16 May 2009

I had to register for fall classes at 6am this morning, which is 2pm U.S. time, and I completely overslept. Norio ended up waking me up at 11:30am when he knocked on my door. Luckily registering later made no difference in my options for classes so I still got everything that I expected to, and I waitlisted for the classes that were already full. I didn’t have anything pressing to do today, so I just got up and took my time. We leave for our second weeklong trip on Monday morning, so the most immediate order of business for this weekend was to exchange my voucher for my second Japan Rail Pass and make seat reservations for eight different Shinkansens for my travels during the next week. Many people had left to take care of it earlier this morning, so I found Seth and Blake, who also didn’t go this morning, and we jumped on the train to Shibuya. Our two choices of stations were Shibuya and Shinjuku, but Shinjuku is the #1 busiest station in Tokyo, and Shibuya is #3. Once at Shibuya, we navigated our way to the nearest JR Information booth. The lady spoke almost perfect English and barely even had an accent, and she was still clearly Japanese. She exchanged our rail passes for us and directed us to the nearest location to reserve our seats. We waited in line to reserve seats, but once we got the front, the lady we got spoke no English. Instead of being helpful, like most other people are in Japan, she was rude and refused to even try to help us. She told us to go back to the information booth where the lady spoke English, but we told her we couldn’t make reservations there. She just kept interrupting our sentences with the word “NO”, and she wasn’t even trying to figure out what we were trying to say. It was really frustrating. We went back to the information booth and explained the situation to the lady. I could tell it was a bit frustrating on her as well, but she began figuring out what we needed to reserve. She ended up having to call for a second person to help her since our needs were going to take a while. The second lady spoke fairly good English too, and together they slowly worked to figure out our reservations. It was additionally unfortunate because they were not equipped with the proper computers to look up the reservation information, so instead, they had to use huge schedule books for all of the JR lines to figure out which trains to book. The entire process ended up taking over an hour, and from the start, we could already tell it was going to take a while. As a result, I stepped away for about ten minutes to go buy a nice box of chocolates to show our appreciation towards their helpfulness. We gave it to them at the end, and they were really surprised at our generosity. We still felt really bad, but at least we felt like we did something.
By the time we finished up making our reservations, it was already past 3pm. All of the guys had to move out of their rooms today to a different part of the NOMYC complex, so their check-in time for the new place was 3pm. Seth and Blake resultantly had to rush back to the NOMYC to get their stuff and find the new room. It was 3:45pm by the time we got back, and the three of us still hadn’t eaten anything. I was starving, but I waited for Blake to get done moving his stuff so we could go get McDonald’s. I had been craving McDonald’s since yesterday afternoon, so I decided I would go to the one across the street from the NOMYC. While waiting for Blake, I ran into Derrick and Jeff, who also ended up coming with us to McDonald’s. I ordered the filet-o-fish meal set as usual with a Qoo soda. It cost 590 yen. My favorite thing about the filet-o-fish sandwich here in Japan is that they always make it for you fresh, so even though I always have to wait three minutes for them to prepare it, it is always better than the ones I get in the U.S.
After my late lunch, I was tired again from all the hassles associated with getting my rail pass and reserved seats. I ended up going back to my room and napping for about four hours! It was a longer nap than I wanted to take, but it was definitely much needed. I felt much better after my nap, so I worked on my blog and uploaded more photos. Shae, Derrick, and Norio all stopped by my room at different times, and we all ended up hanging out for a while. After Shae left, Norio decided to take a nap on the couch in my wing’s lounge, and Derrick actually asked me to give him a haircut. The thing about haircuts in Japan is that they are really expensive and seemingly overpriced when compared to the U.S. Since Derrick only have short-ish hair, he figured it’d be much cheaper to ask me to cut it rather than pay at least 3,000 yen at the cheapest place. He gave me a few photos of what he wanted it to look like, and it took me almost an hour to cut it al since I was only using scissors. If someone had had an electric razor with a longer tip on the end, it would’ve only taken ten minutes but oh well. I think I surprised both myself and Derrick because the haircut came out pretty much exactly how he wanted it. The true test will be when he styles it tomorrow, but the rest of the night, he was really content about it.
Even though it was a little after 11pm when I finished the haircut, both Derrick and I were really hungry. McDonald’s was the only meal I had had all day, so we decided to go to Matsuya for a late night dinner. Matsuya is open 24 hours a day, so that is always convenient. I ordered the kalbi beef and kimchi rice bowl for 490 yen. Norio had ordered it the last time we went there, and it looked really good. I figured I’d try it this time, and it was definitely a good choice. The rest of the night, Derrick Skyped with his parents and girlfriend, and Norio continued to nap. Tomorrow the guys of the group have to move out again and move into another building at 3pm, so I am letting whoever is interested store their luggage in my room until check-in. Most of the other girls said no when the guys asked to do that today, and I was the only person who offered to help them out. Norio was the only one who stored his stuff in my room today, but many people have already asked me to store their stuff for them tomorrow. Since checkout is at 10am, I will probably wake-up around 9am to make sure I’m up before people start bringing over their luggage. After that, I have no idea what I’ll be doing with the rest of my day.