Wake, work, sleep, and repeat

Time goes on.

So... I have completed my first week working for a Japanese company. My thoughts? Well, the first thought I have isn't even of work, its of the crammed train in the morning and the desire to move closer to work minimizing the time spent commuting. I hop on the bus at 7:12am and then I am literally squeezed onto my first train at around 7:30am just to be birthed from it at around 8:30am, just in time to run up some stairs and squish on another train for 20mins. The total time from home to work is roughly 2 hours. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. So I plan to get a nice cozy apartment close to work asap.

Regarding the actual work at East West Consulting. It consisted of a small amount of training and a huge amount of personal training through trial and error. My objective for this week was to "obtain an assignment". Assignments are given to EWC by very large outside foreign companies and all we have to do is locate potential candidates for them to employ. So I spent a huge amount of time foraging our database for companies and calling and meeting with them. I am pleased to say that I have obtained an assignment and am now looking for program managers.

All that can really be said at the end of the week is that work is work, and I am somewhat relieved to have a job but I know my weekends will quickly become more and more precious. This weekend was fantastic. Guillaume has a very good friend who has just arrived from France. His name is also Thomas and we all went to Shinjuku to show him around a little bit. BUT, upon walking around for all of 5 mins we found an Izakaya that was $10 all you can drink for 2 hours. We decided that this was too good of a deal to turn up so our night started a little earlier and a lot cheaper than we had planned (which is great for me because $10 is about my budget limit at this point in time). Entering the Izakaya, they saw three large foreigners come up stairs and one of them said in Japanese "they cant come in here". This is very typical, simply because they don't think we know any Japanese and certainly cant read it. All it took was a well pronounced "konbanwa" and we were escorted right in as they complemented our skills. Apparently we were the first foreigners in this establishment. Anyways, against the waitresses advice we ordered a delicious dish of chicken covered in "uneatable" peppers. Guillaume having lived in Ecuador for 6 months last year likes to show off his pepper eating skills. Upon receiving the dish he went straight for the red guys. He ate about 1/4 of an entire pepper, his face went bright red and he quickly started coughing. Thomas and I laughed and then both reached for a pepper. Boys being being boys things quickly became a contest and the waitresses all stood around laughing as we all ate as many of the peppers as we could. Gulliaume eventually killed the fun and almost himself when he stuffed several peppers in his mouth at once. He started hiccuping uncontrollably, couldn't speak, and could barely breath. He required a large dose of milk which was quickly fetched by our new friends. After this incident things were settled down and our time came to an end and we stumbled out into the bright lights of Shinjuku. We wandered around for a while before we decided to head back to Guillaume's part of town. This was a good decision because we found a fantastic little Jazz bar to relax, chat, and listen to great music. Ahh what a weekend, although I have found that my French is improving faster than my Japanese at this point. Not quite what I had in mind, but I am sure that my mother who is headed to France later this week would appreciate my skills.

Now, its approaching dinner time and my host father will shortly be sending their Dog "Hina" to come and fetch me so we can enjoy a beer before feast. Hina really is incredible, she will fetch just about anything. She seems to have a fantastic memory, or maybe Japanese is easier for dogs. She will fetch your cell phone, socks, tissues, and just once my tooth brush. But maybe the cutest part is how she has a little plate that she carries around while we eat dinner. She will come up and lightly remind you that she has her plate as you eat. I'm not one for begging, but how can I resist this? (that's her raincoat)


So, yes I must go, eat, and prepare for another week.
Thanks for reading... and if you know any good program managers who speak Japanese and English pass em my way.