Well, I made it. Here's how:
The flight was rough, and definitely not one I am looking forward to doing again any time too soon. This year. This lifetime. As I said before, anyone who can sleep sitting up, or in any moving vehicle with ease, I envy them greatly.
We landed in Narita, and I proceeded to customs where I had my fingerprints scanned, picture taken and bags checked, all in accordance with new immigration laws. Despite only sleeping a little on the plane and being rather out of it I did OK, got my bags and went towards ABC movers, the company that moves your bags since everything in Japan is too small for you to do it yourself. I lugged my 120-some pounds of luggage along with my two carry-ons across the terminal, only to later realize there were carts one could use to move heavy baggage. Do'h!
Then, I hit a snag. When I gave the movers my address, they said it was lacking a room number, so I thought, "I'll just call the company!" Only problem was that I hadn't yet exchanged any of my money into Yen! So I did this, then went to a pay phone only to get put on hold for about 5 and a half minutes, leaving me only 30 seconds to talk to the person in charge who basically said "we are not the housing agency, so I don't know either." Great. By this point I was frustrated, but pressing onward I went to go buy something from a stand to get more change. Seeing a magazine rack, I thought: perfect, here's my opportunity to do something I've been waiting for years to do, buy a real friggin' issue of Shonen Jump! Except, as you probably gathered from the title, they don't sell it anywhere in the airport, as a lady kindly explained to me in Japanese. For anyone not aware, Shonen Jump is "the world' most popular manga magazine," featuring the latest weekly serializations of such international hits as Dragonball Z, Naruto and my personal favorite: One Piece. Anyway, I said screw it, bought some funky energy bar instead, came back to the pay phones and called again, and after being put on hold for another 5 minutes they tell me "just tell the movers to ask for you at the guest house, and they should find you." I tried to joke with the people at the counter and crossed my fingers, but the meaning of this is completely lost on a non-westerner.
I found the shuttle and took it to my hotel; Luckily that was free! To my surprise and chagrin however, the outskirts of Narita are fairly desolate by Japanese standards and there was nothing within walking distance of the hotel to go and see. Too tired to travel back to the airport to take a train into the city, I just crapped out in my bed. I slept about 3 hours (to help make up for the near 26 hours straight I'd been awake) and went to the dining hall to eat dinner. As I walked outside my room and fiddled with the lock however, I got my first taste of really feeling excluded for being a foreigner. I heard two little girls laughing, so I glanced down the hall and two japanese girls of what appeared to be 5 and 8 were heading toward the elevator. I turned that way and the little one said "dangerous!" in Japanese, then "safe" when I stopped and let them get on the elevator by themselves. It was innocent enough, and I realize that with my height I can intimidate a child of any ethnicity, but it kind of hurt my feelings just a bit. I'll get over it, or get used to it, hopefully both.
Looking at the dinner menu, and noting all the grave spelling errors such as "red vinagered," I chose the horse meal because my friend Ian had told me horse is delicious, and I believed it! The only problem was it turned out to be fried horse mackerel, some kind of funky fish and tartar sauce, which was pretty subpar for my first real meal in Japan. I bought an Asahi beer from the vending machine because I could, and proceeded back to my room. Asahi is cheap and roughly the equivalent of Molson Canadian in the states: it doesn't taste that good, but it gets the job done. I went to take a shower, because the whole trip plus the ordeal at the airport had left me sticky and soaked in sweat, a feeling I should probably get used to for the remainder of the summer here. So I passed out again and woke up repeatedly before figuring I couldn't sleep anymore around 4:30am. I thought: "well, if I can't get to sleep and I can't get breakfast until 6:30, I'll get another beer and watch some Japanese T.V.!" This proved to be exceedingly more entertaining than I could have possibly foreseen. I will recount in list format some of the things I saw:
-A medley of J-Pop music videos, the first of which had a chorus that went "monkey monkey" in Engrish, cuing a group of 5 girls in yellow dressed to instantly switch into red monkey suits.
-A commercial where 5 female reporters made intense faces to emulate athletic expressions, then held up their mics which caught fire like olympic torches
-A hair-loss commercial that starts with an old woman sprouting a giant mole and a 2 foot long hair out of her forehead, which she yanks repeatedly.
-Olympic coverage of the American basketball team kicking Australia's sorry butt, with japanese announcers who were cracking me up with phrases like: "Damn, that black guy
is really tall" in Japanese and "Naiso shootoh!" in Engrish
-Olympic coverage of the Japanese female ping pong tournament where a girl made ridiculous noises every time she won or lost a bout; She also served by bopping the ball with her forehead.
-Some kind of imitation sumo wrestling match in which two women - one average Japanese-size, the other a classic case of baby-got-back - tried to push each other out of the ring not stomach to stomach, but butt to butt. Hilarious.
