Here's another photo of my morning routine... a little breakfast, coffee and catching up with friends back home. Well this is just a photo with my computer's background photo of my sweet family but I'm sure there was some gchatting or Skyping that went down.
Fried egg + blueberry jam = heaven.
This post is going to cover the last two days of the workweek... back in Ibaraki at our R&D office. Upon my arrival at the office on Thursday morning, I was greeted by the security guard with a "good morning!" (in English) and an extended hand with a bag full of candy. The week before, I had been leaving the office with my colleague when this particular security guard (there are three) gave me a piece of candy. It was fizzy and sweet and really strange, but SO good. So of course I said "mmmm, good" and made all the other sounds you can make when you're enjoying a piece of candy that a stranger just gave to you. Well apparently he remembered my enthusiasm from the previous week and decided to gift me with a whole bag of this delicious candy. So technically, I guess he's not a stranger anymore. So that's good.
This is an example of one of many occurrences that happen daily in Japan that immediately make me so grateful for the opportunity to be here. The people continually amaze me with their thoughtfulness, kindness and patience.
I took the bag of candy into my office and shared it with my coworkers while asking them what it actually was. They read the label and said that it had "salt and soda". I'm not really sure if this was the right term but I took it to mean carbonation. Or something. It basically felt like a combination of Pop Rocks and what I would imagine an effervescent bath salt to feel like, if you know what that would feel like to eat. I'm going to have to find some of these candies in the grocery store to bring home. Really unlike anything I've had before.
This was an exciting day in the office for many reasons. It marked my first day with a computer that actually get online and would allow me to check my email. Of course, all the operating system and thus web browser menus were in Japanese. My keyboard kept alternating between typing in English characters and Japanese before I asked my coworker to show me how to toggle back and forth.
Well, it seems to be a general rule that you shouldn't download programs, change settings, etc without some type of permission. I'd already asked about the possibility of getting an English browser or changing settings to English and was basically told it wasn't possible. Suffice it to say I didn't exactly take this as the final answer and found a way to get an English version of Mozilla Firefox. It's just so much easier not to guess from menu placement and symbols what each command is in a web browser. And for future reference, www.freetranslation.com is really helpful for deciphering computer prompts in Japanese.
Back at home, I continued to clean out my remaining produce and cooked diced some sweet potato and pumpkin with a kind of curry gravy. SO GOOD. I picked up these blocks of curry paste at the grocery store, after remembering my friend Alex telling me about curry tablets that you can buy from Asian markets. Apparently you just add these pre-measured and blended spice tablets to a pot of veggies, meat, broth, whatever and it's an easy way to make a curry sauce. So I cooked the vegetables and then added a little water to the pan with the leftover cooking juices and a hunk of this curry block thing. I'll have to take a photo so you can see what I'm failing to describe well :) Also realize that the only reason I was able to pick this out from the fifty other similar looking packages at the grocery was because it literally said "curry" on the front beside the Japanese words.
Friday was also an exciting day in the office because it marked Safety Training, which I'd been hearing about all week. As you already heard from my first introduction to safety when I arrived in the office, safety is the ichiban (number one) rule in our office. Also, I still haven't figured out what the dangerous thing is yet. I was hoping that this day of safety training might give me a clue.
Well my coworker handed me a white hard hat with my name on it (so exciting!) and said that at 2pm we would hear an alarm and that I should put on my hard hat and follow her to the "safe place." As intrigued as I was with this mysterious "safe place", I was more concerned about what would happen after we arrived there.
I was told that once we arrived, I should stand at the front of a line of people and respond with "ichi" when asked "bongou?". My coworker was thoughtful enough to write these instructions down in extreme detail for me in case I was to forget my short job. When the alarm sounded exactly at 2pm as I'd been told, my coworkers and I were already prepared with our hard hats on. Some of my coworkers apparently had important safety responsibilities and got to wear bright colored vests. I'm not sure why I wasn't entrusted with a vest but it's probably for the best since my one-word response proved to be plenty for me to handle. I proceeded to follow my coworker out of our office and down the stairs that I had only previously known would lead to the labs and locker rooms. In our short trip, I gathered that an important part of safety training is that you appear to be in a hurried state without actually being in a huge hurry. Everyone was traveling in a slow jog but with quick steps. I was mostly able to keep up (and maintain my cool American disposition) by walking in long strides.
I soon learned that the safe place was an empty baseball field beside the offices. I'm assuming it's considered to be the safe place because in the case of an earthquake, there's nothing around that could squash you. Makes sense. Well my cool American demeanor was quickly destroyed after I realized my mistake of loosening the strap to my hard hat. As we all silently "jogged" to our positions on the empty field, the only sound to be heard besides the shuffling of our feet was my hard hat noisily squeaking as it bobbed up and down. I tried to pull on the strap as I jogged to hold it tight but I think it only made the sound worse. Eventually I just resigned myself to the squeaking and hoped that it wasn't as loud as it sounded (doubtful).
