The first few days

Let me start by saying that I was crazy to believe that I had somehow beat Jet Lag, that I had found the miracle cure, staying up 36 hours straight. I was wrong. It's currently 3:30 pm, and I've been up since about 2 am. I want to sleep now... because, I'm tired.

Also, please feel free to tell me that my writing's horrible. Leave a comment, say something like "Paul, you never explained what you had to register for in the last post", or "speak English please". Believe it or not, I might actually come back from Japan with worse English than when I left, so this is your chance to make fun of me, and help me!

Osaka's really cool. I haven't gone drinking yet, and I've met the girls that live upstairs and the ones that live downstairs. I briefly met some people at the airport, but they were British, and not the Monty Python kind. They were probably tired, I'll see them on Monday when I start working. My favorites moments include the lady who kept on staring at me, and the man who delivered my luggage who laughed at me when I said Ariagato.

So the apartment's really small. Everything's small here! Lightbulbs, cars, people, all tiny! There are however exceptions to every rule. In this case, the beer cans are huge. 500 mL, but for some reason, they don't have bottles for their beer, at least none I've seen so far. The grocery stores are pretty cool. They're basically exactly like the grocery stores here, everything you need on a regular basis is on opposite ends of the store so you have to go through the whole store to get what you want. The instructions on how to make stuff is all in Japanese, so I buy all the food based on whether it's pre-made, or whether it's got some cute animal speaking and doing each step with a pretty picture. Today I had curry, which had a lot of writing for how to make it, but a picture with boiling water, the curry pouch in the water, with a Koala bear saying "(japanese stuff) 3 - 5 (more japanese stuff)". 5 minutes, and I had the most awesome pre-packaged curry sauce ever.

I had to register as a Gai-jin today, which means foreigner. I walked into city hall, and there was a huge board with all the services that City hall provides. There was an old Japanese man who looked at me, then pointed to number 25, foreigner services. I thanked him, but was a little hurt. Supposedly, I don't look Japanese. It was cool, so now I can open a bank account and get a cell phone.

The other thing I'll talk about in this post are the beds. Now everyone, can you guess why it is that the Kanji symbol for floor in Chinese is the Japanese symbol for sleep? That's right, I sleep on a very thin mattress with sheets on it which is in turn on some tatami mats (which is a nice way to say wood). It's actually comfortable, except the pillow. The pillow's filled with like beans or rice. It's incredibly uncomfortable. My room also has no windows, which isn't helping the jetlag thing. Over the next two days, I plan on buying an alarm clock, some more groceries, maybe go to a bar and restaurant.

Japan's awesome, and it may seem like I'm angry or insulted, but I'm not. Tune in next time at the same bat-Time and the same bat-Channel.