Journal lingqi's Journal: November 26, 2002 - raw eggs, apply for phone line 5
November 26, 2002 (2:30pm)
I don't know where to start, but the weather is always such a fine place! Contrary to to yesterday's deep overcast skies, today the weather was quite pleasant. The sun peaked through what's left of the clouds and shone brightly, as if it was happy to see us as well. On the other hand, I checked my barometer this morning and the pressure graph has been steadily dropping to an all time low - so while my little weather hint yesterday is slightly useful, don't count on it too much.
A good morning is usually accompanied by a good breakfast. Breakfast in the US is usually never without eggs. Japan has eggs too - most of the time they are scrambled and ate with ketchup, I don't think there are options like "sunny side" or "over easy." There is the option of raw, though.
The terminology might be confused but there is the raw egg and sometimes the "onsen(æ©æ)" egg. Now, the onsen egg as I was TOLD is that it was heated to exactly 70 degrees, resulting in a solid yolk and runny whites. The raw egg is, well, simply raw. The time that I had the onsen egg, though, the yolk was completely runny as well, but I had it at a really cheap place so maybe it's just their bad cooking.
Actually I had the raw-egg experience while hiking. the said egg was part of the breakfast. I at first thought it was a regular hard-boiled egg, and was about to peel it and eat it, when the lady next to me cracked hers into a small bowl, poured some soysauce inside, beat it listlessly, and poured the resultant brown/yellow goo over her bowl of rice.
To not appear too out of place, I followed her example. During the entire breakfast I thought that though I had never had the displeasure of tasting snot, this is probabbly what snot would taste like if eaten with soysauce. Beside this thought that I kept trying to supress, the taste itself was not offending (though the texture brought out the said thought). Knowing, however, that many people from the states are quite particular about eating raw eggs, I give my warning here: beware of eggs with shells, for that so far all the hard-boiled eggs are peeled for you beforehand.
Small side-note: Mayonnaise is a blended mixture of raw egg and vegetable oil - and no-one seem to mind that, so... raw eggs should be game for everybody right?
other side-note: I heard that the said raw egg is part of a traditional japanese breakfast.
more side-note: in china / philipines / whatever you can get eggs with "almost hatched chicken" inside. Many people can't stomache it. I am okay with it. It's really just eating a very very small chicken - imagine eating a sparrow with yellow fur instead of feathers. I plead everyone to give it a try.
The other thing is that I brought my keyboard from home today. I cannot handle the strangeness of the japanese keyboard, especially the one on the laptop.
Japanese keyboard adds a few keys to include all the kana characters. Since there is no good place to put them, they took space from the end of the right hand side where the [enter] key and the brackets etc (on a QWERTY keyboard, anyhow) are found. Worse yet, even when a laptop has room for all the keys of a US keyboard, they need to make about 10-12 keys 3/4 size to fit it all on the right side and the [right_shift] is so small I have to look for it with a magnefier.
Worse yet, the reason that they did all this work is so that people can do a one-key per kana typing (well, two if you put the two dots to make "ka" into "ga") but nobody actually uses the kana input and settles on romanji instead, defeating the entire reason for having a japanese keyboard.
On the other hand, if a person was to learn using the japanese kana input style, "ro(ã)" is not found (mapped to a key) on a regular keyboard altogether so you would have to bring a japanese keyboard with you everywhere you go (i.e. when returning to a land without japanese keyboards). It seems that good english keyboards are not easy to find here. Might want to bring one if you will be doing a lot of typing.
I got another email from YahooBB a while ago (few days), and good grief are they slow in responding (it took maybe a week and half)! My question, which concerned the possibility of using a type2 analog line to access their BBphone service, was unanswered. However they implored me that I would not be able to sign up with YahooBB altogether unless I had a phone number (unlikely, but I don't expect people to be too knowledgable, to tell the truth). Either way, however, I decided to get myself a phone line, if nothing else atleast the convenience of actually having a possibility of initiating a call to the US, and recieving calls from the US at discount prices.
The application process was surprisingly easy. An english speaking representative did all the translation between myself and another NTT employee (in charge of my area). They sent the paper application, which was to be completed and sent back with copy of identification (Alien Registration Card works fine here, but I am not sure about passport), in the "postage paid" envelope they attached.
The application itself was very easy as well. All that's required was Name, Addr, and contact number, how many lines, and listing preference in the telephone directory.
"white-pages" here is called "HelloPage (ãfãfãf¼ãfsãf¼ã)" and the "yellow-pages" called "TownPage (ãã¦ãfãf¼ãfsãf¼ã)." You can select "Same as applicant" or "do not list". The bottom there is a blank area, maybe for if you want to list under a different name? I thought about putting down "James Bond" or "Superman" but decided against it.
And that's it! After they recieve this (I am assuming that they have not), I should get a call in a few days for a technician to come and "install" the line. So more updates later.
It's so painless that I really regret not taking care of it earlier.
(update Nov 27 1:30pm: fixed some spelling errors. everything same otherwise)
Imagine the possibilities!! (Score:1)
Why would you stop there, you could have used any number of "english funny names" like Haywood Jablowme (Hey would ya blow me), or something.
Basically you could have used any of the names Bart uses on Moe, for his prank calls in the Simpsons.
I doubt anyone at NTT would be able to pick up on those... lol, oh the missed opportunites!
Raw Egg & Stillhatched Chicken - Yum! (Score:1)
I'm intrigued by your description of the Japanese PC keyboard, must see if I can track down some pictures on Google...
BTW, keep up the journal, it's mighty good reading. Cheers!
Re:type 2 analog line? (Score:2)
other online Japan websites have more info but this is a different computer and all my bookmarks are off in
Telemarketers? (Score:2)
I'll be curious to know if you start getting telemarketing calls on your new phone line, and what they're selling.