Because of my front row position during the exercise, I had a really good view of what I consider to be a really thorough and entertaining safety exercise. I tried to stay as still and solemn as possible to show everyone that Americans can be as quiet as Japanese people, but at one point, I noticed a large spray of water going into the trees out of the corner of my left eye. My colleagues were apparently required to test out the fire hose systems and had chosen to spray water into a group of small trees. I still don't really understand why this happened, but the scene of my colleagues spraying this huge water hose up into the air and into the trees made me start to laugh. Of course I couldn't make any noise or really move at all so that only made it worse. At one point, I had tears coming out of the corners of my eyes from suppressing my laughs. I don't think it was really anything specific that I was laughing at and certainly not at the seriousness of safety. But I think the combination of going through this bizarre exercise for the first time and not understanding a single word and looking around at all of my colleagues with their solemn stance and perfectly tightened hard hat straps just struck me as hilarious. Luckily, I'll have the chance to redeem myself as a serious American as we'll repeat this exact safety exercise two more times over the next two weeks.
This day was also my first time riding my bicycle to work! I'm loving my bicycle and was excited to take it to the office. Turns out there's a sort of art to choosing when you ride your bicycle to work as I ended up riding home in the pouring rain. Every other person I saw riding home in the rain was wearing a rain suit and rode while holding their umbrella. I had failed to bring a raincoat or umbrella and even if I had an umbrella, I don't think I'd be able to successfully control my bicycle's path and stay dry. So, I just enjoyed the rain (it wasn't cold out) and laugh at myself. Not a foreign feeling for me at this point.
PS I keep setting out to make quick, concise blog updates and then they grow into these detailed, drawn-out accounts of each day. This also happens when I email friends so I guess it's just how I do. So from now on, I guess you should be prepared to spend some time reading what I'm writing. Haha.
During lunch at the office, one of my colleagues walked over to my lunch table and said that he and some other coworkers were planning to go out to dinner after work and would I like to join? Opportunities like this are ones that I absolutely LOVE so of course I was really excited to join. Over the course of the afternoon, I learned that we'd be going to a Korean BBQ restaurant. I've only ever had Korean BBQ in New York City during a college spring break trip in college with my friend Melissa and I remember it being EPIC. You receive a bunch of vegetables and raw meat and cook it yourself over some kind of setup with hot coals or gas, depending on the restaurant.
I tried a few new things including cow intestine and tongue as well as a WHOLE scallop. At first I didn't recognize the scallop as a scallop because it wasn't just the little round shaped piece that we all recognize. The scallop that I ate included all the "guts" as my Daddy later informed me. The guts were a pretty delicious addition. Maybe a little added salt flavor.
This coworker is in a different department and sits at the table behind me in our office. I'll have to take some photos of our office so you guys can see the layout. He speaks good English and lived in Australia during university. He also told me his favorite food of the evening was the cow intestines. Unfortunately, I didn't share his pick of favorite. I think the cow tongue is burning in this photo because we took so much time to take pictures.
Lots of food. So good.
The cow intestine, in case you were wondering what it looked like. It's a white meat, more like chicken or pork. Apparently VERY important to let it cook all the way to prevent sickness from the bacteria. Noted.
The guy on the right is my boss/supervisor while I'm in Japan, he's head of the protective apparel department. The one in the middle, I met a year ago during a visit to one of our manufacturing plants and he's since been transferred to our office in Ibaraki. He was in charge of my "welcome party" during that first trip and did a great job translating a welcome message for me from Japanese to English. The guy on the left is in a different department than me but sits beside me and probably speaks some of the best English in the office. So you can imagine that I've made good friends with him and ask him for a lot of help during the day. These two guys are the youngest in the office (27) and the only ones that aren't married. So we'll probably be spending a lot of time together since they don't have families to go home to. Both, however, have girlfriends and will probably be married by next year or so.
Most exciting moments: Besides getting candy from the security guard, I was also excited to receive a slice of homemade bread from one of my coworkers. She had baked it that morning (from "rice flake", not sure how that works) and brought me in a fresh slice. So sweet.
Most awkward moment: On Friday I worked for a few hours sorting out the receipts from all of my expenses so far. I have to keep detailed expense records for my accounting department back at my home office. Even though all the receipts are in Japanese, I usually have an idea of what they're for based on the day, time and cost of items listed and can figure out if they're personal or business related. Well there was one receipt that I couldn't place because I had done a lot of shopping on that particular day. So I took it over to a colleague (female, thankfully) and asked if she could tell me what it was for. As she started to read off the items, I immediately realized it was from a pharmacy that I visited over the weekend. I didn't want to be rude and snatch it away before she finished her kind translation, but I wasn't exactly thrilled for her to be reading off items like "liquid eyeliner, nail cutters, eyeliner pencil..." in front of the rest of my coworkers. So funny.
Shopping list: Need some waterproof-ish shoes for days when it rains. My linen Toms, (p)leather Target flats and sandals are not really cutting it in the wet weather. There is a lot more walking and biking that takes place here so you have to have shoes that can stand up to rain a little better. Apparently at home, I don't do much more than walk between my car and a building on rainy days. Didn't think about this before I came.
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