How I spend my Friday nights

The sewing of my Harley Quinn outfit has been defeated! ...I mean, completed.

I can't figure out how to flip the picture...

It took me hours and I broke countless needles (of which I will be replacing for the friend I borrowed the machine from), but it's done and ready for tomorrow's pub crawl! I just need to buy a nurse hat and some gloves that I will get at the Halloween warehouse tomorrow morning. I should look pretty rad. I can't wait to see what all the other nerds dressed up as.

On a down note, I got pulled over today because my tags are expired and I never registered my car under my name (oops). Going to the DMV Monday to sort it out (what better way to spend my day off?) and then eventually once I get it all sorted out I'll have to go to the sheriff's department so they can inspect it and waive the fine (of a whole $20) and the citation so I don't have to go to court on August 13th (which I wouldn't be able to make it anyways as I'll be stuck in LAX for a whole day flying back from Japan on that day). Seeing as how I should have paid better attention to the registration/tags I feel no angry rant is in order because it is wholly my fault. And the officer was very nice (although a little exasperated looking). Unlike the cop who gave me my speeding ticket four years ago. He was just plain mean. Regardless the fact that I deserved that one too.

And I think I did something bad to my left knee...it hurts. Just in time for my triathlon.

Oh joyous world.

Jamie  

Too much structure can be too much

so um, my camera is broken so there won't be
any pictures that I've taken shown for
a while.....

I have been battling over skype with Citi Bank Japan these past couple days to try and figure out how to set up a transfer from my account to my host families account (JASSO - the scholarship I was getting while over there-- ended up paying out March's portion even though I 1. didn't sign for it and 2. am no longer there. But now I can pay back my host family so I'm not really complaining).

After going through all the menu options in both Japanese and English until I hear the one that sounds remotely like the problem I am having:

Today our computerized phone receptionist will be
played by Lady Gaga

Generic computer phone women's voice: "please enter your account number"

Me: grumbles while tears through bag to find card; enters number.

Woman's voice: "now enter your telephone pin number"

Me: "my what?"

Woman's voice: "please enter your telephone pin number"

Me: enters pin number

Woman's voice: "we're sorry, that number you've entered is incorrect. Please enter your telephone pin number"

Me: "stupid computerized piece of..." enters number in again.

Woman's voice: "We're sorry, that number you've..."

Me: hangs up.

I called back and did it all over again, entering what I thought was my PIN number but turned out to be the wrong pin number and I was transfered to a human.

I get talking with this guy (who's English is so-so but I can manage). He tells me that in order to transfer the money I have to apply for something called a "one time pin". What does it take to do that?

Citi bank man: "I'm going to transfer you back to the computer system where you'll have to enter in your telephone pin number".

OH I'LL GIVE YOU A PIN NUMBER!!!!!
(me played by Beyonce)

Me: "but wait! I've already tri..." Too late, i'm transfered and the woman is back demanding my number.

I hang up and call back.

I get someone different. We go through the explanations and just before he's about the switch me to computer woman from hell I tell him that I don't know what my "telephone pin" is.

Citi Bank man: "oh well, if you've signed up for banking online then you should know it".

Me: "looks like I forgot it".

Citi Bank Man: " you should have gotten it in the mail on a little post card when you first opened your account".

Me: "yeah that's gone".

Citi Bank Man: "oh..."

Me: "Is there any way you can just look me up in your system and go from there"

Citi Bank Man: "no, we need that PIN number, we can't look up anything without it".

Which is complete BS because I called them a couple weeks ago about closing down the account and the guy just looked me up with my name and date of birth. But this man could not be convinced otherwise.

Solution?

He told me to download this registration form and send it in by mail then they'll manually register the account that I want to transfer to. Should take about forever to complete.

I understand that companies have certain laid out ways of processing things, but sometimes you got to break the rules a little bit. Just sometimes. Why couldn't they just look me up with name and my account number? Who knows.

Thank you for calling Citi Bank, have a nice day.

Jerks.


--In other news--

I've been working my butt off lately (not complaining seeing as how I'll be able to pay my rent and car insurance on time~). In addition to my current job at OIA (office of international affairs) I have picked up a student to tutor in English! The Middle Eastern Studies advisor heard that teaching English was kind of my thing and hunted me down and introduced me to a student from Qatar who is having some difficulties with his English studies. Very nice guy and eager to learn, but at the very most beginning level right now.

I don't know this for a fact but I don't think that they require you to learn English in the Middle Eastern countries. Most the students from the Middle Eastern countries are all in the Intensive English Language Program (and a good portion of them fail their classes on a regular basis for more reasons than just not being able to understand what's going on). My new student has been here since winter term this year and is still mastering his ABC's (but he's moving through them like a trooper!). I helped him with his English HW and could tell that he gets it, it's just being able to remember things without needing something to prompt him.
I charge him $10/hr and we're scheduled to meet twice a week (although he's very relaxed about time and was at first saying "oh, whenever you're free is fine". To which I was like "no, I need structure, when are you free"?). Canaan (the middle eastern advisor) said that he'd be shooting more students my way in the future so. bring on the tutoring~

$10/hr is less than I was charging in Japan but the way people think about money over here is way different than in Japan. If I had been asking for 1000 yen/hr over there then I wouldn't have gotten any students because they all would have been wondering why I was so cheap! Whereas here, if I had gone above $12 no one would even consider me! So why did I go with 10? Because I don't have any fancy qualifications other than what I can tell them I've done in Japan and that i'm a Linguistics student. Whereas in Japan all I had to be was a native speaker and I was in! Funny how that works out.

