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| Rainy first day in Japan! A beautiful canal in small town Ootsu |
Morning
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| Breakfast table |
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| Our beautiful morning walk in Ootsu. |
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| Covered Mall area in Ootsu |
We went back to the subway line and made our way to the real estate office in Kyoto to follow up on our apartment that we were to move into April 15th. The real estate agents didn’t speak any
English, so Shinko did most of the talking while Ben and I sat there and picked
out the occasional word. We could sense
that they were hesitant to rent to us because they would have no way to
communicate with us on legal matters if anything went wrong. They wanted to have the head office call Ben
and talk to him on the phone to see if his Japanese was good enough to qualify
as a tenant. Thankfully Shinko convinced
the real estate people to let us rent the apartment, and Ben didn’t have to be
tested on the phone after all. What a
relief. I’m sure if we’d had to do the
phone test, the head office wouldn’t have let us rent from them.
Midday
We decided to
have lunch at this very small, but amazing curry place with only barstools and
one guy running the whole place. He
spoke with Shinko and they helped us find a hostel for the next few days where
we could stay before moving into our apartment April 5th. After phoning around to 6 or 7 places, we
finally found one that had reasonable prices and a room available. We’d been finding it difficult to withdraw
money from any ATM, and found out from the curry guy that foreign cards were
only accepted at the post office ATM down the street. We thanked him for his help.
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| Running errands! This pic at my university |
Then we need to
go to get Ben an “inkan”. An inkan is a
personalized stamp carved out of wood that Japanese people use to sign
important documents. It’s used in place
of a signature and the real estate office required it of us to sign the papers
before we move into our apartment.
The whole time
we were really learning the most important phrases to know in Japanese which
are: “gomenasai –sorry, sumimasen – excuse me, arigato gozaimas – formal thank
you.” Everyone says these things all the
time, and it comes from the buyer or the seller at a store, or if someone moves
for you when they’re in your way, or when someone helps you in anyway even for
a very small thing. And there is lots of
bowing. The depth of the bow marks your sincerity. We discovered quickly that it’s very
important to do this so as not to offend people.
One cool thing
that happened while on the subway was when I said hello in English to a little
girl. Her mom immediately prodded her to
try and speak English with me. The girl
said “nice to meet you” and the mom then lifted her arm up to shake my
hand. It was very cute.
Evening
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| Beer Vending Machines?! |
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| Our room in Shinko's lovely house in Ootsu |
At the end of the day my brain was so tired from trying to speak and understand Japanese. It takes so much effort. When we got home that night, we were again exhausted but so thankful for Shinko and all her help. We’d be kind of helpless without her.
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Day 1 (Travel from the airport)<<<Previously Continue reading>>>Day 3 (First night in the Hostel)
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Ben and Kailey lived in Japan not too long ago and also visit Kyoto every year.Ben is developing a Japanese Practice site. It's current main functions are:
1. a Flash Card system that features a leveling system where you must answer correctly and "level up"to gain new cards, receive money and buy new decks - anime decks included!
2. Fill in the Blank system where you can choose to focus on particle practice or verb practice etc.
Japanese Practice Blog is here. Check out the Japanese Practice site here
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