Bloom In Japan

Well yesterday marked the 2-month mark for my time in Japan, and needless to say it has been a wild ride so far. The next week will bring about even more changes, as I move into Tokyo, start 2 new jobs, and wait to hear WTF is going on with my last job.

Thursday afternoon I will officially make my move into Tokyo prefecture, as I settle in a few minutes walk from the heart of Ikebukuro. I managed to get my address and find the house, and while the place itself looks like shit from the outside, the location is absolutely perfect. From front door to standing on a train at Ikebukuro Station was less than a 15 minute walk, including wait time at 3 traffic lights and dodging thousands of people. To make things better, my main branch for one of my new jobs is at the station, so I will be able to freaking walk to work. How cool is that? I will be a little sad leaving Miyoshi Town, but it’s been my goal to live in Tokyo, so this will be quite exciting for me.

I finished training for one of the new jobs yesterday, and will technically start work on Friday, although I have yet to create my schedule. I plan on working as much as possible over the next few months to build up some funds and recover from the bullshit that has gone down over the past 9 weeks. I just receieved another offer for a 2-day per week contract at a corporate training company, and I plan on accepting it. I should be able to get some valuable experience working in a professional environment, and the money will be decent. In addition I hope that living in Tokyo will open up the possibilities for teaching private lessons and getting some grub money while I await my first paychecks from the “real” jobs. Things are going to be tight for the next couple months, but hopefully things will work out.

NOVA is set to make an announcement on Thursday regarding the future of the company. Surprisingly 10+ companies have expressed interest in buying them out, so it will be interesting to see what happens as far as backed wages and everything. At the very least maybe the students will be able to use their old points, but I’d obviously like to see SOME money for the 2 months of service I “volunteered”.

At any rate, I’m still a prick and have not uploaded all the media that I have stored, but I will do my best this week in between moving and everything. Beyond that, I hope things are going well back home with everyone. I see the temps are quickly falling, luckily we are still at a reasonable range here. Anyways, I shall try to catch up with everyone soon, mata ne.

Since I will be working most Sundays, I decided to take advantage of my last day before work (Sept 9) and embarked on a little adventure. There is this place called Harajuku in downtown Tokyo that is famous for its street performers and shopping, and it really comes alive on Sunday afternoons. So I took the Tobu Tojo line into Ikebukuro, transferred over to the Yamanote line, and landed in Harajuku ready to see what all the fuss was about. I didn’t have a map, so I basically had to guess where to go, but right off the bat I found myself walking down Takeshita Street. Takeshita Street is basically this long-ass, pedestrian only street that is lined from end to end with various shops and restaurants. It’s quite a trip walking through it, as it is packed from end to end with people, so if you are claustrophobic you may not make it out alive. After working my way through that craziness I found myself in Omotesando, and took a stroll down Omotesando Street. Right away I was lucky enough to see some sort of traditional parade, of which I took video of and plan on putting up soon. Omotesando is known for its super high class shops and whatnot, so I was reserved to just enjoying the sights and keeping my wallet in my pants.

After wandering around for a bit, I finally found what I was looking for…the street performers. After taking some video of the cosplayers, I worked my way over to the entrance of Yoyogi Park. It was like entering a time warp and being thrown back to the 1950s, as I watched the Rockabilly dancers and another performance group strut their stuff in front of the tourists. I stuck around there for a bit until I finally heard some modern sounding music. As I walked around the bend, I was amazed to see some random rock band setup on the side of the street putting on a free show, amps and all. I watched a few songs and then continued walking down the path and found no less than 5 other bands within the next 500 feet or so. I imagine you could spend all day walking back and forth and see 20-30 different bands, it’s awesome.

After watching that group of bands for awhile, I crossed the street to some sort of festival grounds where there was a Brazilian festival going on. I wandered around there for a bit, took in some live Brazilian jazz, and then continued to the other side of the grounds. What was I met with? Oh just another group of about 20 bands playing up and down this huge walkway. I was looking forward to catching some local Japanese acts, but to have so many in one place was amazing. Some of them were pretty amateurish, but there were a few that definitely had some skill, making it well worth a watch. I finally dragged myself away, and walked towards the city. Twenty or so minutes later I found another thing I had wanted to see very badly, the world famous Shibuya crossing. It’s basically an intersection connecting 5 or 6 streets, but every 5 minutes or so the lights turn red and thousands of people cross the street in various directions. It’s hard to explain with words, but the video I put up later will show you what I mean.

After walking around Shibuya some more, I headed back and walked through Yoyogi Park itself. When you think of Tokyo, you think of masses of buildings and zero grass, but this park is incredibly huge. It took me a good hour and a half to walk around in a circle, and I don’t even think I saw all of it. Bike trails, running trails, dog parks, recreational areas; it has everything. It began to get late, and I had to meet Eric in Ikebukuro after he got off work, so I finished my solo adventure and hopped back on the train to grab a few drinks with the roomie. I’ll do my best to get the videos ripped and posted on YouTube sometime this week.

