Pizza can be inspiring

It was a good weekend, not too hectic for a change and I am totally okay with that! I got to sleep in both days without feeling like a complete slug... okay, maybe I was kind of slug-like today, but I cleaned my apartment (I even vacuumed) so I would tend to consider that a major accomplishment. Yesterday I went to my manager's party and my audition, both events went fairly well. The party was first and oh my goodness, there was SO MUCH FOOD. Every time I thought there could not possibly be anymore to eat they would bring out another dish. I honestly have no idea how the majority of Japanese people have managed to stay so thin because they certainly do know how to eat! I guess they must have some sort of whacked out metabolism that they decided not to pass on to me... oy, it's so unfair. In addition to eating ridiculous amounts of food we also enjoyed playing with the animals that the family owned. They had a parakeet named Poppy and a rabbit named Cinnamon (after a manga character). I didn't really care for the bird so much because it kept landing on people's heads and I was afraid it might make a mess in my hair. The bunny, however, was very cute and small, well at least small in comparison to my mammoth of a rabbit, she wasn't nearly as cool as my bunny because she wouldn't sit still to let you pet her... Dommi will sit for hours. The party started around noon and I didn't leave until 4:30 to go to my audition, but I was still the first person to leave, apparently Japanese parties are all day affairs. I think the audition went pretty well, it was a very laid back atmosphere and the director said that she thought she could work with my schedule so I'm crossing my fingers. She also said "well done" at the end so I'm going to take that as a good sign since she could have just said "thank you". I will find out in about two weeks if I have been cast so I will be sure to let all of you know as soon as I hear. It is a spring play so even if I am cast the rehearsals don't actually start until April. (The audition was held very very close to Tokyo Tower, so I took the photo at the top while I was there.)

Today was quite relaxed. Jenn and I decided to have a movie night here at my apartment so that was fun and cheap. It worked out well because she had the microwave popcorn and I have the microwave. In addition to the popcorn and the snacks that I bought, we decided to order delivery pizza from a chain called Pizza-La. Easy right? Yeah... not when you don't speak the language. We decided that since Jenn knows even less Japanese than me (which basically equates to no Japanese) that I should be the one to make the call. I have never in my life had to prepare more for a delivery order. I wrote down the pronunciation of each food we where ordering, thank goodness we were only ordering two things, then I wrote out the words for all the numbers of my address. When I made the call I prayed that maybe someone there would speak a little bit of English, but no such luck. I made it through ordering, giving my address, and choosing tomato sauce versus some other unknown sauce, but then she asked me something else and I got stuck. Luckily, Jenn suggested the word keitai, which means cell phone, when I repeated this to the girl she excitedly proclaimed "HAI!!" which means "YES!!". It took me about a full minute and a half to get through my 11 digit phone number since I am still not so great with my numbers. Once everything was complete the girl confirmed my order, address, and phone number, but it took another minute or two to hang up because she kept saying ok and thank you and other nice things that didn't make sense to me, so I wasn't sure if we were actually done. I can't tell you what a relief it was when the delivery person arrived and spoke English! Still, I must say that I felt kind of proud of myself when I hung up the phone, it was the most Japanese I've spoken since arriving here and it definitely inspired me to keep on learning.