Oh and one interesting linguistics thing that I found out from my first lesson: Arabic doesn't distinguish between "p" and "b" sounds. "put" and "but" sounded the same to him. IT'S INTERESTING TO ME.

For those of you who don't know where
Qatar is; here you go. 

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jamie

Life a new~! Happy 21st!!

I just finished getting my room into a semblance of organization. Still don't have all the furniture though.

It's this but silver and minus the pink
dice (although I think I should add
a pair. XD) 

Life is putting itself back together faster than I thought it would. Already I have a job, a place to live, and a car (a silver 98 Hyundai Accord named Silverado~). The car has some character flaws (cracked windshield, belts need replacing, and oh yeah if I lock the driver-side door I'll never be able to open it again) but it runs and has low mileage on it so yee haw!.

and best of all there are no radio active
zombies to worry about!

I talked to my host family yesterday morning and they are doing fabulously (they were all drunk and had just finished eating a huge meal). They said that life in Tokyo was completely back to normal and a black out still hasn't happened in their area. Now i'm feeling a little bit angry for being forced to come back seeing as how everything is fine in my area. I'm not going to brood over it though.

I actually stayed inside on my
birthday; putting my room
together. It's just not the same
when you've already experienced
bar life ahead of time.

I turned 21today and although i've been drinking and buying my own alcohol in other countries for a couple years now, it was still exciting to buy my first bottle of wine in America (and my first beer last night at 12:30 am was pretty exciting too). It feels like i'm about to start on a whole new life now that i'm 21 and have nothing else to look forward to in terms of birthdays (not true, you have the 25 tax cut, the big 'FIVE OH' and senior discounts!). I'm excited for this new life and embrace it whole heartedly.








Here's to being able to drink legally for once,

PEACE OUTSIDE ( next post about SE Asia coming next!)
Jamie 

Heading home

Going back to Portland tonight. I would have liked to stay here in California for a little while longer (about a month would have sufficed) but I can only live in limbo for so long.

Some good news, I got an email from my old job at the University and they're going to hire me back! Going to go in tomorrow to talk out details.

ah, reality; how I didn't miss you.

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jamie 

So, um...what country am I living in again?

DONE WITH INITIAL CERTIFICATION TRAINING FOR GABA!! WHOOO HOOO!!!!

...Sorry, but it's really been a grueling 3 days. From Tuesday to Thursday, 10am-7pm, non-stop learning how to be a good Gaba instructor/customer service bitch. That's right, customer service...my favorite. Even though I am an instructor, we are supposed to carter to the whim of the "clients" (not students), and make sure that they leave a "satisfied customer". Makes since, but I hate to look at it that way (I bow down to NO ONE, you hear? No one!) yet, I understand the importance of making sure all our "students" (clients just sounds so stiff and impersonal) feel like they're getting their moneys worth (one "package deal" of lessons at Gaba costs about a small fortune) and actually learning something, which is what every teacher in any field should be concerned about. I think just putting the "customer service" label on it is what bothers me the most so, from now on I'll just ignore that bit (but not in the sense of not making sure i'm giving my all to every student, of course).

I officially start on Monday, and I'll be working at the learning studio in Tokyo, which sounds like it will be a busy one (more money for me, whoo!). I met some pretty chill people during training, including the guy that was training us. Yet, from hanging out with all these other gaijin (foreigners) and speaking nothing but English for the past couple of days, I've sort of forgotten what country I'm living in. Every time I stepped out of the Gaba building onto the crowded streets of Tokyo was like a little culture shock experience. I've been getting home late as well so I haven't really seen my host family much (hence haven't spoken Japanese much) which has also thrown me for a loop. To top off the unbalanced-ness, last night I performed at this place called the Pink Cow (i'll get into the performance details in a bit)

Even their bathroom was made up with art work~

This place was amazingly chill. It's part restaurant, part bar; part art gallery, part stage, and all parts awesome. The lady that owns it is from San Fran and has been running her place for 11 years now. It's located in Shibuya, in the basement of some other building and it's very spacious (a rare commodity in Japan). In the front it has a little stage equipped with a DJ hole. There are tables and benches with colorful pillows strewn everywhere surrounding the stage area. Off to the left of the stage there's more seating and artwork displays (actually, this whole place in itself was an artwork display). Towards the back was even more seating and sound equipment. TV's were placed everywhere so that you can watch the performance from where ever.

Micheal discovered this fact out fast. 

