Of Adapters and Adaptation

Let's see where I'll be living for the next month or so.

This is the outside of my house; very homey and pleasant looking, I think.

And here's the view out of my room's window on the second floor, looking down at roughly the same place from which I took that last photo. The two don't quite meet up, however. (I.e., if I were simultaneously standing where I took that last photo as I took this more recent one, the "me" down there wouldn't be visible in the picture.)

Next is the view from the opposing window in my room. It looks nice, although it's a bit stiflingly close to that building right outside.

This is the kitchen. Pretty much ALL of the kitchen.

Here's the rest of the kitchen. (Panned to the left a little bit with respect to the last photo.

Now the best part: the toilet.

I have never yet encountered a toilet-space that small in my life. I mean, look at how little room there is for your legs when you sit down:

Sheesh.

After settling in reasonably well, my primary objective became to find an adapter for my laptop's power cord. My phone worked just fine, but my laptop's cord is three-pronged, whereas practically all Japanese outlets are two pronged. As far as I can tell, both my phone and laptop should work fine with the voltage differences between North America and Japan, albeit they may take longer to recharge and such. (Japan typically uses 100-110V appliances and outlets, America seems to use 120-130V. Or more. Or something.)

I did a bit of preliminary Googling about where I might obtain such a device, but I didn't have a whole lot of luck. I went out and wandered around my neighborhood without any better results, although I did finally buy a bit of food (some sort of slightly sweet, spongy, cake-like bread. I think eggs were responsible for said spongyness).

I also got slightly lost wandering around: here are some of the photos I took.

Upon returning home, I ran into one of my house-mates (one from France, I believe), and I prevailed upon him for adapter-related help; he directed me to a store called "Bic Camera" in Shibuya, a neighboring district.

I got a little lost on the way there (even though the instructions were pretty simple), but I made it alright. Subsequently, I spent some 30 minutes wandering around in the store, looking for an appropriate adapter, and wondering if I was brave enough to try asking one of the staff for help. (Sumimasen, adaptaa wa arimasuka? "Excuse me, are there adapters [here]?") But, I don't really know how I'd specify the kind I wanted. "Powaa adaptaa"? "San, ni" ("three, two") while showing three and then two fingers, respectively, to indicate three prongs going to two prongs? But what if I inadvertently made a horribly offensive gesture in the process? O_o.

The store's signs were of no help, since practically everything was written in Japanese. I eventually found something that looked promising hiding away near extension cords and surge protectors--I couldn't read anything on its box to know if it said anything about American plugs, though, so I just decided to get it and cross my fingers, so to speak. Checking out went relatively smoothly, although I didn't really understand what the girl behind the counter was saying at all. I caught... something about yen amounts... maybe... and then she seemed to ask something, to which I replied, Sumimasen, wakarimasen ("I'm sorry, I don't understand"), and she sort of seemed to shrug and carry on it with. Maybe she was asking if I wanted a bag for the purchase. Maybe she was telling me I bore a distinct resemblance to warthogs and alpacas. Who knows?

It had become quite dark by the time I'd found Bic Camera and purchased the adapter; food began to sound more and more like an appealing idea as I walked back. I kept a look out for plausible seeming places, but most looked too meat-heavy or too English-unfriendly. (I can't really deal with Japanese-only menus at the moment.) I came across a little mall-like below-ground area called the Oval Plaza, and I wandered around there a bit. The stairway down into it is surrounded by a nifty water-feature, which I photographed for y'all as follows:

The largest store/restaurant in the plaza was a McDonalds--it kind of occupied the center, and stretched around back quite a ways. It looked pretty different from your typical American McDonalds (actually, different from the other Japanese McD's I've encountered so far, too). Note the ebullient English and European words wandering all along the left side of the entrance--those wound about pretty much the entire structure.

After hemming and hawing for a bit, I built up the courage to walk into a small restaurant on the side that had English descriptions of its food items. Conveniently, the waitress who served me spoke English pretty well--although that was almost a disappointment, because I'd been trying to psyche myself up to deal with struggling through language barriers again. Anyhow, she was very nice, although somewhat oddly convinced that I didn't want to use chopsticks ("You like a fork? It's hard to eat with chopsticks, yes?"). I ordered a steamed vegetables + noodles soup kinda thing (I don't think it was miso, although I dunno), and an iced oolong tea.

By this point, I was pretty much starving, so I don't think I had the most critical judgment in the world, but at any rate the food, and the tea, tasted abso-freakin'-lutely delicious. (Although I didn't like the onions. Too bitter, blegh. But mmmmm, the bamboo and mushrooms were amazing.)

Food acquired, I continued onward and... got myself even more lost than before. I discovered (later) that I'd started out going the wrong direction once I'd exited Bic Camera--the lack of familiar stores probably should have tipped me off. But, anyhow, I definitely wandered around for quite some time before finding myself back at the Bic Camera again. Some street signs are in English, others... not so much. >_>

I really need to get up to speed with written Japanese; this is giving me a new appreciation for the necessity of literacy in navigating throughout everyday life. I've also discovered that, while I have a small ability to read the two Japanese phonetic scripts, Hiragana and Katakana (as opposed to the pictographic/ideographic Kanji), I have nowhere near the facility with it that is necessary for reading signs and labels. Oy vey.

So, here are photos that I took whilst on my (rather lengthy) night-jaunt about the city:

I finally made it back, safe and sound, though also bloody-well exhausted, around 10-11pm Japan time. Further pictures and stories later to come.