It's been a while, but....

I've finally gotten fully acclimated. At least I think I am now. I've been here for a week and a half and I can finally stay up past 10 PM (not that I need to be with school starting next week) and I finally had my first Japanese meal!

The night before last we got a small group of five to go down to a Yakiniku place next to our town's station. Our international group was comprised of cool guy from the UK, a guy from Australia, a Japanese guy who plays American football, Steve, Patty, and me. Yakiniku is basically fried meat, and you order it by the plate full. Some places do a buffet as well like you pay for two hours and it's all you can eat during that period. The exception here is that you fry the meat yourself! Which is very similar to a fondue I used to do back stateside.

Our Aussie buddy had to reserve us seats as each group gets their own private section to be seated in and they set hot coal grills in front of you for cooking directly under a vent to suck out excess smoke or smells. The atmosphere was the most awesome thing I'd seen yet with all sorts of paper lanterns and a wooden flooring inside, but the best part was the new age Japanese hip hop rap playing inside. While I'm not lecher, the women in this establishment were all very young and beautiful in their kimonos. Since we did not go to a buffet it was quite expensive but since it was my first real Japanese meal experience I didn't want to cut myself short so Steve joined in on buying the tokubetsu (specialty) meat which was about 13 USD for eight slivers of meat. Although expensive I feel it might have been some of the best meat I've had in a long time if not ever! We ended up getting another small plate to ourselves (not the specialty and half the price), as well as some rice and beer. Needless to say I won't be eating there much because it ran be about 30 USD after taxes and the service fees. Come to find out there is no tipping here in Japan because everyone is paid at an hourly rate.

I got my Xbox live hooked up and it works like the rep said it would when I called before leaving the states. However, for those you who play games, one must add points to download small games (generally about 10 dollars). For some reason upon moving to Japan I can't order points through my debit card. I ended up wasting a dollar of Skype minutes (ya it's not much but I didn't buy it for this) calling Xbox live to resolve the issue. This will mark my first blog vent if you will. So I must first say this: I HATE OUTSOURCING.

The woman I dealt with on Live support was definitely from India and English not being her primary language. Now I never usually cuss people out because I worked customer service for shitty Kroger for nearly ten freaking years and I know that their job sucks. However, these are supposed to be the people with answers. She kept telling me I had to change my address on my Live account to my Corbin addy (it was still on my old Richmond one) in order for my billing to match my account. I did that in two different places but to no avail. Her only excuse was that Xbox live updated two days ago and that there's some server error, but it was only an assumption and not a real answer. My deductive reasoning tells me that I cannot add points because I'm attempting to add points from Japan, but hey what the hell do I know. I ended up cussing occasionally (not at her but about the situation) and eventually asked her if someone in the USA bought me a preloaded Xbox live point card (sold at Gamestops, Kmart, Walmart, and surely many other chains) and gave me the scratch off number from the back if it would add points to my account. She quickly said yes and I hung up on her seeing as I had wasted too much on my Skype anyway. So for all you awesome readers that have gotten this far, please feel free to donate to the "EJ Needs Xbox Live points for mini-Arcade games and Rock Band 2 Song Foundation". We except point card donations in twenty and fifty dollar increments.

So now I'm going to an ATM in order to pay my landlady the deposit I owe her for my dorm room, and maybe drop of my visa work forms. I ended up taking the English teaching job which will pay me 50 dollars per two hour session. I'm teaching the class with Steve and we have about 15 students as of right now but may go up to twenty. Our classroom has two large chalkboards and instead of desks has about six or seven leather couches and a few leather seats. I have to dress up hardcore as well, but I brought a lot of nice clothes and now have an excuse to wear them. Hope everyone is enjoying my blog thus far, and if some people reading want to talk one on one please feel free to comment on my blog posts and keep in touch!

PS Sorry for no new pics, but I recently discovered a warlord's castle a few blocks away that I'm going to hit up. We're also going out to picnic if it's warm today and maybe have some cool pics of all the international peepz here.