Yay for A/C!

Last night I slept so well and it felt wonderful to have A/C in the room! I woke up originally at 4:30 AM and then dozed off here and there until 8 AM. I got out of bed and checked email, then got a knock on my door. It was Tim and his daughter checking in on me to see how I was doing, and letting me know that later on in the morning I'd have someone take me around the neighborhood and show me what is around.

I showered, ate breakfast and looked up train schedules to try to figure out where exactly I was in relation to other things I knew in Tokyo. Around 11:30, Tim's son Michael showed up to take me around the neighborhood. I thought I was going to go to the school, but it was too hot out to walk and I didn't yet have the key to the bike. It's a pretty small neighborhood, but he showed me where some of the convenience stores are in the area and he pointed out where the JR line train station is (I'm on a local train line, not the main JR line). I came back because I was actually getting a little sleepy. I'll blame it on the heat and the jet lag! I ate a snack, heard from my Uncle Peter that he and Hideko were going to pick me up at 5, and then also got a call from my mom! We talked for almost 20 minutes and it made it seem even more like I was just staying at someone's house...that I was not really in Japan!

I took a couple of different naps, only waking up when the phone rang. The "super drama channel" has been a fun one to watch on TV. There are random drama shows from all different networks back in the US on this channel. I love how random it is! There are shows like Ugly Betty, Without a Trace, Third Watch, and then Six Feet Under, the Wire. I would doze off watching a show that I would normally watch at home, and then feel totally disoriented when I woke up during the Japanese commercials.

Uncle Peter and Hideko took me out for a great Italian restaurant (Japanese style). I didn't really eat lunch (and neither did Uncle Peter) so we were hungry. We ate a Caesar salad with a ham added to it, had a pizza, two kinds of pasta (clam sauce and spicy meat sauce), and then this great risotto, where they shaved off the Parmesan cheese from a huge block carved like a bowl and mixed it with the risotto right from the pan at the tableside. We ate dessert too and I laughed at the "Engrish" we came across. The dessert was a coffee flavored jelly on top of a custard with caramel on top of it. The jelly was really bitter but the custard below it cut down on the bitterness and it was a good combination. Yummy! The writing on the dessert cup had "cafe jerry" written on it. Cafe for my mom...hehehehe! Cafe jerry= coffee jelly. Those darn l's! After dinner, since we had the car that they picked me up in, we drove to the Gourmet City grocery store so I could shop for food. Almost everything there was half the price that it is for Uncle Peter and Hideko near their house, so they were excited to shop too. I'm glad that they were there to make some recommendations for stuff to get, and it went a lot faster than if I would have tried on my own because he translated everything for me! I'm now stocked up on food...dinner, snacks, more breakfast food.

I'm meeting up with the lead English teacher tomorrow afternoon to get a more personalized introduction than the general orientation on Saturday. I'm going to walk to the school first (should be about a 25 -30 minute walk) because I want to see the route first before I attempt it on a bike. The streets are narrow and I worry that I'll keep going to the wrong side of the road when I bike. I've been pretty long winded on this post, and it's 9:30 PM so I might get ready for bed soon...more later! :)