Large Blocks of Non-Informative Information

Summary: Collected my Alien Registration Card, found a post office and withdrew some cash, headed into Sannomiya and then onward to my real estate agent's office in Shin-Kobe, headed back home, spoke to a Canadian guy who's moving out of my new place's building and am able to get some cheap stuff off of him, headed back to Takarazuka, did some grocery shopping, headed home, sat back for an hour and then headed off to work.

In Detail:
So... I got up at the ungodly hour of 8am and headed off for a walk to Sakasegawa where the Takarazuka City Office is. I picked up my Alien Registration Card (which I'll have to reapply for once I move to Shin-Kobe; repeatable fun) before heading into Shin-Kobe.

I tried to give this guy Matt a call, who is a Canadian guy going home and is trying to flog some stuff from his apartment in my new place's building, who Duncan had given me the number of. I eventually got a hold on him and he says I'll be able to come check out his stash before he leaves next week. Not really much I can think of that I'd truly want from some random Canadian guy else I'll just not bother; curtains from him maybe, but crockey and cutlery maybe I'll just buy new. He's also supposed to be trying to flog some leather couch for ~$AU200, but am not interested in it for that price and am happy to settle for a beanbag.
I also heard at work tonight that Pierre/Peter, one of the guys who I went to the football with, will be headed back home to Melbourne very soon and might be able to score some good stuff. According to Duncan anyway.
Then there's also Dimi (another one from Melbourne) from work who will be resigning in October sometime and has already said I can have one of her TV/VCR for 5000 yen (about $50, and I still have no idea why she has two TVs and two VCRs. She says "I've been here too long.") and wants to just hand over a load of other stuff cheap or free such as a fan or heater.

Before I rattle on further, I'm thinking much of what I just wrote looks very boring to read...

Anyways... I signed my money away today to Yoshiko-san, my landlady / real estate agent who I still don't know what her family name is and so am just sticking with Yoshiko-san. I'm moving in on Thursday coming and will be officially out of Takarazuka by 12pm Sunday, so I've the whole weekend to move my stuff over. Surprisingly, Yoshiko offered to pick me up at Nigawa train station next Thursday as she said she'd be out this way. I'd commented about how I'll be carrying my futon/mattress through all of the walk to Takarazuka station and then on the train to Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi where I'll be lugging it up and down the stairs before I would have headed onward to Sannomiya, through the throng that never ends, and up for a 15min walk to Shin-Kobe (or I guess by subway, but would still have to walk a bit). So yeah, I'm not doing that now and will be meeting Yoshiko at 11:30am Thursday and driving out to my new place. I guess I made a good impression.

I had a guy with a really bad stutter at work tonight. Wasn't too sure how to deal with it. Do I let him try to finish the sentence for a few minutes? Do I interrupt him and stop him from holding up the lesson (with two other students)? Do I praise him when he's finished? I don't know... I do know that the most fluent person in that class was actually a young guy who'd just been 'leveled up', oddly enough, and came out with a lot of things the other students were unable to. Nova works by having grades for the fluency/difficulty of classes broken up into:

Zone B for level 7B students (very basic english with single word answers etc and very hard to have a non-guided conversation with)
Zone C for level 7A students. A very slight step up from 7B.
Zone D for level 6 students.
Zone E for level 5 students.
Zone F for level 4 students. Start getting into some 'fun' english like exaggeration. (This one's awesome.)
Zone G for level 3 students. Very fluent and have lessons following topics such as discussing alternative medicines and your belief/non-belief in them, the industrialisation of where you live and how it has changed over your lifetime, dealing with awkward situtations etc etc. In other words, some very abstract topics. Although I say 'very fluent', so people don't deserve the title.

Then there are Voice classes where it's just a room where anyone can use up a single Voice voucher/payment and spend as long as they like in there talking about absolutely anything. Since I'm new, it's easy to just fall back on talking about Australia and my life-so-far in Kobe, but I'm starting to get some regulars in there and will have to start actually working a bit in there soon but, once the novelty that is me wears off, they'll find topics to settle into and discuss as a group. It's a focus on talking to each other, rather than to the instructor. The instructor is more the mediator of the conversations and there to help out (or force) the converastions along. There can be anywhere from 1 to 15+ people in Voice at any one time and they can be of any skill level so I have to ensure that each person in there gets a chance to try and participate. I've averaged about 4 people for each time I've been in there, but had just 1 person the other night. Some students don't actually even take regular classes and will just come once, or more, a week for Voice.

So... I'm tired...


Really looking forward to moving out; it can't come soon enough.