So after eating at the coolest sushi place ever, Eric and I took a cab over to the Miyoshi Town city hall. First a little note about the taxis in Japan. After flagging one down (red light means vacant and green light means occupied…?), you don’t want to try and open the door for yourself. Instead you just say abra cadabra, and vualla, the door automatically opens and closes for you. It’s the same deal on the way out, which makes the outrageous fares seem a little less harsh. Anyways, as a foreigner living in Japan, you are required to register as an alien and receive a “Gaijin Card”. So after arriving at the city hall, we proceeded to the counter and began the most complicated form completion in history. The man behind the counter didn’t speak any English beyond two words (which will be covered in a second). I was presented with the registration form, and after 5-10 minutes of Eric trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do, the kind man broke out with these useful instructions. “Name, name, name, name, name”. I literally had to write my name 5 times on almost consecutive lines. After filling the form out and presenting it for review, I was relieved to hear the man bust out with “OK, OK, OK, OK, OK” as he pointed to each instance of my name. I really don’t know why I had to write my name a million times, but after 30 minutes of waiting I was presented with a temporary certificate that I would need to use until my card was ready 3 weeks later. If Eric hadn’t been there I would probably still be standing there like an idiot trying to speak in broken Japanese. It was day 1, and I had just realized how nice it would be to actually speak the language in this country.

After spending 15 minutes trying to decipher a bus schedule, we managed to catch a ride back to the apartment. We had just talked with Mike and agreed to meet him and a couple of friends out in Ikebukuro to celebrate a birthday. As Eric is getting ready, I turn on the TV and get greeted with a news report about the Typhoon that was on a crash course with Tokyo. What’s better is that it is scheduled to hit at 9pm, right when we were going to be in Ikebukuro celebrating. Obviously being the superheroes that we are, we weren’t going to let a little Typhoon keep us from a night out on the town, so we made our way over to the station and caught the train downtown.

After meeting us outside the train station, Mike led us over to a small London style pub called HUB for a couple of drinks during happy hour. After chilling for a little bit and meeting the birthday girl Reiko and Mike’s friend Simon, we made out way over to an izakaya for dinner and some more drinks. Izakayas are extremely common in Japan, and offer you the chance to enjoy dinner with a bunch of friends in a traditional atmosphere. You walk in, take off your shoes, and are seated in a private booth with the rest of your friends. You basically just order a bunch of dinner plates and share with everyone involved. I don’t remember everything we ordered, but everything was delicious.

After completely filling our stomachs with food, we decided to keep our livers in tip top shape by going to a shot bar. A shot bar, as you may be able to guess, is a bar that specializes in shots. The menus do have a couple mixed drinks available, but the vast majority are just listing for different shots and that. We were only there for about an hour, but I think we managed to kanpai about 6 shots each. I think 4 or 5 were tequila based, but one was a special order by Mike. I can’t remember the name for the life of me, but it was this dark green concoction that was 120 proof. Needless to say it burned a little going down the hatch. Another interesting thing that you can see a picture below is the bar food. In America most bars offer popcorn or peanuts or something similar. This bar had neither, but instead served ginger sticks and soy beans. Both were surprisingly good, and more than did the trick.

After stumbling out of Radio Hall, we decided to go back to HUB and drink up before having to catch the last train @ 12:30. One pretty sweet deal is the Liter Tower Beer. As you can see in the pic below, you basically get a liter sized mad scientist pitcher full of some tasty suds. You get about 4 glasses out of each one, so the 1350 yen price is actually a pretty decent deal. The strange bar food continued with the smallest wings I’ve ever seen, and the addition of fried ravioli to my repertoire. The TVs had typhoon news coverage on, and it showed some outlying areas getting smashed pretty hard. Last train was quickly approaching, so we left to go walk Reiko back to her apartment. On the way there we made our way through a pretty sweet park and navigated through some random ass alleys and whatnot. I’m a huge fan of the movie Blade Runner, so walking through a big city late at night, with the rain falling and neon everywhere is quite exciting for me. At any rate, we finally got to the birthday girl’s apartment, said our goodbyes, and made our way back to the train station. The typhoon peaked around this time, so running around without an umbrella quickly turned Eric and I into a couple of soaked drunkards. I also learned that a piece of cardboard really doesn’t do the trick for very long. A 30 minute train ride later, and we were back home. After surviving sushi, alien registration, a taxi, a bus, the train system, a pub, an izakaya, a shot bar, and a typhoon, day 1 came to an end. Welcome to Japan.

After spending all night packing and finally getting to sleep around 2 AM, I awoke a few hours later ready to begin the biggest day of my life. The nervousness that had been non-stop for the previous week or so was at a new level, as I realized that I was really about to leave my family and friends and move to Japan. I hurriedly repacked my bags to be sure that they were under the weight limit, and after taking some pictures with my family, we left for the airport. Saying goodbye to my parents and sister was really tough, but as I held back the tears, a new excitement was building as I worked my way through the security checkpoint and into the terminal.

