金曜日, 10月 13, 2006

13th Oct 2006

Went in to college for another orientation lecture, but this time for the Japanese language class…it also turned out to be a bit of a lesson in Japanese life and customs…which we got a handy leaflet on…anyway lessons start on Monday…

Also tried signing up to the university gym which was interesting because they don’t really speak English…I tried to explain to the people on the desk that I wanted to use the climbing facilities…so they passed me on to another guy in the gym who I was meant to ask something (I didn’t catch what the guy said to me before he ran off) anyway, there’s this guy behind a desk with a computer, with less grasp of English than the guys on the front desk (I really need those Japanese lessons to start!). I try and explain to him that I want to climb…which I’m sure he’s misunderstood because he’s just given me a temporary wrist band. And we spend the next ten minutes or so communicating via very confused expressions and him typing into Yahoo translate in Japanese to show me what he means in English. Ahhhh…the hilarity of the situation…

I wonder over to the bouldering wall…stare at it…and read the sign in English beside it saying that you’re not, under any circumstance, allowed to even think about touching it until you’ve gone to a special training session.

I wonder back to the man behind the desk…and try and ask him if I can move the bouldering mats off the other bouldering mats under the wall so I can climb… I think now he gets the idea that I want to climb and not use some form of treadmill or something silly like that…but yeah, he then trys to explain to me that I can go online to register for a training session. On a site which is *entirely* in Japanese. With the help of universal sign language (meaningless hand-waving) and a website translating typed Japanese…he helps me fill out a form to get a permanent membership for the gym and a training session for climbing.

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