Anyway, spent the biggest part of the day back at the immigration office in the middle of nowhere picking up my visa extension. Handily, they aren't deporting me which is always nice, otherwise, I'd be home when Navina is here, which would be a bit of a disaster :) I just need to change my flight home till later in the summer, and I'm all set! I did discover that taking the JR to Shinagawa and then the bus from there is much easier and faster than going to Tennozu Isle station and walking from there, so that's good - the bus to the immigration place is really clearly signed in English, they're obviously used to people like me!
Oh my god! What a freaking ordeal! I had to line up with about 120 people to pick up a form, which didn't require filling out, just stickering with my 'proof of payment', and then I had to go downstairs to the combeni to buy said sticker (the line was probably about 40 people long; out the door), and then back upstairs to wait through about 200 numbers (and an hour long lunch break), on the floor since there were no seats available... Then, I got to the counter only to find out that I'd missed a step (another line, to hand in said sticker), but luckily the guy took pity on me, took the form off me, passed it to his neighbor, and told me to go wait. You'd be surprised how many people would have just been like 'da-me!' and sent me to the back of the other line... Anyway, 30 minutes later, and just over 3 hours after I got in my first line I was out of there. I guess its not actually so long, but its always so crowded and busy and inefficient feeling that its hard to deal with! (Even for someone like me, that actually enjoys filling out forms, and loves it when the census comes around!)
Back on the bus and then to Shibuya, to teach at 4:30. I actually got there a bit early, which was good, I had time to finish my Morgan Fisher article (well actually, I'm way over the word count, but I can deal with that tomorrow), and finish up my movie review. Good to get them basically done though!
Today's student is the stylist, off to New York tomorrow morning at six am with twelve bags full of costumes for a made for TV movie he's working on over the next month. He showed me the page he's made with all of the costumes organized on it, and its completely nuts! There are 6 characters and 83 scenes, and each scene requires a new outfit. Since they're not like the rest of us, and never re wear clothing, its made for quite the shopping spree over the last few weeks! The poor guy was pretty stressed out about everything, and worried the clothes wouldn't fit (he hasn't met many of the Korean actors, just gotten their measurements which he doesn't trust 100%.) For him, the biggest disaster would be having bought clothes which are too small - you can strategically pin stuff, but you can't exactly let it out when there's no extra fabric! I'm excited to hear about his trip when he gets back in the middle of next month!
After he left, I hunkered down (still in the same cafe, as there was a plug they weren't upset about me using and I was there anyway) to write my article about language exchanges for BAB. Again, I'm over by a few hundred words, but I can prune them out over the next couple of days. I don't know what's going on today, I had been getting better about planning the arc of the article to fit the word count, but I think that deciding to 'just write the story first' as I did today did me in in terms of keeping the word count under control. That's what we have editors for though, right?
After finishing that up, I headed to Tower Records and browsed for awhile like a kid in a candy store with all the books in English! I ended up reading first chapters of like three books and flipping through a bunch of magazines (Tower is like home of the magazine browsers!) Soooo many books and so little time! I also went back and checked the name of that book I mentioned a few days ago about the horses in the ghetto. It's called Fletcher Street...
(Click the photo, I think, for more images from inside the book)I met Sarah after that, in Shinjuku (and got COMPLETELY turned around, taking the totally wrong exit out of that ridiculous place. In the end, I had to call her to get her to meet me, b/c I knew it would take me ages to get to her... I really don't like that station!) Anyway, we went and ate Italian, and had a great, gossipy evening. It was a really good chat, I'm glad we met up! Three hours later, (we had a lot of chatting to do, apparently!), I headed home, and got back here just after 11. Peter and Hitomi were supposed to be back today, but their flight got cancelled and they're staying until Wednesday now, so I just fed a very hungry V (poor girl!) Bribed her forgiveness with a rawhide, blogged, and am now heading to bed!
D
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