The flight from Milwaukee to Detroit was super smooth, but the flight from Detroit to Tokyo was a little more complicated. After boarding, just as we started to move out of the docking station, the entire 747 shook violently and we came to a stop. Everyone was obviously a little concerned, and a few minutes later the captain unleashed his first words to us. “Folks, I’ve got some bad news”. Not exactly what you want to hear right before you’re supposed to travel 13.5 hours in a plane. Turned out that the towing taxi had its connection to the plane snap off, and as it rebounded it managed to whack the front wheel. The pilot explained that we would need to wait as they performed an inspection, and if everything looked OK we would be on our way. To make matters worse, the ventilation fans that were supposed to keep us cool were spewing warm air due to the engines not being on. The temperature inside the plane had to reach 100 degrees, getting to the point where we were told to close all the windows to try and keep the sun out. An uncomfortable and anxious 2 hours later the captain finally told us that everything was good to go, and we proceeded to take off and enter a heaven of AC. The flight itself had a few episodes of rather violent turbulence, but overall it wasn’t too bad. I tried to sleep a few times, but I think I only managed to get an hour of actual shut-eye, making the flight seem a bit longer than it should have.

I had an aisle seat, and most of the windows remained closed, so I really didn’t get much of a look outside during the flight. That was until the 13th hour or so when we began our descent. About 30 miles off the coast, I was able to see the typhoon that was approaching Japan, which was kind of cool. A few minutes later we finally made our way over land. My first reaction was to think of all the history that had happened below over the past 2 or 3 thousand years. To actually see Japan with my own eyes sent a wave of emotions throughout my whole body, literally giving me chills. It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life, and one I hope to never forget.

We touched down at 5:46 PM local time on Wednesday, and I was officially in Japan. I was kind of worried about going through immigration and customs, as I had a lot of random junk packed, but after all was said and done it was surprisingly non-eventful. I walked away with a year-long visa stamp and my golden ticket into Japan. One thing that was rather surprising was the amount of new recruits congregated in the lobby. I was expecting maybe 5-10, but there was easily 50-75 fresh-faced instructors. We each received our welcome packets, handed off some luggage to the courier service, and broke off into groups based on our destination. I was originally supposed to travel by bus into Kawagoe, pretty much bypassing the downtown Tokyo area. As it turned out though, we took a bus straight into downtown, on our way to Shinjuku Station, where we were to catch another train to our home stations. As we left the airport and hopped on the freeway, everything looked very similar to home, except for the driving on the left side thing and the Japanese text everywhere. It was dark by this time, so you could see the ominously bright glow of Tokyo all across the horizon. It was kind of eerie actually, as I knew that it was Tokyo, but I had no idea what to expect when we actually got there. What I should have expected apparently, was to have my jaw hit the ground as I took in one of the craziest sites I have ever seen. The city of Chicago has been my favorite place for a long time. For some reason, being in a massive city like that makes me incredibly excited. Seeing Tokyo however was like seeing Chicago, New York, and LA thrown side by side. You really can’t describe how huge it is. Unfortunately I was too amazed to even think of taking a picture, but I hope to get some pictures of that view up sometime soon.

We first dropped off about half of the bus in Shibuya, and then departed towards Shinjuku. If you’ve ever seen Lost in Translation, where Meesta Halis is riding into the city by taxi, that’s exactly what I was greeted with. Being in Tokyo at the micro level is insane. Neon everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of different shops, and thousands of people out and about like it’s a Saturday night instead of a Wednesday.

We finally arrived at Shinjuku Station around 10:30. For those of you who don’t know, Shinjuku Station is the busiest train station in the world. When you walk down to the sub-level, it’s a bit overwhelming, as you are thrown into a sea of people that doesn’t seem to end. If it wasn’t for my escort, I probably would have just fumbled around and got lost for the rest of the night. At any rate, we worked our way through the maze of people and boarded a train bound for Ikebukuro, which is the closest part of Tokyo to my apartment. From there we switched trains, hopping on the Tobu Tojo line, and arrived at Tsuruse Station 25 minutes later. It was quite late at this point, but my guide walked me out of the station all the way to my apartment about a half-mile away. Walking through what was to be my new neighborhood at night like that was an awesome experience. It had just finished raining, combining with the random neon glow of signs and street lights, to make it one of the most surreal walks of my lifetime. Once again it’s hard to explain, but the vibe it gave me was exactly what I’ve been searching for for a long time.

After getting a little lost on the way, we finally arrived at my apartment, and I said thanks and goodbye to my guide. I chatted briefly with one of my new roomates, sent off a quick email to my family, and went to my room to crash. My initial reaction to the apartment was that it was quite normal to what I’d seen back home. The one thing that was obvious was that my room was freaking tiny. I’ll be throwing a video tour up sometime soon, but you’ll be able to see in my next post just how small the space is.

I finally fell asleep around 1 AM, as I prepared for my first full day in Japan.