Day Fourteen - Tokyo.
Aug. 10th, 2009 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19It took me a while to get around to typing this up. Apologies.
I was awfully busy on my final day. I met with a professor at Sophia University around 11am for an introductory chat. He was extremely kind to me, listening to my disjointed explanations of my proposed dissertation work with patience and making some very good and useful suggestions. He seemed to be willing to help me move forward and to help at the varying stages of my work, and I will definitely be in touch with him during my Yokohama year. After our short talk, he took me and one of his graduate students out to lunch. I had tonkatsu again. ;>
I then made my way out to Yokohama for a meeting with the rental agent. We went over the apartment contract and building rules, discussed the location, the trash and parking arrangements, how to make payments on the rent. Then she drove me to the apartment so that I could see it. It is tiny, but cute and it has everything you need (even a dvd player!). I loved it. It's a plain furnished rental, but with a little love and decoration sense I'll make it into a really happy home.
I'm proud to say we conducted the entire transaction in Japanese, even though I'm fairly confident that she speaks English (and probably better than I speak Japanese). I was complimented by her actions, which indicated to me that she found me easy to understand and communicate with. Clearly, my language levels are not fluent, and they aren't what they need to be for my research (which means they aren't good enough in my opinion), but I have to stop telling people that I can't speak Japanese. Because I can.
That's so weird.
I was heading back to Tokyo around 5pm, so I hit the hostel for a change of clothes and then met Eunja for a final dinner. We ate out at this all-you-can-eat Italianesque type place. It totally reminded me of Fresh Choice - pasta, pizza, soups, salad. Japanese-style, of course, which means there were all kinds of fish pasta dishes and tofu, and green tea cakes for dessert. And at one point the servers came through the restaurant with samples of extremely undercooked (and extremely tasty) marinated beef.
Eunja's husband was supposed to join us, but he was asked to stay late at the office at the last minute - so it was just the two of us. (He did call me, though, to wish me a pleasant flight and to ask that we all meet in September.) Being just the two of us was fun, though. We chatted, as we usually do, about a number of things that we both find amusing and interesting. On our way back to the station, we stumbled across a summer festival - taiko drumming and dancing in the park. We stayed until the end of the festival, watching the different people dance... men and women, children and the elderly, tradition dress and modern, skilled and clumsy. Everyone was having a wonderful and unaffected time. The sun was down and the nearly full moon was on the rise over the skyscrapers surrounding the park.
It was surreal and beautiful, peaceful, heartwarming... almost timeless.
And then it ended and we walked to the station, said our goodbyes, exchanged hugs, promised to meet again in September. And I went back to the hostel, packed up, checked my emails and confirmed the departure time, etc. And then I went to bed.
And the two week adventure had ended.
I was awfully busy on my final day. I met with a professor at Sophia University around 11am for an introductory chat. He was extremely kind to me, listening to my disjointed explanations of my proposed dissertation work with patience and making some very good and useful suggestions. He seemed to be willing to help me move forward and to help at the varying stages of my work, and I will definitely be in touch with him during my Yokohama year. After our short talk, he took me and one of his graduate students out to lunch. I had tonkatsu again. ;>
I then made my way out to Yokohama for a meeting with the rental agent. We went over the apartment contract and building rules, discussed the location, the trash and parking arrangements, how to make payments on the rent. Then she drove me to the apartment so that I could see it. It is tiny, but cute and it has everything you need (even a dvd player!). I loved it. It's a plain furnished rental, but with a little love and decoration sense I'll make it into a really happy home.
I'm proud to say we conducted the entire transaction in Japanese, even though I'm fairly confident that she speaks English (and probably better than I speak Japanese). I was complimented by her actions, which indicated to me that she found me easy to understand and communicate with. Clearly, my language levels are not fluent, and they aren't what they need to be for my research (which means they aren't good enough in my opinion), but I have to stop telling people that I can't speak Japanese. Because I can.
That's so weird.
I was heading back to Tokyo around 5pm, so I hit the hostel for a change of clothes and then met Eunja for a final dinner. We ate out at this all-you-can-eat Italianesque type place. It totally reminded me of Fresh Choice - pasta, pizza, soups, salad. Japanese-style, of course, which means there were all kinds of fish pasta dishes and tofu, and green tea cakes for dessert. And at one point the servers came through the restaurant with samples of extremely undercooked (and extremely tasty) marinated beef.
Eunja's husband was supposed to join us, but he was asked to stay late at the office at the last minute - so it was just the two of us. (He did call me, though, to wish me a pleasant flight and to ask that we all meet in September.) Being just the two of us was fun, though. We chatted, as we usually do, about a number of things that we both find amusing and interesting. On our way back to the station, we stumbled across a summer festival - taiko drumming and dancing in the park. We stayed until the end of the festival, watching the different people dance... men and women, children and the elderly, tradition dress and modern, skilled and clumsy. Everyone was having a wonderful and unaffected time. The sun was down and the nearly full moon was on the rise over the skyscrapers surrounding the park.
It was surreal and beautiful, peaceful, heartwarming... almost timeless.
And then it ended and we walked to the station, said our goodbyes, exchanged hugs, promised to meet again in September. And I went back to the hostel, packed up, checked my emails and confirmed the departure time, etc. And then I went to bed.
And the two week adventure had ended.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 02:42 am (UTC)So... where's your apartment? I'm quite curious to learn if it's one my friends stayed in when we lived in Yokohama.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 10:18 am (UTC)