October
11, 2004 - Kobe Night Life 
October
11, 2004 - Settling In We landed a pretty decent apartment in the married student housing wing of an international dormitory. It is about 400 sq feet, has a kitchen/living area, bathroom complete with soaking tub, and - get this - a washer and dryer, all things considered we hit the jackpot as far as housing goes. Everything is designed for people that are a little bit shorter than us, so we have to stoop a bit when cooking or brushing our teeth. The only major bummer is that the penalty for having overnight guests is expulsion - so we'll have to figure out something when you all come over for a visit...
Getting settled on the opposite side of the planet has been a bit of a rough ride so far. The paperwork, and confusion surrounding the paperwork, has me on the brink. The Japanese are mad for forms, a foreigner can't take a crap without the written consent of the city warden. And when it comes to filling out the forms, the language barrier is a bitch. I will forever cringe at the thought of a 10 page form written in chicken scratches with little boxes for me to fill in with god knows what. Speaking of god knows what, we are fortunate that many restaurants have the food that they serve mocked up in little window displays - or we might be eating horse by accident (if it looks like meat and it doesn't have scales, proceed with caution).
Classes haven't started yet, I've got no house projects to work on, and I've been reading voraciously. An expensive habit given the scarcity and high cost of english books here. First I finished off Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan a very dense pulitzer prize winning book written by Herbert Bix. I started reading the book last time we were in Japan, September '02, making it about half way through before putting it down during the time we were back in Seattle. It is a thorough investigation of emperor Hirihito's life. From a factual standpoint the book seemed to be on the up and up, although I'll always remain suspicious how much of any historical work is based on or influenced by propaganda. Next, in a feverish one day push, I burned through Roald Dahl's biography Boy and Going Solo. Roald Dahl is my all time favorite childhood author. His writing brought back childhood memories of reading by flashlight under the covers after "lights out". The book kept me up until about 3:00 am, just like old times. For another trip down memory lane I reread Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, another pulitzer prize winning book and parting gift from our friend Martin.
Diana is going to start looking for a job tomorrow, pray for results - we are burning through money like rock stars on tour (not to be confused with living like rock stars on tour). Just keeping a maintenance level of alcohol in my blood stream is costing a king's ransom, a six pack of beer runs $12 - you had better have a fat wad of cash if you want to have a beer while you are out on the town. It would seem that the scholarship people failed to calculate my lifestyle properly when they were coming up with the sum of money it would require to keep me afloat.
Getting emails from my friends (Seattle, Rome, and beyond) makes it seem a bit of a downer to be flying solo over here - without the camaraderie of the studio environment in Seattle (or at the very least with someone that can speak my language). My Japanese classes start tomorrow - perhaps I'll meet someone who speaks English there.
