Hamamatsu Day One

I woke up a bit before my alarm today and chatted with my mom a bit on Skype.  That was nice.  ^o^/  It's a bit weird being in a room by myself.  I was already used to Nicola being around, so to have the place to myself is both nice and a bit lonely.  This room is warmer, which is nice, but the bed is just as hard and my back hurts from it - not so much my spine as my muscles.  It's weird.


Breakfast isn't as fab as the other place.  Well, I liked the other one better anyway.  I still had my potato salad (this place puts cucumber in theirs!  yay!) and miso soup.  I had a croissant and a weird mousse-y chocolate stuff with chunks of banana in it... and orange juice.  Yum?  XD  


Back to my room and a tried a bit of a video chat with my mom and brother, but I messed it up after a few minutes.  Oops.  I'll get it working sometime.


At 9, we started off to our training location, which is in a business building across from the train station, and rather close to our hotel.  The wind was HORRIBLE!  It's chilly here, but the wind makes it rather cold!  If you get to a spot with little wind and some sun, it feels quite nice, but if not, brrr~


In our training in Narita, they concentrated a lot on our first lesson, but here we're talking more about daily life and the rest of the time teaching.  It's great to get tips and hear storied from the trainers.  I have much to improve upon.  >.<  I tried to make a drill this afternoon, based on drill structures we learned, and I didn't do the best job.  I got lots of peer and trainer feedback and I took LOTS of notes today, so hopefully I'll be able to turn it around.


Tomorrow we're hoping to get our details from the branch - where we'll be living (exactly), how we're getting there, our cars, first day of school, teaching schedules, etc.  I'm looking forward to it!  Hopefully, there aren't any hang-ups to delay them until Tuesday.  I heard from someone that on Tuesday and Wednesday we're moving to our locations.  Exciting!!


For lunch, Nicola, Helen, and I went to Freshness Burger.  I've been dying to try Freshness Burger ever since I heard the name!  (meals during branch training are on us)  I got the bean burger and it was nice, if a bit... mushy.  Not something I would eat often, but definitely something I'd eat again!  ^_^  Sorry I didn't get a picture of it, but I can't really lug my camera around during training - it's too bulky!  We walked around a bit in the shopping center by the station, and I found a fabric shop!  With sewing machines!  They seemed to be around $350 each.  D:  I'll have to save up a bit.  I could do with a more basic model than those... maybe I'll see if I can find a second-hand shop or something.  We also found some 'New York style' bagels.  I got a strawberry and white chocolate bagel.  It was good!  The flavor was mild and there was no gross aftertaste like you sometimes get with store-bought bagels.


Poor Nicola's still sick and the flu is apparently going around and I think three people stayed in their rooms today instead of going to training!  o.o  The trainers are going to take them to a clinic, I think.  They're encouraging the sick people to stay back and rest so the healthy ones don't catch it.


After training, I really wanted to try to find Animate, so a bunch of us met in the lobby for a dinner/shopping group.  After being lost for rather a while, we found it.  >.<  I was soooo disappointed at their Sengoku Basara selection!  TT^TT  I really wanted to get a t-shirt!  (They had a lot of cool Tiger&Bunny stuff though, and I almost bought the Wild Tiger Hero Suit watch!  I might go back and get it because I need a watch).  I bought a Tokugawa phone charm for when I get my phone, a SB doujin (allegedly it's all gag and comedy) which I haven't looked at yet, and a copy of CosMODE, which will probably end up belonging to Athel sometime in the future because her picture's in it.


For dinner, we ended up at a ramen place which was totally empty when we went in.  I think he called his wife for back-up when 11 foreigners came in.  XD  We were put in the upstairs seating area (we would have flooded the downstairs).  I got the salt-flavored ramen.  It was yummy.  ^o^/  The guy was so sweet.  I asked if he had anything without meat (for me), so every time someone handed him their order-ticket from the order-ticket machine, he would say 'this has meat, is that okay?'  It was wonderful that he was so concerned!  I tried to explain to him that only I was concerned about it, but that bit didn't seem to get through.  XD


Not many pictures today, I'm afraid!

Dinner group for ramen

My ramen!  Topped with sprouts, carrots, seaweed, and something else... cabbage, maybe?

The optside of the ramen shop!  I didn't even notice the slightly creepy pic until after we walked out.  

We got a bit lost on our way back from dinner, but we made it back just fine.  More training in the morning! This training isn't half as intense as the other, but between being mentally active during the day and not sleeping as well as I could at night (due to the bed and pillow), I'm so tired every night!  D: