But that isn’t important right now.
When I went to university I moved into my room, said goodbye to my parents, unpacked lots of my things, put my computer together, commandeered a shelf in the fridge and hung around for a few hours all before I met anyone else. I sat in my room with the door wide open because some advice somewhere told me it was a good way of meeting people when you first move in. It wasn’t working for me; there was no one around to meet. At some point in the late afternoon however I heard the door to the corridor open and close. I listened like a bat and could tell there was now someone in the kitchen. With a nervous dread of excitement (I know that doesn’t make sense), I went into the kitchen and saw a man on a table. I spluttered out to him, “Hi, I’m Nick,” in as friendly a tone as I could muster. He replied, “Hello, my name is Joe, I’m the maintenance man,” which did perfectly explain why he was both standing on a table and holding a light bulb.
In my present situation though the people are here already and it is I who has been delaying meeting them. At 9:30 in the evening though on my first full day in the country, I went into the kitchen to wash stuff. The kitchen here is next to the large communal lounge, home to sofas, a computer, a television and at that time a head poking up from behind one of the sofas. I washed my things in the kitchen and kept looking through the handy window to see if the head had moved in reaction to me, it hadn’t. I could tell she was a girl but was not sure if she was asleep or just ignoring me. In hindsight though it was the least scary way for me to meet someone, in fact I had to think about how not to scare her with my approach.
I said “hello” from a few feet away, she sat up a bit startled. She was a Japanese girl with a big smile, she said “hello,” back to me and it was then that we both realised that there was a Massive Language Barrier. We struggled through asking each other for names, I have forgotten hers I am ashamed to say no offence to her. We talked about something else and then a guy came in who she immediately spoke to instead, but about me. I heard the Japanese word for American from him, but she corrected by saying that I was English, there was a look of surprise, they don’t get many English around here. The three of us attempted to converse, we talked about the time and Harry Potter. His name is Yan and he is from Korea, we each tried pronouncing “Harry Potter” in Korean, Japanese and English accents.
Three became four when another girl entered who shall remain nameless until I figure out her name. Her English is fluent, she is Japanese but lived in America for 12 years in the hope of getting into film production. She is now working in Tokyo as a web developer and, as with most Japanese people trying to forge their careers, she was working late; she didn’t get home till gone 10pm. She helped me with how to cook my instant noodles (yep it’s the same as everywhere else, pour in boiling water, but you never know) which was Miso flavoured but had bits of meat in that I tried my best to avoid (I am a vegetarian). I spoke to her for quite a while and then she left and I snuck away intending to go back but never did, still it was a good start and it paid off the next day…
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