Well,
it's the beginning of another weekend! It has been another quiet
week, but since this is basically my real life for the next year (as
opposed to a semester-long study abroad or a short vacation), that's
probably going to be the norm. Or at least until I meet some more
people or find some things to participate in.
Anyway,
the most eventful thing that happened this week was my welcome party,
but before that I'll talk a little about my office first! We are the
International Relations Section of Chiba City, under the Office of
the Mayor. There are eight of us all together; three men and five
women. There's the section manager, who we all call 'kachou' (section
manager), the supervisor Hirata-san (who I've mentioned a bunch), my
supervisor Satou-san, and then Kitamura-san (F), Kurashige-san (M),
Kondou-san (F), and a Chinese lady named Aoi-san. We all work
together in one room, with Kachou and Hirata-san at the front and the
rest of us in a block in the middle. Instead of having individual
cubicles, our desks are all pushed together, and I sit in between
Kondou-san and Satou-san.
Everybody
but Kitamura-san (who had to take care of her kids) came to my
welcome party, which was really just all of us eating dinner and
drinking together at a restaurant. The director of the office of the
mayor was there too, which surprised me a little. It was also an
'otsukare-sama party' (probably not a real term) for Gina, who had
been working at the international relations section for 4 months but
moved back to the international association when I got here. There
was yummy food and unlimited drinks (for 2.5 hours), and I had a good
time talking with everybody! It was nice to spend time just chatting,
although because of the way the table was set up I really only talked
to half of them. Anyway, I've heard that this sort of gathering with
the office happens pretty regularly in Japan, so I'm looking forward
to the next time!
Other
than that things have been pretty unremarkable – I've started some
new translation projects at work and bought some more things for my
apartment. Today I walked around past the supermarket to see what
else is in the area, which is really nothing – it's mostly just
apartment complexes. But tomorrow I plan to go downtown to look at
cell phones (though I don't think I can get one until I have my
resident card, which could take a while) and explore a little, like I
meant to last weekend, so that should be fun.
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