Cousins

The last two days have definitely been educational. Yesterday, Liz had another twelve castings so we went to Denny's for breakfast. Since everything was in Japanese, we just pointed and hoped for the best. There was a little brown button on the table that we had to press for someone to come take our order. I do have to say I was impressed with the meals, even though my eggs, toast, and bacon came with a salad. It was so cheap, too! The total for the two meals together was about 800 yen, the equivalent to 8 bucks. We will be seeing you again, Denny's.

Since the agency apparently has something against me going to castings, I found myself with nothing planned for the rest of the day. I decided to brave the streets of Tokyo to find an actual grocery store. Turns out the whole thing wasn't too eventful. I didn't get lost and it isn't confusing to get around the area surrounding our apartment anymore. However, it took me about an hour to find butter, I was hit on by a large business man from Ghana, and I almost walked over a tiny little Japanese women who barely reached my belly button. I bought salt, butter, spaghetti noodles, strange cheesy pasta sauce, and some edamame. Liz doesn't really like food so buttery noodles were my best bet. After my grocery run, I stayed at the house to clean and catch up on Hulu. When Liz came home around ten she told me she booked a job. Yay! While I was making her noodles, she also told me about a bizarre toilet that played music to her while she was peeing. I mean I'm not really surprised, but that's got to be a little disconcerting.

This morning was my first encounter with the Tokyo subway. It wasn't as chaotic as it could have been, but the amount of subway lines running in and out of Roppongi station is ridiculous. The directions weren't too complicated but it definitely took some creative thinking on both of our parts to understand the map the agency gave us. Whoever drew that map clearly wasn't all about spacial relation or proportions. Anyway, Liz was modeling wedding jewelry at the studio. I didn't get to see her being made up, but I did get to watch the shoot and see the unfinished pics on the computer screen. She looked so glamorous! The women and men were very nice to us, but couldn't understand my relationship to Liz. They called me mother and sister and were all very confused when I told them we were family friends. Liz and I decided to say we are cousins from now on. After the shoot, they fed us some authentic Japanese food and I taught Liz how to use chopsticks. Neither of us are very adept with them, so the manager took pity on us and found us some forks. My favorite part of that meal was the fried carrots. Surprisingly delicious!

After the shoot, Ko called from the agency to say he would pick us up at the subway station. Turns out he only wanted to pick Liz up, so I headed back on the train by myself. I felt a little panicked when I followed what I thought was the exit to a road that I had never seen before. My map was useless but I knew I took the right train so I couldn't be far from the apartment. I stared at buildings for awhile until I spotted one across the street that looked familiar. Once across, I remembered where I was and it was easy to get home. So here I am now typing this post. I think I'll stay here for the rest of the day.

In the last post, I promised some pics of the apartment and surrounding area. Here ya go!

The outside of our place
                                                
views from the windows

Looks like a normal-ish small oven?

NOT! I mean seriously. What could you possibly fit in there to cook?

more views

I forgot to rant about something I noticed today. Japanese people are dangerously polite. Yes, dangerous. I seriously can not believe how people don't get into accidents around every corner of the sidewalk. They don't seem to have any sort of rule about which side you should pass. That's not exactly dangerous, but it sure is annoying when someone is sprinting right at you. Seriously, they sprint. Again not excessively dangerous, but disconcerting! These women would just randomly up and leave conversations at the photo shoot today and sprint around and back again. I mean I like the dedication, but why is that a thing? Anyway, the dangerous part of this whole politeness thing is the bikers. They are too polite to say anything to you, so they just hope you don't move while they pass you. It's especially scary when they are behind you because they don't make a sound. Once Liz and I were walking in the middle of the sidewalk and a guy behind us almost crashed instead of saying anything. He skidded to an abrupt stop instead, but who knows what will happen next time. I don't get it.