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.

Excuse my massive excitement, I seem to have been a little camera shy. Anyway, here goes nothing…

So the day after the Typhoon (Fri, Sept 7) brought with it something I had failed to see since landing 2 nights earlier, the sun. This was a double-edged sword however as it was insanely hot and humid, which is basically par for the course in Japan. I’ve been to Florida before and was amazed with the humidity there, but it’s on another level here. I literally walk 20 feet and I’m sweating my arse off, it’s crazy. So anyway, I decided to start my day by taking a jog through the neighborhood. What an experience. The main drag of my town is rather modern, with a lot of new buildings and all of that jazz. But as I made my way into the older part of Town, it was like entering a completely different world. The streets, if you can call them that, are all single lane and about as skinny as the width of a car. The homes and shops that line the streets combine to create a 20 foot wall, and make you feel like a mouse in a maze. Every single corner is a blind corner, and if you’re lucky there will be a nifty mirror to show you the cross traffic of cars and bikes. Unfortunately many don’t have this feature, so you need to stop and peak around the bend to avoid any collisions. If it weren’t for the Daiei store that is close to my apartment showing itself above the craziness, I would have never found my way back. All in all though, it was pretty awesome and something I will need to share with all of you via video at some point.

After jogging I decided to get some errands done and went to the grocery store. Who knew buying food could be such an intimidating experience, heh. I can read some Japanese, but trying to figure out what I was looking at in the store was near impossible. I finally managed to pick-up some neccessities, and even managed to pay for it all without incident. One thing that made me smile was finding the liquor section, and seeing a certain liquor from a certain movie; picture below. The rest of the day I pretty much just unpacked and got settled into the apartment. That night I met another one of Mike’s friends, Satomi, and along with Eric we just chilled and threw back some brewskies. All in all a pretty good day.

Here are a couple night shots from the balcony on Saturday the 8th.

say anything bad about Japanese people again (not that I have in the past). Imagine yourself getting on the last train from downtown after a night of drinking, but that train stops 3 stations from your home. If you are me, you ignore common sense and walk the remaining distance instead of taking a taxi. Needless to say, I somehow underestimated the work involved with walking from said station back home, and began an hour+ journey into the heart of Japan by myself, equipped with only a compass and a faint idea of which direction to go. After about 45 minutes of wandering, I fell upon an AM/PM store (like a 7/11), and proceeded to ask for directions. After another 25 minutes of “communication”, what am I presented with? Not more directions, but a worker from the konbini equipped with a pedal bicycle, ready to freaking take me all the way to my home station. When he rolled up I immediately tried to refuse the hospitality, but after bickering back and forth I finally accepted the fact that Japanese people are quite possibly the nicest people on the planet, and received a ride all the way home. I wanted to pay a large sum to show my gratitude, but ended up convincing said friend to take a small amount of money for my appreciation for the entirely unnecessary amount of work that he applied. Seriously, would this sort of thing happen anywhere else on planet Earth?

Edit: This was written immediately after getting back, so I was a little drunk…But the point is the same. Having some kid half my size insist on taking me to my home station, at 1:30 AM, on an old rusty bicycle, was easily the nicest thing any stranger has ever done for me. I am still a little shocked to be honest.

Alright, so after all the craziness involved with moving 6500 miles, I awoke the next morning with a refreshing 5 hours of sleep under my belt. Much to my dismay, the size of my bedroom was indeed a reality, and not some cruel dream. But since I have not exactly lived in penthouses in the past, I wasn’t too worried about it.

Seeing my first view of Miyoshi from the balcony was rather exciting. This town is pretty comparable to Hales Corners in relative size to surrounding cities, except there is over 36K people squeezed into about 15 square kilometers.

A few hours after waking up, my other roommate Eric awoke from his own slumber. We were both pretty hungry so we decided to go hit the sushi joint down the street. I had heard about conveyor-belt sushi restaurants, but actually going to one was a pretty cool experience in itself. You basically sit down at a table, and different plates of sushi move along the belt around the restaurant. If you see something you like you just pick it up and chow down, but if you are really craving some octopus and it doesn’t seem to be floating around anywhere, you get to use this nifty touch-screen. After placing your special order, your item is placed onto a red plate, and as it approaches your location it will begin to beep at you. As if sushi in constant motion and James Bond style plates weren’t enough, they even made the manner in which you discard your plates and pay for your food fun. There’s a little hole under the hot water spout (free tea) where you insert each finished plate. Since everything is 105 yen (about $1), the screen will count everything up and then you are presented with a bill from the waiter/waitress a minute later. The kicker is that for every 5th plate you get to play some sushi wheel of fortune to try and win some prizes. Technology aside, the food there is awesome, and at 105 yen a plate I’m sure I will be making several appearances over the coming weeks.

Typhoon and Izakaya goodness as Day 1 concludes next time…

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.