Bumping Into Sensei Alot and an Inability to Locate Places

I had to get up quite early for my lesson on Wednesday because it required a lot of transfers and was over an hour away. I wanted to leave even earlier than I had to actually because it was somewhere I had never been before. I had been to a place a stop before it a little while back but not this particular place and I wanted to allow time in case I got lost or something.

As it ends up it’s a good thing that I did because I ended up having an issue switching trains. I thought the train I got was going to Shibuya but it only went until Shinjuku, the stop before. So I had to switch yet again at Shinjuku which was a bit of a pain since the train pulled into a different part of the station. After I wandered around for a little bit I managed to get on the train I needed.

I got there early just like I wanted and since I was thirsty I decided to stop at a conbini on my way to my lesson. As I was on line to pay for my tea I saw Sasamoto-sensei in the same conbini. It was kinda funny because he had picked up tea too, just a bigger bottle. We ended up walking over to the place where the lesson was together and went downstairs to the room.

The room actually smelled a little moldy but oh well. There were a couple of women from the group there already and I was surprised because it was easily about 40 minutes before the lesson was scheduled to start. Before everyone else arrived Sasamoto-sensei had me and one of the other ladies practice a little bit. I liked having the little bit of personal attention.

The lesson was very good. Not only did I get to learn a new song but I also got yummy cookies from Sapporo. Both in the beginning and at the end of the lesson I made sure that everyone had one of my little meshi (business card). I walked back with most everyone to the station but I somehow managed to be the only one to get on the train. I went to the stop before to take some pictures of the other place where I had my lesson before because the neighborhood was quite pretty.

That only took a few minutes so I hopped back on the train and went back to Shibuya. What a day for coincidences because I ran into Sasamoto-sensei again in the station, which is not small by any means. I was confused though how I ran into him there. I know he didn’t get on the train when I did because he was walking away after we all said goodbye. So I’m thinking that he stopped somewhere and then got on another train, or maybe he walked to another station? No idea.

So after that I somehow managed to get on a train that was heading in the exact opposite direction of where I wanted to go. But I fixed my mistake at the next station and was at Shinjuku not too long after. I needed to cash some traveler’s checks and instead of going all the way back to Akaska I had picked up a brochure of their locations and decided that since Shinjuku was on my way back I would go there instead.

Since I had never been to that location before I wasn’t sure how easy to find it would be. I followed the little map in the brochure and was going to walk one more block up before crossing the street. I should have trusted my instincts because it was really one block down and right across the street.

Instead I ended up wandering around for like almost a half an hour and passing this one McDonald’s like 5 times. The funny part was I went into the subway to try to see if I could find a train that went to Akasaka and the map down there showed where the building was. And it was so close; in fact it was right under the McDonald’s I passed so many times. So I went there and changed my money and then went upstairs to get some McDonald’s.

After I was done eating I headed back to the station to come back to the center because I was tired. I had passed this homeless guy earlier when I was on my way to find the money exchange place. Now as I passed him it looked like he was unconscious and a police man was trying to wake him. I noticed someone else gesturing to the cop so maybe the guy fell or something.

Back at the center I watched the drama called Last Friends, yet something else I’ve become a fan of here in Japan. It got windy outside, I could tell from my window, and I watched some children’s shows including ピタゴラスィーチ(Pythagoras switch), which has little cartoons and such interspersed with clever little Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, and ぜんまいさむらい (zenmai samurai), a cartoon about a little kid that goes around doing good or something like that.

Then later on I played around some more on my computer trying to put the pictures in order and label them all. I got a little further but still wasn’t done. I stayed up a little late since I had a free morning but eventually I went to bed.