Even further back takes you into this little cozy hole of a bar area where the friendliest bartender will gladly use you as his guinea pig for the various drink concoctions he thinks up (for free, if you sit there long enough). Somewhere in there is a kitchen (I saw the chef make an appearance every once in a while, but I never saw where he came from), and all the employees are foreigners with the same goal; just trying to make a life for themselves in the busiest little city around.  I have no problem picturing this place in Portland, and it made me a little home sick to tell the truth. Now, why was I there??

As mentioned before, I was performing~! Well, I ~accompanied~ my friend Maria Sekiya on guitar. I did do a solo bit as well though. How did it go?

I butchered everything.

This picture about captures how the
performance went; Maria, beautiful
and perfect; me, a mess and slightly retarded. 

Maria was born to sing and nailed every song; me on the other hand, well...perhaps if I had had more time to practice I would have done a better job (only had about 4 days to prepare due to finals at school and the damn job training). But actually getting up on stage and doing it was the hardest part and what counts the most right?? I mean, I actually played and ~sang~ one song by myself. I've never had the guts to do that before and even though I royally screwed up Muse's "unintended" I still got a round of applause and shouts of encouragement from friends and acquaintances a like, which made it worth it. I didn't have anyone video tape it (for obvious reasons) but I did convince my friend, Micheal to take pictures and as soon as he gets them to me I'll post them for your viewing pleasure.

Aside from the embarrassing-ness of it all, I met a bunch of awesome people. This particular night was dubbed "Ladies Night" and the focus was on getting intelligent women together to talk about how awesome we are (okay well, perhaps it was more like getting together to network and share what we're doing with our lives in Tokyo, etc). There were fashion designers, musicians, actors and theater owners, painters and dancers and just plain cool people. The Pink Cow holds loads of events to host local artists to get their work out and the owner even invited ~me~ back to the next open mic event. I also volunteered to be a model for a body-painting exhibit they're going to have in a couple weeks, so that will be exciting. AND ( so much happened last night, it's hard to type it all out) I got talked into performing at Japan Music Week at Shibuya La Mama (see previous posts for details on that place) on the 19th of this month. Yikes!!!! Need to practice. Oh and to top that all off, the guy that conducted training at Gaba just happens to be very involved in the foreigner music scene in Japan and said to keep in touch for some future gigs/networking opportunities. Thank you Japan, for giving me back my passion for music; I had lost it over these past two years and really appreciate being reunited. I feel like Japan gives a lot more opportunities for musicians than America does...or perhaps it's just that I don't know the right people in America...anyway.

One of my adoring fans, Namiko!

And possibly my #1 fan, Micah! 

The lady on the right (Joana) is the one that
will have be perform at Japan Music week. Micheal
was dragged into it as well. 

The performance by the belly dancer just reinforced the
feeling that I was in Portland rather than Tokyo. 

Overall, I give the Pink Cow 10 thumbs up and I will most definitely go back just to chill there, and recommend anyone who is coming to Japan to look it up (just follow this link to their home page). 

Now it's time to enjoy my day off.

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jamie

In Japan!

I'm here, i'm safe, and i'm dieing from the heat T.T
My flight from Portland to Vancouver was the scariest flight I have ever been on. The plane was this little put-put thing that shook a lot and was front heavy so the flight attendant had to have people move to the back of the plane to even it out. But it didn't crash so that's good.

I met this guy in the Vancouver airport who was actually on the flight from Portland with me but I didn't notice him then. We were on the same flight to Narita so we chatted it up while we waited. I forgot his name (maybe Jared) but he was coming to Japan to visit friends and family. He said he was 1/4 Japanese: blue eyes but still slanted, face kinda flat, and brown hair, he looked like a hybrid alright :p Anyway he lives in Portland and owns one of the food carts with his dad on 4th and college (it's a Vegan one but I can't remember the name). He was pretty chill so we exchanged emails. Maybe hit up an Izakaya later even though he said he doesn't drink (and he's Vegan? what the heck is he doing in Japan!?).

Going through immigration the guy that checked my documents said that he wanted to go to Waseda too but I guess he didn't get in. Too bad.

Customs didn't even check my bags so no problem with the BCs!

Ryoma's friend Yusuke met me at the airport. Ryoma had band practice and couldn't miss it because they have a show tomorrow, but I was only a little disappointed. I was more worried about customs than who was coming to meet me. I hung out with Yusuke a little last summer so at least it wasn't a stranger that came to get me. And he speaks English pretty fluently too. He had just gotten back from India last time I saw him, lucky bastard. He was going to go to the Middle East with his girlfriend this summer but he ended up not having enough money so his girlfriend wen by herself. To Israel. Yikes.

2 hours later we arrived at Ryoma's apartment; Ryoma with a rose in hand and stuff to make a tasty dinner ready :D But I wasn't hungry because it's too freakin' hot so I didn't eat.


Today we're going to go see a movie and maybe do a little shopping if it cools down later (not likely).

Might go to Osaka Sunday, still thinking though.

Hope everyone is doing okay and if you are technologically hip you should get skype and we can talk at each other sometime!

<3 Jamie