Extra! (3): [短い文句がある]

TOOTHPASTE!!! Why?

Today was a normal day. UNTIL THE OCCURRENCE. 

I was just completing my daily routine of pre-bedtime ablutions, (Yanno, womanly things like face cream and eye drops etc.) when I reached the final before sleep stage, tooth brushing.

This would normally go averagely well, disregarding the occasional drop of the toothbrush, and I would inhale the air of minty freshness as I drift off to sleep. BUT NO.... 'NOT TODAY' said Japan. 'Not today or for the next however-long your toothpaste lasts' continued Japan with a evil chuckle.

For my toothpaste was orange. I don't just mean the colour by the way, the contents too have a citrus flavour.

I mean, yes, I realise the packaging for this specific toothpaste is very orange oriented, but in no plane of this world did I expect this design choice to actually represent the flavour of the tooth cleaning substance inside. That would be like buying Warburtons bread and not being at all horrified when the slices tasted of bubblegum.

NO!

Tasty citrus stripes.....

Me no want...

 

All I know is that citrus and toothpaste do not go together. It's basically a law of life that you cannot drink orange juice after brushing, in fact I think that comes printed on children's birth certificates. 

Maybe they were trying to make the flavour more similar to that of industry strength cleaning products for extra subliminal tooth cleaning umph......

In any case I feel like I just swilled my mouth with a combination of liquidated car air freshener and after eights.

Good night all.....

どちらのサンドイッチは一番おいしい？ (1)

こんにちは！サムのサンドイッチの批評をようこそ！

I'm reviewing sandwiches. :D :D :D :D

At home I really enjoy a daily sandwich in a little box to take to my lectures for lunch but here rice has taken over. HOWEVER, the humble creation of the late great earl of Sandwich is making its way onto the shelves of Japan.

Yet, somehow it feels, here, they haven't entirely got the hang of what to put in a sandwich or the filling to bread ratio.

So here it is, Sandwich number 1!

Crunchy!

This sandwich's contents were (to the best of my tastebud recognition knowledge) iceberg lettuce, cabbage and a bit of fried ham/spam. This combination was a bit dry and crunchy and it could have done with a bit more of the ham/spam stuff to balance out the cabbageyness. Other than that it was a tasty combination I will give maybe...... 5/10 

I will just take a moment before sandwich number two to quickly explain the rating scale. 1 = mushrooms (squeaky and rancid) and 10 = spaggossages (nyum nyum nyum)

Moving swiftly on! Heres sandwich number 2!!!

Amazing technique!

This sandwich's contents were somewhat odd. It's also the reason why I though the other sandwich may be spam and not ham... due to the fact that this one was definitely ham, but was different to the last one. This sandwich didn't have lettuce which is instantly a shame but, it did have fried egg mayo with a layer of ham, cabbage, and some sort of sweet brown sauce  This made it squishy and tasty rather than crunchy like the previous sandwich. And it amazed me how they managed to fry egg mayo without it exploding into an eggy mess. :O (when I fried some fudge it just dissolved into a disgusting soap like pile....).  Also the filling to bread ratio was good, but the sauce stuff did make the top bread slice a bit soggy. Overall a good 7/10!!

Lol, thanks for reading. be back soon with more sandwichy nonsense!

野菜の神様！

Thank you for using Sam's IT communication services.

So i've started a non-profit IT consultation cooperation. Well, not really but I may as well have! The reason for this is that quite a few people in my accommodation have bought internet only sims from B-mobile. These take a bit of a faff to set up. A faff of which I am experienced having set up my own sim a week prior to this day.