-A behind-the scenes interview with "Alien Jones," Tommy Lee Jones' character in an ongoing series of ads in which he plays a space alien who drinks an energy drink. When interviewed, he said something like: "these commercials are great, fun to make, and funny. You also get a lot of presents!" I guess he forgot about the millions of dollars-part. Whatcha' doin with all that dough, Mr. Jones?
And that's just what I can remember. Seriously, I've condemned watching T.V. for all these years but the Japanese have some quality programming, and also seem to have significantly less commercials, but ones which are actually funny and entertaining.
I took another shower, got my things together and went to eat breakfast. This was in buffet format, which excited me greatly, and was also the first really good meal I'd eaten since I went to Pancho's with my Dad and Rich the night before I left. I had: 3 eggs, toast, bacon, sausage, miso soup, salmon (not boneless which caught me off-guard), some black japanese seaweed (which was surprisingly delicious), potatoes in three different formats and some fruit salad (tasted just like the canned stuff, probably was). The things I didn't try included 5 varieties of pickles, and dried sour plums. I would have taken pictures of this and a lot of other things but I am currently lacking a camera and cell phone, not including my macbook which can do both, but is a little clunky to be whipping out and snapping photos with.
I took the shuttle back to the airport, and caught the Narita Express to Shinjuku, where I was to meet some representative from my future employers. The train ride was smooth and rather interesting, actually. Oh, and right before getting on board I bit the bullet and bought Young Jump, one of the only other manga magazine I am currently interested in - they serialize Gantz, an intense sci-fi/horror manga about people forced to fight aliens. I couldn't really concentrate on a book, magazine or my DS, because to the left and right of me was the most intense display of urban sprawl I have ever seen in my life. Apartment buildings everywhere, a person to car ratio of what looks like 1:100, huge skyscrapers in Chiba and, much to my chagrin, giant posters advertising AEON and NOVA. The former is an English-teaching company which denied me a job - they are infamous for pulling stuff like unpaid overtime and not treating their employees so great, so it was just as well - and the latter is similar huge company that went bankrupt this past year due to embezzlement, leaving thousands of foreign teachers without pay for several months. The big thing was that as we kept chugging along - the train ride was almost two hours - the sprawl never stopped. It subsided at times and gave way to some rural areas between Narita and Tokyo, but really, it is just breathtaking how many people live in such a small area. I've known this for a long time, but seeing it in person and reading about it are so completely different. I guess this is the closest I've really come to "culture shock," although it was more like a feeling of just being really, really overwhelmed.
When we arrived in Shinjuku, I got really excited: Here was my first chance to explore, on foot, a downtown area of Japan for myself. I had over 4 hours of time to kill, as I wasn't meeting the company representative until 2, or 14:00 as they say here in Nippon, so i made my way casually through the station. It was huge, and when I finally got to the proper exit, I noted something very, very different from any NYC subway: people were scanning tickets to get out of the station! Not knowing this, I had left what I thought was a worthless ticket stub on the train. Realizing I'd made a mistake, I went to talk to the nearest station worker, but he spoke little to no english and only kept asking: "ticket. Ticket. Ticket?" And signaled for me to move out of the way. I found what appeared to be an officer, or perhaps a security guard, and upon explaining to him in Japanese that I had left my ticket on the train, he talked to the station worker for me. This was where it got weird: the station guy asked me to put, in a calculator, how much my ticket was. Why, I haven't a clue, but I typed in the 3310 yen and he said "Oh, OK," and signaled for me to go on through.
I was supposed to meet someone around 2 at a coffee shop in the station, but instead of that I figured hey, why not just impress them by walking to the company headquarters myself? Then I figured I'd have some time to walk around and explore, despite the two annoyingly heavy bags I was carrying: XBOX 360 in my backpack and my laptop, wii and other things in my leather suitcase. When I saw daylight however, I realized promptly that I had never printed out the instructions on how to get from east Shinjuku station to the company location! I asked around but no one seemed to have any idea who or what my company was. I also tried several coffee shops for internet service but none offered, which I thought was strange. Aren't internet cafes supposed to be huge in Japan? I ended up snagging a map and some directions (which later turned out to be wrong) to HQ from the information office at the train station, and made my way in what turned out to be the wrong direction towards what turned out to be the wrong location. I stopped for a burger and a chance to sit down in a nicely air-conditioned place, whose premiere item was a hot dog with chili in a soft taco shell. The burger was surprisingly excellent, and the service was very friendly - something I've heard about but had to experience for myself to believe, here in Japan. Even at fast food restaurants, people actually take pride in their job, which seems to be a lost art in America nowadays.
