J2 – Birthday party and starting work
It has come to one of my very rare “weekends”, which means free time to blog! Being in retail, getting two days off in a row is rare, and rarer still is them falling on a weekend, so I’m very privileged right now. Let me tell you all about my birthday things and my first few days at work.
After my actual birthday being at work, the next day was our last training day, which meant that after that, all the friends we had made we would split up from and probably not see much… Unless you were one of the lucky ones who got sent to a shop together with another abroad friend. I am all by my lonesome out in Chiba! So, as well as a birthday party for myself and Seb (who’s birthday was the day before mine), we also were having a “yay last day, boo splitting up” do.
The last day:
We left training/work and headed over to Shibuya (Mitch met us at work) to go to this Showa-period themed restaurant which sounded awesome. I’m not gonna lie, when we got there and read the menu I wanted to walk back out and go to a waaaaayyy more normal place! But it turned out to be really fun. What put us off wasn’t the theme… but the menu. The first thing we saw was “Raw guts and so on”…. Yeah. The Google translate menu text was hilarious though. You can see what I mean in the piccies.
But once we got ordering (sooo hungry at that point), there were actually load of tasty things hidden among the very terrifying sounding ones. Locust, anyone? I did try the frogs legs though! Which was particularly amusing because that day Mon-chan had done some kind of hilarious Spanish kids rhyme to soothe pains over my cut, and when she translated it, it turned out to have the line “A tiny frog’s ass” in there just because it rhymed xD We were very tempted to use it as some kind of poultice.
Once we finished food and ordered our boobs ice and University of potato ice, the group brought out a cake and cards for Seb and I! It was so nice of them :3 We weren’t allowed a knife so we had to do some serious teamwork with chopsticks but we managed it beautifully. The card was so lovely and the cake was delicious. The boobs ice was hilarious too! It was a little balloon thing with a teat filled with ice cream which we initially squeezed onto cake and then when the pressure got too much and the flow wouldn’t stop we had to just suckle like weirdly huge babies. The final dying spurt was pretty hilarious; Nick’s boob squirted all over the table as he wasn’t expecting it and I prepared for mine after seeing that by popping it in my mouth… that was a lot of dairy very quickly. I promise I’m not making this up!
We had to leave shortly after (because of time restrictions honest, not cos we were too rowdy!), and we decided to go to a pub for a bit. There wasn’t any inside room but we had a great time hanging outside and giggling till the last trains home 🙂
All in all, a brilliant double birthday goodbye party in Tokyo. Thanks guys ^_^
The next day was a day off before I started work properly and I wanted to go shopping to my favourite place from my year abroad called Kichijouji. We have been missing this amazing restaurant where you get food on sticks, batter and breadcrumb it, then deep fry it to your heart’s content. It’s brilliant. They cut the sausages so they turn into little octopusses! We spent far too much money but had a great time. Mum’s present arrived in the morning too so I have new stocks of chocolate and mascara 😀 Thank you mum!
And since then I have been working! It’s quite a job if I’m honest. 9 hour shifts, and an hour and a half commute. But hopefully it will improve my Japanese and the pay is a little more than I got in the UK so it’s definitely a step forward. The first day was pretty scary. The people there are nice, but not exactly friendly. They aren’t unfriendly, but I’m definitely an alien among them as it were. They explain bits and pieces and sort of leave me to it on the shop floor.
The thing that has taken the most getting used to so far is the greetings. One person shouts a long monologue about product info and then we all repeat the last line, or we shout “welcome!” to passers by and those that come in. The first day I just mouthed it or whispered it! I’m a bit more vocal now but still hate the sound of my own voice >.< But I’m helping customers and so on so it’s all good. There are also many pretty glasses that I want to try on but by the time my shift is over I’m way too tired. But having cleaned them over and over, I know where they are and which ones I like so I’ll get round to it eventually!
Here’s hoping the job from here on is fun and not too tiring. Wish me luck!
Maisy In Japan 