05 05 2004
The above is my ungrammatical attempt at "drunken old man". I was
walking through a department store today, and I walked through a
reasonably narrow passage-way between the escalator and a wall in
order to get to the side that was going down. There was a man sitting
on the chair and I gave him a faint nod as I walked past as a sort of
unspoken "excuse me".
But I shouldn't have! I reached the escalator and the guy walked up
behind me and muttered something a few times. I couldn't make out his
Japanese, though after he repeated it about 10 times I realised he was
saying "good evening" in a devilishly bad English accent.
The conversation proceeded partly in terrible English and partly in
terrible Japanese (on my part). He stunk of alcohol and it was only
6pm, and I had no desire to continue talking to him, so I tried to
lever my way out of the conversation without appearing rude. At one
point he asked me in Japanese if I drank and he seemed to be trying
to invite me out for a drink - to which I hastily replied "kyou wa
chotto.." - today is a little... (difficult)
After a couple of uncomfortably long minutes, I managed to free myself
from the weird old man's company, and I proceeded to Kinokuniya, which
is a book shop company in Japan. The other teacher had pointed it out
to me yesterday - they've got a selection of Japanese textbooks in
English - it's the first place in Japan I've been able to find a
textbook so far. Now I have more books to continue studying with!
Before running into the weird old man, I'd braved my first haircut. I
was somewhat anxious about it, as I don't know many suitable words
for communicating what I'm after in a cut - such as "this bit short",
"this bit long", etc. The staff there were nice though and after
bumbling about with "this place big, this place small, 1/3rd (miming a
chop)", etc, I ended up pointing in a magazine to someone who had a
similar haircut.
They'd given me a pair of magazines while I was waiting. The bulk of
the magazines consisted of 4 faces per page, all with different
haircuts. There were a veritible wealth of styles to choose from.
Japanese men have a lot more variety when it comes to the way they
style their hair.
Last night I went to see "Kill Bill 2" with the other ECC teacher. The
movies here have this weird ticket system where a limited number of
tickets are distributed to newsagency/stationary type shops. If you
buy a ticket there, it's cheaper - we got an adult ticket for about
$15 instead of the $22 or so we'd have had to pay in the movie
cinemas.
After the movie we geeked it up at his house for a bit - he's got a
very good widescreen HD-TV, digital PVR etc, and the picture quality
is just stunning. Ah well. One day.
Post-geekage, we went to a Chinese restaurant and then on to an Irish
pub which had just opened up near my house about a month before I
arrived. We bumped into one of the hairdressers we'd met the other
night (birthday cake from that night attached), and I also met a
really happy, friendly waitress who the other teacher'd met before.
When she finished work she came and sat with us and we chatted until
the early hours of the morning, which gave me a chance to practice my
meagre Japanese.