basic details

okay so there are a couple of basic details about me living in Japan that you should know. btw, i'm in the mood to highlight random words. deal with it. its my blog, i can do what i want.

i live in Shin-Urayasu, Japan. Not Tokyo. the actual city of Tokyo is seperated into several section and they are almost all big urban city areas. not a lot of people actually live in the city. in Japan instead of counties they have prefectures. Chiba is the prefecture right next to Tokyo. Shin-Urayasu is a city within Chiba. So its as if Tokyo is LA county. and Chiba is the OC. Shin-Urayasu is the cypress of Chiba. understand? Tokyo Disneyland isnt in Tokyo either. its also in Chiba. its in Maihama which is the Anaheim of Chiba. Cypress is the nice residential area, and Anaheim is the touristy area. same with Shin-Urayasu and Maihama. does that make sense? here let me draw a picture.....




the only difference is that where i live is literally on the very outskirt of tokyo, so its only 3 train stations away to be in the big city. i hope the drawing makes more sense. thats the best way i can think of explaining it. haha. I'm such a dork. i draw a new picture on my white board every morning with breakfast. just because i can. 

Another thing. the time difference. Japan is 16 hours ahead of the west coast. so to figure out the time difference you add 4 hours to your time and change it from am to pm. so if its 4am for you its 8pm for me. which makes talking to you guys really difficult because it has to be either really early or really late for me to talk to you. it feels awkward to be on the webcam and say goodnight to my daddy as he's just starting his work day. 

okay wow, the weather here is CRAZY. right now its moving from the scorching hot summer to typhoon season. so some days its sunny and hot, and others its pouring rain with strong winds. the weird thing is that even when its showering down the water is warm, and the air is really hot. i walk to work under my umbrella in a  tank top and i'm sweating because its so hot out. another thing, the weather is super bipolar. after it stops raining, ten minutes later the sun has dried up everything and you feel like you're on the surface of the sun. its just weird.

okay, I was put under the impression before i got here that the japanese understand quite a bit of english. NO. they take 8 years of english classes in school, but that doesn't help much. first of all they study more reading and writing than speaking. They don't have a lot of people in their society to practice their english with so they don't really know how to use it in a conversation as much as reading it. also, for those of you who took 4 years of spanish with me in high school, you know we didn't soak up anything other than "como estas" and "bien, gracias. y tu?". thats probably not even right. i wouldn't know. i didn't learn much. which is why i totally understand why the japanese didn't learn much english in high school either. it doesn't help that their language only has 107 syllable options and we have over 3,000. but i'll go over that later.

so how do i talk to the japanese? i pantomime. a lot. you dont really realize how many hand movements are universal till you have to carry a conversation with someone who doesnt speak your language. for example. usually when you dont know where to find something in a store you have to use your hands to explain what you want. when you ask for soap, you pretend to wash your hands, ect. but it gets really hard when you're looking for things like double-sided tape. i've officially experienced the most awkward moment of my life because of this. i was in the office section at D2, which is like the japanese version of Wal Mart and i couldn't read the japanese labels. the first employee i saw happened to be this adorable, little japanese man restocking items. i asked him if they had double-stick tape and i could instantly tell he had no idea what i was saying. i pointed to the tape and said "double-sided". he was baffled. how do you describe double-stick tape?!?  so i did what had worked for me so far. i began to pantomime. i used my hand as tape and i stuck it to a wall. then i stuck a paper to the other side. oh my gosh he was so adorable. he looked at me like " i am sooo sorry, but i have absolutely no idea what you're doing to your hand". it was super cute. so i continued to look like an idiot and stick things to my hand but that did nothing. i decided to make things awkward and include him, so i used his hand and stuck it to mine. it only got more awkward after that. but anyways, my last resort was putting up a 2 sign with my fingers and it totally clicked for him. he started cracking up. he grabbed my hand and redid all of the random pantomiming i had done, and laughed at how it completely made sense to him now. he grabbed the 2-sided tape that was right in front of me, and we seriously laughed together for like 4 minutes. me and this small japanese man had a complete bonding moment in the office aisle without having a conversation. that was pretty much the best moment of my life. i really dont think i'll ever forget that. 

the japanese drive on the left side of the street. they also stay to the left on sidewalks and escalators. it kills me. i'm gonna come home and people are gonna think i'm an idiot cuz i walk on the left side out of instinct now. by the way, i feel really weird being in the passenger seat of a car,sitting on the left, and making a left turn against a curb. its just awkward. random picture...

this post is kinda long so i'm gonna start a new one. but that only touches the tip on things i want to share with you guys. sayonara!

Shanell

i'm gonna be random...

japanese phrase of the day: arigato gozaimas. 

arigato obviously means thank you. but gozaimas is more formal so you naturally just say it more often to be polite. its like saying "thank you very much". but you wouldnt say it alone. just like you would never say "very much" by itself. just fyi. :) oh! and the "ai" in gozaimas is pronounced like "I". and the "a" in "mas" is dragged out. so its like "gozImaaaas. so that was random...... okay how many of you just said it out loud to your computer? haha.