Yes there has even been an incident of this:

And also yes, the restart did work. Just think how much money I would have got if I charged an upfront fee. *dreams of grandure and yen*

I apparently also deal with hardware issues and, along with a girl here, have spent a great deal of time recently traversing the streets of Tokyo between media and phone companies trying to get them to un-screw the back of a phone. This they would not do and not even the kindly old lady who owned the local screwdriver shop could provide us the tools we needed to accomplish the dismantling ourselves.  (the reason she needed the phone opening in the first place is she shoved a micro-sim into a normal phone and it got a bit jammed inside. -____- )


However finally after many days with the aid of a paperclip or 70 the sim came free and my companies name remained untarnished.

In the real world.....

I actually had a really busy day. It was not only the day of the internet usage presentation (otherwise know as 'normal person's common sense presentation' / 'waste of my time'), but also the dreaded speaking-test-interview-scary-talk-exam. dun dun duurrrrr!!

So essentially this HIGHLY informative presentation regarding the internet was just a video of a man dressed as a stereotypical burglar stealing everybody's internet passwords. It told us generous nuggets of information such as 'don't give your password to random people who ask you for it'. <--- Bit annoying really... I had to quickly run and cancel my print-job of 1000 copies of my password I was planning to hand out next week :/

The speaking test on the other hand, despite being shoddily run, actually went OK. I managed to say words in an order somewhat even resembling a real life sentence, instead of just spouting nouns every few seconds!!  The most difficult bits was the text part. We had to read a passage out loud and then answer questions on it. Sounds easy right? Except for when you forget the first line by the time you reach the last, and the examiner asks you the most simple child-level question regarding it but all you can do it sit starting at them with a facial expression that can only be described by the word 'DURRRRRRRRR'. Aside from that it was good, the two exam ladies looked happy enough with it anyway, got some swanky grammar in there too.

In other news...

I found a broccoli! Oh lovely broccoli, I will cook you in a pan and use you in many dishes. I haven't seen another shop that sells my favourite green floret bunch since so I must go back!

I'm so happy.

I also got mail today, from my Mum back home in England :) I was surprised she managed to get the letter here with her tiny minuscule knowledge of the japanese language and address system but its here and its Buddah shape adds a bit of zen to the organised chaos of my desk 

Thanks Rigglington :D

Extra (2): [連絡しよう]

It's Party Line!

Line messaging

I've been thinking, for days when my life is just as uninteresting as back in England I can provide bloggy updates of interesting gubbins I have discovered on my travels. You might even learn something... so hold on tight here it is INFORMATION NUGGET NUMERO UNO!

Line messenger 

SMILEEE!

Firstly, as you know my phone is working :) BUT many of my more complainy friends back home are having a rant about how I message. This is because on my phone plan I only get data (3G). The reason for this is... it's cheap. It only costs me ¥1800 a month and I get 1GB of internet to use out and about. ALSO, everybody and their dog and probably their dog's cat in Japan uses an app called "line" to message each other. Line let's me message, call and send photos all on the internet and as such is really helpful for meeting up with people. The stickers and emoticons on this app are crazy I can show a much more massive range of emotions than in Britain. In England we are stuck with: happy :), sad :(, very happy :D, very sad :'( and at a push... 

owl <(OvO)>! 

But on line as you can see above I can show everything from accusational pointing, to vomiting collapse
all the way to crime victim!

As a person coming from England the best part is you can get signal everywhere here! The 3G is never 
ending and this includes in clubs bars and even subway tunnels. A far cry from home where the slightest 
movement from the signal hotspot of the left hand seat on the sofa equals instant 0 reception. -___-

So if you know me and aren't one of those celebrating my absence (Lauren that's you), you can add me 

by my line ID of samburton. 

面接？何の面接？

Sam's uselessness reaches a whole new level

The title of this post is misleading, mostly because it implies I am responsible for the medium sized fail that follows, when in reality i'm entirely out the ven diagram of responsibly.

Ven diagram of responsibility 

Now that's out of the way, the story is as follows. Yesterday I attended the first orientation meeting which, as you may have read on my previous amazingly interesting blog post, was very difficult to understand. Alongside this they dumped a bagful of information on our desks containing all the useful and totally insignificant details about the coming week. 

