Weekend Dusk; Post-Work, Pre-Bar

I have a lot of free time at work. A lot. Combined with having an awful memory, I make a habit of taking notes of things that stand out during the day, using my phone. It's after work on Friday, but too early to go to the bar, so there's nothing to do now but go through my notes.


1) I spent the majority of today looking up charset utf-8 on wikipedia, or copying the contents of a brochure in Japanese...to Japanese. It gave me a chance to read through it to see how much I knew, and something to do since I prefer to work on the company's webpage using my own laptop, which I didn't bring.


2) When I'm introduced to customers at work, each staff member has their own particular way of listing who I am, and why I am there. One coworker says that I'm a study abroad student that can barely speak Japanese. Ok, that's fairly close, with the exception of the study abroad stuff.
Another coworker introduces me as some University student that was interested in Fluorocarbon Resins, so I started to work at the company. This one is a bit more far from the truth, but atleast being a student part is correct.
A third coworker goes through the same script everytime he introduces me, and I have my parts too. He introduces me as a Linguistics student that is interning at the company, and although I don't have an interest in chemistry or resins, I'm really there to study Japanese and help out at the company. He continues to say that I am fluent in Japanese, at which point I tilt my head, give a questioning look, and say something along the lines of "not really." This is where my coworker goes into a full listing of my amazing skills, emphasizing that I am able to eat with chopsticks. This consistently gets gasps of amazement, which is beyond me; manipulating two sticks in order to get food into my mouth is not an achievement. Recently, the same coworker has started to add more to our little introduction script, which goes as follows:

Coworker: "Yep, he's good with chopsticks."
Customer: "Amazing. Dark hair and good with chopsticks, he's pretty much Japanese already."
Coworker: "He's from America. And he's not fat. Look how skinny he is."
Customer: "America!? I thought all Americans were fat. Aren't your sodas at fast food restaurants this big (use hands to pantomime a gallon-sized cup)"
Me: "Something like that, but I rarely drink soda."
Customer: "And french fries! So many french fries in America!"
Me: "Well, I don't eat fast food too often either."
Customer: "...and hamburgers! Your hamburgers in America are so big!"
Me: "We don't have the MegaMac, like they do in Japan. I don't think McDonald's in America carries a burger that big."
Customer: "..."
Me: "I don't really know, I don't eat beef."
Customer: "..."
Coworker: "He's from Texas."
Customer: "Do you have a Harley Davidson?"

Around this point, I've successfully broken most stereotypes of Americans, and we can continue with the meeting.


3) Kit-Kat's are incredibly popular here. There are varieties that I have never seen before, although, I don't normally pay particular attention to candy in the US. Today, one of the office clerks gave me a Brandy and Orange Kit-Kat.


4) There's a little bar right next to my apartment. I can literally touch the building from my balcony, and yet I've never been. I think I'll go tonight, and just hope that it isn't a senior citizen bar. Although, the last bar I went to that catered to the elderly wasn't bad. I sang karaoke with some old lady and her husband, and didn't have to pay for my drinks. Hmm, I'll try there tonight.


5) There has to be some chemical in the air at Japanese grocery stores that keeps products fresh, because within hours of leaving the store with any sort of produce, it goes bad. I had perfectly good bananas start going bad 5 hours after leaving the store. I don't know about you, but I'm used to irradiated produce that will give me diseases, but will last for a week. Haven't Japanese farmers seen 28 Days Later? Those apples in the grocery store were the only "fresh" produce they could find! How is Japan expecting to survive during a zombie outbreak? I'm appalled at this lack of planning.


6) SciFi Original Miniseries have to be some of the most poorly acted programs on TV. In addition to poorly acted, the screen writing is equally awful. This is a shame, since the story is fairly interesting. I started watching The Lost Room, which is surprisingly entertaining, in a "Heroes won't be back on for a few more weeks" kind of way. But the acting is awful; as I mentioned. The screen writers also gave the main cop characters such names as Joe and Lou. The villain in first part's name? The Weasel. I don't know about you, but if a character is going to be named The Weasel, it better be in a poorly made late 80's teen movie. And it better be shortened to The Wheeze. Oh well.

This is what I spend my days thinking about.