Well, shit. That was fun. Lemme bring you up to speed here.

I woke up yesterday to find there was no hot water. Additionally, the stove didn't work. Ding ding ding, you guessed it, they shut off the gas. With a sinking feeling I sent a message to Ty and started rummaging through the junk mail pile and located the three bills that were mentioned on the piece of paper stuck in our door informing us officially of this outage.
Seeing as I like showering, and cooking, I took the three bills with me when I met Bryan yesterday in Shin Matsudo and paid them at 7-11 (all people pay their bills here, including rent, at convenience stores. Fantastic. Actually convenient.). The total was 24,199 yen. Yeehaw.
Well, I crossed my fingers that would remedy our problem, but as the hours passed I realized that Japan, much like America, didn't work on an automated, easy-going utility system.

So, now, this morning, I just got off the phone with the gas company, which was an adventure all its own. See, when you call someone in Japan, the first thing one usually says is, "誰か英語ができますか？” Unfortunately for me, the answer was “今、ちょっといない．．." "Does anyone speak English?" "Umm...not so much." So I got to put my Japanese to the real litmuss test and waded through an entire technical conversation. Apparently even though I paid the bill, they have to sent someone out to turn the gas on, which will come at the cost of 3000 yen. I told them I'd be at home between 1 and 3pm today, and all in all I think I understood the majority of the convo, without actually understanding most of the explanation in the middle.

Now that I've been in more than a few survival situations here in Japan, I'm starting to realize the value in those lessons I took. I also see the value in the lessons on similar subjects I teach at Nova. That would be a nearly impossible thing to do for an non-Japanese speaking person. Which also means that there's no way Dave would have done it on his own, with Ty in the hospital. So I was the only person who was going to pay or remedy this bill, basically. Well, at least I don't owe rent this month, after paying the entirety of it fixing the gas from the three months prior to my moving here. Yeehaw.

Well, it's official. On Thursday the 2nd of March I get my training to become the Kid's Coordinator of my branch. I'm excited for the title, but the extra work without compensation is a little bit absurd. All the same, it's what I was looking for, and now that I have it, the longer I stay the better it becomes. As in, the longer I have this title the more the weight of my credentials increases.

I'm going to see my roommate in the hospital out near Shinjuku, who had ACL surgery this week after tearing it playing football earlier in January. But before, I am going to the bank to send money home, change my address, and then to the City Office to update my alien registration. Yeeeeeehaw.

I can't wait for my hat and peanut butter to arrive. Thanks for the outrageous expenditure.

I'm gonna take a moment to explain something, cause I know it probably crosses your minds now and again.

See, I have this problem, even though I don't really see it as one so much. I have this kind of myopic vision when it comes to my life sometimes, and I have a really hard time prying my eyes away from the immediate to look around at the periphery. And even when I do, it's usually not for long, and as soon as my attention goes back to my everyday life and the things going on around me, those things I saw or thought about are essentially gone except for in few, fleeting lucid moments.

What that translates to is a lot of passing thoughts about my family, my friends back home, etc, and a lot of good intent and not a lot of follow through.

I've been telling myself to write me grandparents a thank you note for my Christmas present for months now. LIterally months, at this point, and that's sad. I think about it every day, when I wake up, when I get home from work, all the times basically I have either more immediate things to worry about or nothing can be done. So I'm stuck in this place where I know I should, my folks remind me to, I feel bad about not, but I still don't end up writing this letter. It's frustrating, but apparently, as my psych degree tips me off to, it's not important enough to me to make myself sit down and do it.

Now that sounds bad, I know, saying that my grandparents aren't important enough to me to write, but, hear me out. I'm really secure in myself in certain ways, especially when it comes to most of my friendships, and familial relationships. I don't miss home because I don't need to see my friends everyday to know they're still my friends. I don't as well need to talk to my family everyday to know they're ok and that they love me. It's safe then to assume the same of me. Even if I don't say it to you directly, I'm thankful, I'm ok, and I'm getting enough to eat, even when the last two out of three of those statements aren't true to your standards.

I guess I kind of make this assumption that makes too much sense to me to be functional, that if you do something nice for someone they're going to be thankful. I don't ask for thanks, because it's up to the other person to give it, and how others give thanks can differ from how I expect it. I don't think it's a legitimate line of thinking to believe people have to thank you on your own terms. It's not genuine. It's not that I'm not thankful, I am. I just need people to know that even if I don't go out of my way to say it, I still feel that way.

Please understand that I have a life that is very involving, and maybe it makes me selfish that I tend to immediate needs first. But I love you all very much, and I love hearing from you and appreciate your gifts and comments and stories always. Please, never think that because I don't write or call that I don't hold you in my heart and thoughts always.

I think I'm done moving in now. I think. Anyway, I'm going to spend my days off unpacking, and getting used to this new place, after having spent the last four nights or so in my old place to save on travel money until I get my new train pass.

Not-Broke-Anymore Day is Wednesday, so that will make life much easier. I hate thinking to myself that if I hadn't moved I'd have 65,000 yen in my pocket right now, but I know that over the next two or three months I will make back all my moving expenses from the 29k/mo I'll be saving.

I'm going to go back to my old place some time in the next week or so and pick up the rest of my bed set so I can have extra bedding here for guests.

Matt, the guy who lived here before me, left his book "Cracking the GRE", and I plan to flip through it at some point, but admittedly I cursed it by putting my Japanese textbooks next to it, who I as well planned to flip through.

02-07 - 10:39pm

This my second night here in my new place. Our cat is meowing at me feverishly as he hasn't been fed in 9 hours and that's hard enough for me; I can't imagine the poor kittie's famine. The place though is really nice, I'm in the tatami room and I have plenty of space to spread out. The previous tenant left his bedding here, so now I'm up one sweet blanket and some good funiture, which I have put to good use. My roommates, Dave and Ty are both really cool guys. Dave is from Canada, Ty is from Georgia.

Work is going well, I'm a full regular instructor now, and have received good comments throughout. Kerry (my area manager) complimented my training post task, apparently it was very well written. Blah blah blah. Sorry, I'm used to being complimented on things as if I actually put effort into it. Alright, Narcissus, let's move on.

So, I seem to be standing at the border between settling in and being settled. I know I keep talking about it, but, in a month I will be (gasp) financially stable(?!?!?!?!). And with that will come the stability I need to really make a life for myself here. But let's bring you up to date on the rest of goings on, yea?

I've been writing music with my friend Bryan, which has been nice both as an outlet and as a creative exercise. There are no women in my life, as has been the case for Lord knows how long, and it doesn't appear as if that will change in the near future. I've gotten out a bit to see Tokyo but nothing special, just Roppongi and its ilk. I took some nice pictures of the snower here a little while back, of which I will post pictures someday.

I found out a friend from the dorms freshman year in college is living here as well, somewhat predictably, and she lives in Kofu, about 4 hours from here. She's moving to Tokyo though in March, so that will be nice. I haven't really seen or talked to her in nearly 4 years. It's always good to find old friends again. It's weird how when friends, who maybe even weren't the best of friends, find each other again, somehow their bond is strengthened in the renewal of their acquaintance in proportion to the length of time since they knew one another. It's amazing how much comfort we take and value we place on the familiar. It's also nice to know how much things cycle in our lives, how much things never really disappear forever.

That's all for now folks. Thanks for reading.