Today was simply more training. This time we didn't have to go all the way to Chiba, but could stay at the Yotsukaido school. Training today was much less boring/ anxiety-producing than the previous days. We spent the majority of the day playing games intended for 6 year olds who don't even know English. And here I was playing name the object with my full-grown mother-tongued self. We bounced balloons around the classroom. We played musical chairs with flashcards. We played hide the flashcard, We learned the intricacies of bingo. We hit things with fly swatters. We pointed. We gestured. We chanted. We played with a mechanical crocodile that bites your hand if you press the wrong tooth. And oh yes, we learned the zen art (and I am not kidding about this) of laminating flashcards with packing tape. Jack was very adamant that We had to clear our mind of anything else while making flashcards.
There were several breaks, during which I discovered both coffee in a pop-top can and coffee in a juice box. Trips were had to our regular bakery (I had a bun with potato, bacon, and seaweed inside), the conveinie, and to an arcade.
After work, Albert, Hannah and I continued our search for the elusive reasonably priced watch. Our quest lead us to a used bookstore. Most things there were beyond my appreciation since they might as well have been written in ancient greek. I did however pick up a comic book. Here in japan comics are actual book-sized books. My plans for this little book is to mercilessly rip out its pages and make various art projects out of it which I will most likely leave in half-finished states around my tiny apartment. But I figure I will need something to occupy myself in the first week or two in my village. Another electronic store was on the itinerary.
The most exciting part of the day was the eating. Not surprising. I had my second restaurant dining experience in Japan. I convinced Hannah and Albert to eat at this sushi restaurant that Jack had recommended. The sushi came on a conveyor belt that snaked around the huge restaurant. There were all sorts of things that I had never seen before. There was corn sushi. There was blue eggplant sushi. There was okra sushi. There was sushi with coleslaw looking stuff mounded on top of it. I swear I had one that was rice pudding and pureed fish. Hot water for tea came out of a spicket that was built into our table. Ginger was bright yellow. The sushi was pretty delicious, aside from a few plates chosen in the spirit of adventure, and at roughly a dollar a plate, pretty cheap.
Other highlights of the night include amateur Sumo wrestling on tv and a truly horrific "sport" that involves racing a horse along a narrow corridor lined with people and trying to get it to fly up a really steep hill at breakneck speeds, which usually resulted in the horse foundering, or slipping, or collapsing halfway up the hill with its legs splayed all over the place.
Breaking news: I have encountered my first Japanese Jehovah's witnesses.
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