Today's Events

Today's been an active day at work. W-san, my supervisor, gave me a bag of food, which was very nice. I'll have to give her something, I think. She gave me some umebooshi, which are sour pickled plums, some instant miso soup, and some instant thing that I'm not sure of, but she explained how to make it, and I understood that, so it should be good. Generally Japanese food is good. Also, miso apparently give you super powers, if my Japanese classes are to be believed.
I made my lunch for today, which is a first. Since I am practically a working man now, I have a regular lunch hour, meaning I can't just go home and fix something. So, I made rice balls, which I think have a name, but I don't remember. I bought the stuff to make them for about 100 yen at the supermarket the other day. It's basically just dried flakes of stuff that you mix into the rice once it's cooked. Then you make balls, or triangular prisms, rather, out of it. I felt that this would be a good start to cooking that wasn't just instant noodles or something.
Jo took me over to James's house. He's a Canadian with a Japanese wife. They've been living here for something like 19 years, and he runs some kind of school. Seems like a neat dude, and it's good to meet somebody who speaks real English instead of Kiwi English, which is at times less comprehensible than the Japanese.
This morning I got to go car shopping. Yes, car shopping. One guy from the office drove me around to a few car dealers in town. The conversations can be a little confusing, but I'm getting by alright. Also, one of the dealers has a daughter who speaks near-perfect English, having studied in Scotland for a year, who helped out. I'm waiting on a list of cars from one of the dealers, so I don't have a car yet. I'm kind of excited to drive a tiny, tiny car on the wrong side of the road. Yes, the wrong side.
One of the dealers (I use the term liberally) seemed to be a mechanic who had a few cars in a garage up on a hill. I got to test drive the car he had sitting out, which seemed nice. He asked if I was from Chicago, so I told him I was from near Chicago. It's kind of amazing when a Japanese person knows anything about the geography outside of his own country, as they are so isolated in general, so I didn't want to get into a complicated discussion. He then told me he'd been to Alberta, Canada, so that was interesting. I'm thinking of getting that car.
That's pretty much it for now.