Bryan's lesson of the day - NEVER go in public

Well I had to learn the hard way, but NEVER buy anything in Yokohama Chinatown. I found out why I stay home all the time and never leave. I like to have a simple life, it’s just so simple. Actually, I’m just venting because I’m a stupid shopper. But just so you don’t get conned too, don’t buy, just look. I don’t think I’ll ever go back into Chinatown again. Which I know is a lie, but at least I will stay as far away as I can.

Today started off normal though, I mean with the waking up in the afternoon and not doing anything for most of the day. Until I had the sudden urge to go out and do some exploring. I left kinda late and it was starting to get cold, but I still needed to eat dinner. So I decided that I would go to Ishikawa-cho because I haven’t been there in a little while and there are actually a lot of things to do around there that I no idea before. Even though it was a little too late to do any of those things, I still went and grabbed dinner there. I must have been in the area for like 3 hours in total, just walking around. I explored every corner of Chinatown, since it was Chinese New Year recently; I thought that they would do something special, which they didn’t. I mean the main temple in the center of Chinatown was closed but they did have an interesting display up. I walked down to Yamashita Park to get a picture of the Minato Mirai area…again. It was nice, but damn it was cold. I went back to bought some Coconut Milk Tapioca drink. It wasn’t too bad, but wasn’t worth the $3. I mean compared to San Diego Tapioca drinks. After that, I thought I would get something nice for some teachers that invited to me to their house on Sunday for dinner.

You know those things that you see at Sea World and in San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, you could get rainbow designed characters written in a frame. That usually goes for around $20-30 in total. So I thought that wouldn’t be a bad gift to get a married couple that works at my school. Turns out that I wasn’t even close with the price. It was just a bad guess. I found out this after he started working on it and asked what I wanted on it. So partly it was his fault too. The first thing I asked was the price, which he didn’t reply to me. I didn’t see any sign posting any price and was wondering why, but I wouldn’t find that out till the end of course. I thought originally that it would be something that you could barter, which turns out you can. Well in my case at least. It was much smaller than the ones you could get in San Francisco or in Sea World, but just as nice I suppose. I was wondering why everyone who saw me and the person doing it was saying “okane mochi” which means rich person. At the very end I realized why they were saying that. When he finally finished, he revealed the price. I was right about the price being about $20-30, but it was actually that much for ONE CHARACTER! I had 3 characters and 2 additional drawings which cost $30 each, plus a frame which was $30. Talk about a really nice gift huh? The grand total was a little over $150. Talk about being a bad situation. This is where the lost in translation helps actually and hurts… Lucky for me, I was able to talk down the price and paid something that was incredibly cheaper that what he would have hoped, but way more than I was planning to spend this week. I walked away with the gift for 1/3 the price of the grand total. I really hope they like it because well, it caused me great pain to get it and well, I don’t really like great pain.

When I came home, I had to call the teachers just to make sure that we were going to meet, since it would be a shame if we didn’t. Mr. K picked up the phone and it seemed as if he didn’t know English anymore, and it didn’t really sound like him on the phone. I think things were lost in translation because I had heard that they had cancelled it because they didn’t have time. But they would call me when they did.
Turns out that when Mrs. K called me, they hadn’t figured out the time to meet yet. Not that they didn’t have time, just they didn’t know what time. And the people slated to go was going to change and two other teachers were coming. I felt like shit for a little bit, and after my shower I felt much better. Partly because I could feel my hands and limbs and it wasn’t that cold with the heater on. I think I pulled away with something that was nice for the K’s, but I’ll just have to take the bullet for the price. Still trying to save to make a trip back to the States and various other things. I mean I could totally afford to pay for it at full price, but I didn’t like the way he conducted business with me. So served him right and me too.

My parents were right about one thing, I’m going to have many challenges this year. That’s a fact and now I know it. I can tell by what my dad told me that what kinds of events are going to happen for me. It’s really going to stretch me to see what kind of character I’m made of. I can see that every difficulty has an opportunity and every opportunity has difficulties. But I’m sure this year will have a great share of difficulties just from what has already happened this week. It will really test my endurance and strength just to see if I could keep up. I mean I had both of my Private English lessons cancelled in one week and things seem to have been falling apart on me lately. I’m not sure if it’s my teaching ability or just shit happens. I think for the most part, it’s just shit happening because one of them has a fever and her phone broke. The other hasn’t given me a reason yet, but asked me to do it next Wednesday. I think I’m just costing her too much money. Well, we’ll see how things go. I hope for the better.