Day 32 in Japan - I am Alien!

The 6:30 from Kobe/Akashi
letting out at Okubo station -
this is AFTER peak hour!

What a day! Picked up our Alien Registration Cards with the help of the lovely Yukari-sensei, and even saw a photography exhibition of some of our students while we were at City Hall. My Wall o' English is almost done (thanks for the huge Australian flag, Mum!), and I'm feeling a little closer to ready for classes to start. Or maybe I'm just sick of waiting around in limbo - who knows?

After school I updated my bank book at the ATM. It's like being back in the 80's in Australia, when I remember having a bank book with my $50 savings reported and going into the teller to get it updated every few weeks. Actually, with the $50 balance, it's almost exactly like being back in primary school - have been spending money on fantastic fun times a little too much, I think.

Nah, who'd pick these two as related? Lew is talking to Sam's mum here.

Speaking of fantastic fun times, we had a truly excellent night tonight. In what feels like the biggest coincidence in the world, Sam's uncle Lew (who is from Australia originally, but has been living in the US for quite a few years now) happens to be in Kobe this week for an immunology conference (for my science homies, he's a flow cytometer sales and development guy). We were so excited to be able to see him - it's been about 5 years since either of us got to see him, and the fact that we could see ANYONE we knew was pretty fantastic. Since we still have no phones, it was a little bit difficult to actually meet. We arranged to meet at Sannomiya station, which is a very big place, and finding Lew was a bit hard. It would normally be fairly easy to play spot-the-gaijin, but with the immunology conference on, there were tons of nerdy looking people spewing out of the gates we were waiting for him at.

YAKINIKU!

When we caught him, we wandered the streets for a little while looking for food and beer, and eventually found both in the form of a yakiniku place (pretty much exactly the same as Korean BBQ - yaki = fried and niku = meat). Several huge beers, and a few odd cuts of meat (beef tongue, anybody?) later, we figured it was time to head to another place, so found our way to another izakaya (Japanese pub) before Sam and I had to leave at 12:30 to make sure we could get on the last train home. It was such a great night, and makes me excited to have more people to visit and take around the Sannomiya area. HINT HINT HINT HINT everyone!

The view from the restaurant.
Yes, it was that blurry. Don't look at
the sizes of the beers in the shot
above.

Food Highlight of the Day: Actually, it would have to be the beef tongue that we had at the yakiniku place, which you grilled and then dipped into this delicious lightly lemony sauce. The first bits were pretty tough, but then Lew cracked the code, and told us to pull them off the grill a lot earlier - Worked brilliantly. So there's a tip for you - don't overcook your tongue!