So in order to find my dates and interview times I sifted through the mountainous heap of total drivel they provided and eventually decided I better double check my information. This is when the seed of trouble was sown. I asked for the english version of the data we had been given (this was provided to the other english-track classes) in order to double check my translations. However it turns out that I was not given the same version. <-- nice work Meiji. 

This meant this afternoon at 2pm while everybody else was at an interview I was reading a magazine and doing my hair. It was only after they rang the accommodation at 2:30pm looking for me that I actually was properly notified of my meeting. Thanks english-version providing lady.

Accurate portrayal of my feelings regarding this.

Anyway it was all fine, the guy who runs the house here rang the campus and explained the version of the schedule I had was wrong, despite the fact I ended up being over 2 hours late. 

Nakano Campus!

I dont have too much to say regarding this campus at the moment as I'm yet to have any classes there. BUT when I do I will do a full tour and tell you guys all about it.

For now I will tell you about what I learned on the tour of the building. The main point I wish to convey is, the building is soooo nice. It's all new and swanky with glass bits and bobs and stylistic numbers on doors. Heres a picture of the entrance!

OOOOOOOO

The only thing that has begun to annoy me already is the floor plan. There are two main blocks of the building but you can only get between them on floors 3 and 6, this means getting to the other floors causes a slight inconvenience in my day. How irksome!

I ALSO FOUND OUT TODAY THAT MEIJI'S MASCOT IS AN OWL!!

It's super cute and called 'めいじろう' a combination of the words 明治 (the uni name) and ふくろう (owl). It's purple and snuggly looking in its face and I wish to purchase many things with it on including but not limited to, mugs, pencils and stuffed toys.

LOOK AT HIM!

While we are on the topic of purple animals I also saw this today:

Foldy bum? what?

Only in Japan. Peace out.

Extra! (1) [他他他]: milk

MIIIIILKKKK!! 

(a short description of cow milk brought to you by Sam Corp)

I have discovered a yummyummyummy type of milk.

Here it is: 

Some milk.

Ta-da!

The reason I post this blog is to tell you guys who like milk back home about the differences here. The main one of these is the fact all of the types of milk are UHT (ultra heat treated). This is because in Japan the majority of the land is mountainous so they don't have too much room for cows (they hardly have any room for people). This means even the big cartons here taste like those little tiny milk pots you get on trains or from coffee machines. 

But the main reason this milk is my favourite. Is it's name. 

1. It's made by 明治 (Meiji) like my uni name!

2. It's name is おいしい牛乳 <--- this translates to 'Tasty Milk'. I mean why would I buy other brands now, they gonna be so un-tasty.

Here's my contribution to the advertising of this milk.

I'm sure i'll be hired soon!

今週の日本語誤解 (1)

Dreadful Japanese top 3!

Just a countdown of my top 3 retarded things I said and did in Japanese this week!

At number 3 we have this: 

mmmmmm

This is pork. We can all plainly see that. However I thought it was beef and now I have loads of slappy pork offcuttings and no idea what to use them for. 

- 豚 <-- pig

- 牛 <-- cow

They don't even look similar (-_______-)

At number 2:

I wanted to say 'シャワーを浴びなきゃ' (I need to get a shower), instead I said 'シャワーをかけなきゃ' meaning something like 'i just need to go and hang my shower' . Slight confused faces from my flatmates was the reply to this statement.

And at number 1:

It's another spoken fail but this time to do with food! I was breakfast time and I tried to say '朝ご飯を作る、お腹が空いたから' meaning ' i'm gonna make breakfast because i'm hungry'. Which is a fair enough statement. HOWEVER what I said was "朝ご飯を作る、腹が立つから'... meaning 'i'm going to make breakfast BECAUSE IM ANGRY!!! raaaarghh!'

 Easy mistake to make... same symbol and everything >__<

Face-palm