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I hope everybody had a lovely Valentines Day last week! Derry and I never make a big thing of Valentine's day. He got me some chocolate, we went on one of our Mister Donut outings and then he cooked me dinner. So it was pretty much like most other days, haha. He's a good boyfriend. Another fucking blizzard started on our walk home from MiDo, I've never seen such massive flakes of snow before, they were about as big as my fist.

Work was the usual, one of the little boys called me scary in Japanese - kowai. This is one of the few words I know in Japanese because for the first month I was here, I accidentally kept calling everything scary, when I meant to say cute - kawaii. One of the little girls fell asleep standing up and fell over which was lol. I have to teach next week so I planned my lesson with the other English teacher, and I'm not so nervous now, but I'll prob be shitting it when the time comes.

I had to go back to the immigration office on Wednesday. It got complicated and I still don't have my visa, but they gave me a new stamp in my passport saying that my application has gone through so that I don't get deported, despite the fact that my tourist visa ran out this week. Derry got his tourist visa extended so he's cool too, for now.
We went to apply for our Alien Registration cards on Friday, which you need if you're in Japan for longer than 90 days. I can't believe it's been 90 days. Wild. Derry applied for his, but they wouldn't let me apply for mine because my tourist visa has run out, and I have no official status of residence right now... The dude kept telling me I've overstayed my visa which is illegal, and I kept trying to tell him that I'd BEEN to the immigration office, it was all GRAND, and THEY had told me to come get my alien card. But fucking the language barrier made this an impossible task. Urgh.

We went to the local library which did have a decent enough English section, but we can't get a library card until we get our alien cards. Can't do anything without that fucking card. Can't get a cellphone, health insurance, a bank account etc. Because I have no status. Siiigggh.

I got really down in the dumps towards the end of the week, which was either caused by, or the cause of, a bout of homesickness. Ryuta said it usually happens every 3 months. I can't believe I've been here three months.


We met up with Lugosi yesterday and went for a drunken ramble through Shinjuku. We went back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building again to check out the night view. It's open till 11pm which is cool. I had my camera with me this time:

Click to enlarge

As the night progressed, we got ignorant, found a random shrine, went drinking in one of those teeny backstreet bars where Lugsy demonstrated his Japilities, then went back to Nakano and went bowling. Derry and Lugosi tried to psyche me out because they were so jealous of my mad skills.


Sorry this blog is boring as fuck. Here's me pretending to be Japanese. That's a massive bottle of soy sauce beside me. Yeah.