A Lensatic Adventure? Guess not.

I went to the store today to buy for myself a compass. This seems kind of silly when you first hear it, but I’ve a pretty good reason.

So I woke up this morning at around six, like I usually do. So I take a shower, get dressed, and sit around, trying to find something to do. Well, I think to myself, I’ve got to go find food at some point. I could have rice again but maybe I should try someplace new. Hey, I’ve got $50 worth of guidebooks on that shelf over there… and proceeded to try and find my apartment in the books. The books don’t cover my area at all, and describe the area around it basically as “Uh, there’s not much to do here, but at least it’s linked to the other areas of Kyoto, so it’s easy to leave.” Ouch.

Unfortunately, the streets here always shoot off at odd angles to each other, so I’m constantly getting turned around. My thinking was that if I have a compass, I can at least know which general direction to go. You’d be surprised how hard that is to keep track of here. (Hint: that was my good reason)

So, what does it take to leave? It looks like it’s about five minutes by bike to the nearest train station, and a $1.50 fare should get me to Eastern Kyoto. From the station, it’s about half a kilometer to a store the かんりんりん (apartment caretaker) recommended I check out if I want to buy a decent compass instead of the one I picked up a little earlier, which even I recognize is pretty lame.

I had asked him where I could buy a decent compass as I was walking in the door, by the way.

In this same area, according to my books, is… a lot of stuff. I’m hoping to visit a shrine and find a compass today. Probably also need to eat lunch, ‘cause it’s almost 11AM and I have yet to eat breakfast.

Actually, there’s a sushi place near here…

Blogspotted

I've got the whole thing in Blogger now, and it's all mostly the way it was before. You should see some changes, but I think the biggest improvement is that you can leave comments now.
I can't get the formatting right. If I change it so that borders look right in IE, they stack in Fx. Blargh.

Two prongs? も一つ、お願いします！

Checked out of the hotel today, and they hailed a taxi for me. The taxi took me to Kyoto Gaidai, where I was supposed to meet someone "by 10:00". I ended up having quite a discussion with Tetsushi YAMADA, who... does something at the front gate. I'm not being secretive, I just have no idea what his job is. He's a pretty decent guy and he speaks better English than most of the Japanese I've encountered so far. Most Japanese people seem to recognize just about any single English word I throw at them, so I can use English words when my vocabulary fails me, such as trying to describe a "TV cord", because "coaxial cable" doesn't quite convey the same... I'm-not-looking-for-a-technical-term.

Anyway, as it turns out I got there an hour and some change early, so they told me to wait in the resource room. So I drop my stuff in the resource room and see a line of computers. Yay! Finally, I'll be able to go Internet something! Alas, it was not to be. KUFS apparently has their own domain, and none of the standard guest accounts worked. Oh, and my laptop was at 7% charge, with nary a three-pronged plug in sight.

Which brings me to my next point: grounded plugs. What the hell happened here, Japan? In the hotel room, there was not a single three-prong outlet to be seen. But you can imagine that. I mean, they must have just not redone the wiring since, say, World War II. ... ... Or something.

Except there's not a single one in my whole apartment. Eh? Eh? Surely the Japanese recognize the risk of electrical surges and whatever else grounded plugs are good for.

In the end, I discovered that two of the outlets in my apartment do, in fact, have a ground. It's a screw. Under the plug itself. To use it, you have to go to a 電気屋 (something like Fry's, but scaled down to Japanese-size) and pick up a converter. The converter has a little two-pronged fork on the end of a six-inch wire; the whole assembly looks like somebody's trying to rig up a VHF antenna for their TV through the wall with only one terminal once it's all done.

Now, you'd think this would work like every other such assembly ever but it doesn't, of course, because OMGWTFJAPANBBQ or something. Hell, I don't know. Anyway, you unscrew the brass - I think - screw and then slide the wire under this rectangular washer. I didn't want to end up accidentally flipping the kill-the-stupid-foreigner switch that I'm sure is hidden somewhere, so I had my kanrinrin (something of a live-in manager. Mine's name is "Gyoubu" as far as I can tell) do it. Now I have one surge protector worth of modern, grounded outlets in my apartment.

Mission complete?

Jet Lag, part I

Well, I'm in the hotel now. Have been for about an hour. I'm pretty tired, so I think I'll hit the hay.

Mom sent me an email, though, that reminded me: my first thought when I got off the plane and stepped into the terminal was "Eck, they ionize the air here. Or it could be the humidity." And my first real action while there was to go to the bathroom. I don't know if there's any significance to that, but I thought it was funny.

I'll get out and take more pictures tomorrow. I'm exhausted.

08-03-26 0605WST 2210JST - ウィル

The Plane

I'm right now on a Boeing 767-300ER over the Pacific Ocean, bound for Osaka, which is in the Kansai region of Japan. I left YVR Vancouver, B.C., Canada this afternoon at 13:10PST. The captain announced that we should have about 11 hours of total flight time, which means I'll be in the air slightly longer than I've sat in airports today.

For those that don't already know, I'm going on a study abroad trip to Kyoto, where I will be studying Japanese language at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. I will be studying there for one year and coming home, hopefully to graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Japanese (broad area).

As for the flight itself, it is now 1914, Will Standard Time, which means I've got about four hours left. I have no idea what time it will be in Japan when I land, but it's going to be 11PM or midnight Will's Watch Time and, not surprisingly, Will's sleep cycle time. Hello, jet lag! Actually, I've been trying to nap as much as possible so that I can be semi-wakeful when I get there, but the seats are not particularly conducive to it. They're comfortable enough, though. I'm right by the emergency exits located by the wings, and I think they need to check the seals, 'cause this thing leaks a lot of cold air and makes quite a lot of noise in addition.

I'd been meaning to get a site-shaped thing set up for this, which will serve to help keep my family - and the other four-ish people that care - up to date on my journey. I'll try and tack at least one annotated picture with each post, though I have no intention of limiting myself with that.

Since I'm not yet off the plane, here's a list of some of the stuff I've got pictures of thus far:

• My dad, who is cool.
• YVR Vancouver terminal, where I waited for this flight
• The inside of both the DHC8 Dehaviland twin turboprop that I got to YVR from SEA on and the 767-300ER I'm in as I type this.
• The 767's got little touchscreens you can watch movies on! It's so cool! Also, they've brought us food on two separate occasions, plus a little bag of snack-things. Plus, I think I've had about a liter of Canada Dry ginger ale. Those of you who know me know my history of ginger ale abuse.
• Some of the customs forms for both Japan and Canada. It's convenient for me I'm not carrying any perfume, alcohol, or tobacco, as that is almost all they care about.

I don't intend to make future entries nearly this large, unless I find large quantities of time on transit or something. I'll have to add pictures later, probably from the hotel, as I don't have space to set up my camera safely. My laptop is already consuming the entirety of my lap-area, which is my whole workspace.

And Dean would be disappointed if I didn't put any 漢字 (kanji) in anywhere, so here are a couple of the places I've mentioned:

Osaka	Kyoto	Kansai
大阪	京都	関西

Some eggs at YVR
A fish full of soy sauce
08-03-25 1931WST - ウィル (Will)