Mid-week Update

And Happy Halloween!!!



This week has been a new experience for one main reason... now that our indoc class has ended, I have actually started going into work in the morning and staying all day and Nicki has gotten back into the groove of stay-at-home mommying that she was accustomed to back in the States, as best as she can anyway, with the limited supplies that we have available at the lodge here.

I don't have too many notable things to say about work yet, mostly because I haven't been able to do too much yet. My supervisor tried hard to get me an "up and running" computer at the office while I was in my indoc training, but apparently the people in our IT department had a different idea. Apparently, the paperwork that the IT group provides online is not the correct paperwork, so anyone who downloads it, completes it, and submits it for processing doesn't get help because it's the wrong forms. Worse than that, the IT group doesn't let you know that it's the wrong paperwork, so when you finally follow up with a friendly "where in the heck are you guys?", they tell you that you need to resubmit everything using the correct form, at which time they tell you (I'm not kidding) that they DO NOT have a copy of the correct form.

On another note, my coworkers took me to an authentic Japanese restaurant for lunch yesterday. By authentic, I mean that everything was written in Japanese characters. Also, there were no pictures for me to point at while requesting "kudasai" (bring me a....). But the most obvious difference was what happened as we were seated. We actually had to take off our shoes to enter the section where the tables were located, then we were seated on floor mats next to tables that were about a foot and a half tall. Fortunately, the guys I work with have been around for a little while and they explained a few things for me. The most interesting point of conversation was a food item called natto. Natto is another word for "soy beans decorated for Halloween". And by that, I mean that these soy beans are fermented and appear to have spiderwebs all throughout their sticky globby clumpy form. Very interesting to look at, but I didn't get the nerve to try any. Maybe next time. It didn't help that my coworkers said that they had a pretty bad smell to them too. I didn't get close enough to find out, but will probably do so sometime in the next few years, especially after a fermented beverage or two.

In other good news this week, I passed my on-the-road driving test. Sounds like a simple task, but if you've driven on one side of the road and one side of the car your whole life, it is a very interesting experience to try everything from the other side for a change. The running joke here is that the driver's education cars have the cleanest windshields in the country, because we Americans try to use the turning signals that we think are on the left side of the steering wheel, but instead find the windshield wipers that are there instead. Regardless, I'm now considered a professional driver in Japan so if you're over here on a visit, stay off the sidewalks!

Blog Comments

For those of you that don't know, one of the many great things about weblogs like The Japan Years site that you're reading now is the ability for anyone to comment on posts that Nicki, Josh, or I write. If you're interested in posting to this blog, take a look at the bottom of the most recent post... you'll see the "posted by" line, which includes the time of the post and at the far right the number of comments posted. Simply click your mouse on the word "comments", and a little pop-up box will open up. Leave your comment in the box provided, then you can choose an identity either by creating a blogger account that has a user name and password or you can send us something anonymously. Then you'll be prompted to enter the Word Verification, which basically prevents a spammer from setting up a computer program to send a bunch of unwanted comments/advertisements, etc. because the word verification has to actually be typed in and can't be done automatically by a computer program. Finally, you just click the blue "login and publish" button. Just a note, if you choose to send us an anonymous post, but would like for us to know who you are, then please put your name at the end for clarity. Otherwise, we'll just assume that you are a figment from our already naughty imaginations.

We'd love to hear from you. Oh, and sometimes the experience can be educational, like Alan's recent comments on Japanese food, where he gave a lot of good information on the traditional Japanese diet, including a few words about natto.