Tangled Green Thoughts

[journal] So far I love Japan.

1. The girls are fashionable, cute and friendly. Apparently designer handbags are in, since every fifth girl I see has an LV. Also, it's so hot that girls play on Gameboys or PSPs and read mangas or video game magazines.

2. My place exceeded my expectations. My room size is reasonable and I like sleeping on the futon they provided. The toilet is in a separated room from the bath, which is nice if you don't want to smell like a number two after you come out of the shower. The place is also furnished with a washing machine, although, unfortunately, no drying machine. The kitchen and living room are both very large and my housemates have good taste in furnishing. I swear to God one side of the living room looks like a professional bar. It has those tall metal shakers to mix drinks, 4 bottles (tequila, vodka, etc....) suspended upside down connected to tubes and ending in spouts to professionally shoot out the poison, tons of fancy shot glasses and other lush accessories I wouldn't know of since I'm not yet an alcoholic. There's a television set connected to a Gamecube, which itself is surrounded by video games and movies and television series DVDs. On the other side is collectible anime figures and Starwarsconveyor posters. Okay, sure, the room looks like it was taken off the set of 40-year-old virgin, but I liked what I saw nevertheless. The only con I've noticed is the toilet room had a nasty urine smell. I'll definitely have to buy something to fix that problem.

3. The location is right beside a yummy, cheap, conveyor belt sushi place. So good. I'm going to be best friends with the owner. I need to find a close by Ramen noodles place now.

4. I'm a 10 minute walk from the train station, which itself is a 25 minute train ride from Ikeburo station in Tokyo.

5. I saw two grocery stores nearby and one huge beer/liquor store. I also saw a small time hair salon, but I'll wait to check out a place Gina recommended.

6. Filling out forms here has much pressure attached to it as diffusing a bomb. ZERO TOLERANCE and you better have perfectly neat block letters. If you go over a line, you better just start a new form.

7. The residents all think I'm Japanese. They all speak to me in this rapid fire attacking style Japanese until I ask, "Sorry, do you speak English?" Then their attacking style stops and they blush before saying, "little, little." They are very helpful however and we play these awesome games of charades trying to understand one another. I seriously should learn Japanese though, but I do have one fear. If I was white and I spoke broken Japanese that would be fine, but since they think I'm Japanese, when I speak Japanese they'll just think I have a language learning disability and feel pity for me. It'll be so embarrassing because it'd be even worse if I explained myself, "I'm not slow. REALLY. I'm Vietnamese actually."

They'd just turn to each other, call me "Forest Gump" and nod in agreement.