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Nar3: Japan

Holiday!
Posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003 at 1:57am by Brett.
(Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003 at 2:57pm Japanese Standard Time)

Today is (another) national holiday in Japan. Again classes are canceled! Today is the autumnal equinox.

Speaking of autumn, the weather here has shapped up. It suddenly realized "Holy CRAP! It's the middle of September and I'm still running at 90 degrees F with a relative humidity of 400%!!! COMPENSATE!!!" It's been a nice, but slightly damp, 65-60 lately. Much better than the previous week. It was like...unbearably hot, unbearably hot, unbearably hot...earthquake, typhoon, cold. But it's a good thing! Feels like autumn.

Only problem is that I've somehow managed to bring only 2 pairs of pants. This statement seriously confused my friend Kate from the UK. Apparently, "pants" in the UK are what we call "underwear" in the States. So, I only brought 2 pairs of trousers. So Mom, if you're reading, I need my winter clothes!!!

Nothing overly exciting has been going on lately. I got carpet for my room. That was lots of fun for me. It makes it feel a bit nicer than the old, filthy tile floor.

I have this large florescent light in my room. From the first day I've been here, if you turn it off, the light turns blue. The light would never turn completely off, so there was always this blue glow in my room. It made it hard to sleep, because I like to have absolute darkness.

A couple days ago, directly after putting together my "puzzle" carpet, my door decided it wasn't going to close. So I went to the dorm office for my dorm cluster and asked them to have a look.

You'll find somedays are better than other when speaking a foreign language. That day happened to be one of the "others". I get up there, and can barely say a word in Japanese to explain the problem about my door. They had me fill out a card with my building and room number on it and said someone would be by in about 10 minutes. I decided to go ahead and tell them about the light to see if they might fix that also. Because my Japanese was so awful during the door explaining bit, about 3 people came over to try to help. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Ah, sore kara, heya no denki wa. Keshite kara, aoku narimasu. (Oh...the light in my room. After I turn it off, it turns blue.)

Office Guy 1: Denki wa...aoi? (Your light is...blue???)

Me: Ieie. Kesite kara....aoku naru n desu. (No no...it's that after I turn it OFF, it turns blue.)

Office Guy 2: Aoku...naru? (It turns...blue???)

Me: Hai. Kesite kara. (Yes. After I turn it off)

Office Guy 3: Kesite kara....aoku naru ka naa... (So...after you turn it off, it turns blue??)

It went on this way until they finally decided to walk to my room to see this amazing blue light. I turned it off. It turned blue. All 4 of them pointed at it and gasped "AOI!! (It's blue!!)". So hah. Score one for the gaijin.

They went ahead and changed my light, and it was only then that I realized I had a cancer inducing demon stick for a light. They removed it from the fixture, and it was STILL glowing blue. The guy holding it held it as though it was full of some infectious disease, which if it's not, it probably makes them...

Anyway...that's my fun for the last few days....