), a new set of strings and other things, all included! It was great. I love her. Not as much as I love my guitar Rupert though, who is waiting for me in Britain. 
Here she is!
Right, I shall write more when I’m not in a state of serious food deprivation.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
2 Comments Add your own
Leave a Reply
Trackback this post | Subscribe to comments via RSS Feed
1.
Rachel-san |
October 10, 2009 at 04:39
Well for a short one there was lots of info and didn’t know about the Train Station Drama!!!! keep smiling sweetly and you’ll get along fine. Love you loads, Mumxxxx
2.
Martin-ban-jo |
October 10, 2009 at 18:58
Whoo – lost in Japanese station with an eaten ticket. Freaky. However,he was a nice man, giving you money for the train – you must have impressed him, with your startling knowledge of Japanese and everything!
love you xx Daaaddie-uh (that’s Welsh for Daddy)