After talking to the pleasant folks who worked there I discovered my error in direction, and proceeded to head back across a main road toward the station. However, looking to my left, I saw on a building my employers' name in big red letters! This was in a totally different direction than the Shinjuku station dudes directions told me to go, and I was lucky to have spotted it. When I got to the building, I went inside and up the elevator, despite a total lack of any signs I figured hey, I'll just try all 9 floors until I find it! I quickly discovered why there were no real indications of business locations inside the building however - the signs outside were merely billboards! Feeling a tad dumb, I went back outside and looked more closely at the sign: it had directions on it saying (in Japanese) turn right at the pharmacy and we are right there! Doing that, I found headquarters, a task which amazed the teacher sitting in the lobby. "We usually have to send out rescue search parties for new teachers," he said. This made me feel rather happy, and I proceeded (there was a lot of proceeding done today, let me tell you) toward the personnel department, where they offered to take my bags off my hands, and told me to come back in a few hours. I knew I was early, so this was no surprise. I asked the trainer who escorted me out about any internet cafes, and he said try Tully's and Excelsior. The former had no wifi, and at the latter I asked in Japanese "can I use the internet with my own computer here?" The girl said yes, but as it turned out, after I got my coffee and settled into a nice, comfy chair with a fresh butt-print, she didn't really understand what I was asking, because there was no wifi. Sigh.
So, here I sat for a good hour typing out this entry and sipping on coffee - this place has a nice atmosphere, and now that it's lunch time it's packed with people on break, with light Japanese lounge music in the background, various conversations and the ubiquitous odor of cigarette smoke, a smell that I will have to reacquaint myself with. Let me elaborate: In New York, there were laws past in the last 5 years banning smoking in bars. Smoking sections in restaurants have been disappearing steadily in recent years due to the controversy of second-hand smoke as a cause of cancer. There is evidence going both ways, and in my opinion, the law did more to hurt American businesses than it did to protect American health, although not smelling like smoke after coming home from shows was a big plus for me when I was 18. Also, I have never puffed a tobacco cigarette in my life, nor will I ever.
In Japan, smoking is everywhere. I believe the rate of smoking amount males is something like 55%, which is one of the highest rates in the world. From what I understand, information regarding the safety concerns of soming were not released to the public until the 80's. Crazy.
On a completely unrelated note, one of the girls who just left the cafe had a bag that said "I am not a plastic bag" on it." My oh my, the wonders of Japan.
My laptop is about to die, so that's all for this entry. Hopefully I can get it posted on-line soon. じゃあ、みんあでさよなら！~ Well, later everyone!
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That was my entry written about 10 hours ago, completely intact save some spelling and grammar corrections. The rest of this day has been, how shall I say, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
After I left the coffee shop, I had some overpriced rice at a local shop, and asked the lady who worked there if there was a "Supaa" (Supermarket) nearby. She said yes, and when I asked her to repeat the name of it again she was kind enough to write it out for me. Upon my arrival there, I bought a few light items that wouldn't add to my already annoying load: Bread, Tabasco, bananas, pocky, and some dirt-cheap tuna rolls. I still had some time to kill before I was due back at "work" (hard to call it that yet, considering I'm on unofficial vacation until I start training on Tuesday), and I found a record store called "The Warehouse" that was advertising itself as punk/hardcore, so I checked it out. To my surprise, tons of vinyl there - sorry Rich, as much as I hate to admit it, records are coming back big and strong worldwide. I found a cd I actually wanted for $5 in the used section: Engineer - Suffocating The Artisan, actually the only cd by them I didn't yet own. Score!
Finding my way back to HQ, I was waiting by the elevator, sticky with sweat and using a free hand-fan with my company logo on it, when I realized I had trash in my pocket obstructing my ability to reach important things, like money. I saw the trash was just outside behind a door, so I opened it up and sure enough, there is my future boss holding my bag at the bottom of the stairs, next to a guy who must have been 6'5". He was an Australian, and as it turned out was leaving the company after 5 years of employment. A lot of hellos and goodbyes this time of year, I suppose, old faces out and new faces in. After being pointed in the right direction of my future home, Tobu-Nerima, I proceeded- Sigh. I proceeded to stop overusing the word proceeded. I hopped the trains and, after some confusion at the transfer point which involved me talking to a station attendant with the most high-pitched, squeaky voice in the possible history of all station attendants, I made it to Tobu-Nerima.
Now, I was supposed to be there by 3, but I arrived around 2:20. "No big deal" I thought, "I'll just go call this guy from the housing agency that I'm supposed to meet and tell him that I'm early." When I tried his number however, it was wrong. I tried calling HQ but got a busy signal, so I sighed and walked back to stand awkwardly in front of the station exit with my two big, bulky bags, bloated with electronics. Being the only white guy around and standing in front of a main area of entering and exiting is awkward if anything ever was, and here's a few things about that:
-The man across the road, apparently being paid to hand out flyers, is one of the first people I have ever witnessed fall asleep standing up.
-I got my first mean-looking "WTF, another freakin Gaijin (Foreigner)?! In my town?" look from an older dude.
-I saw another, older guy with what looked like liver spots level 50 on his face, something out of a scifi movie (or maybe just a really bad skin condition? Gosh, I'm so desensitized)
-Upon being bored and waiting, I was lightly swinging my hands back and forth when a dull thud hit my left. Of course a little kid ran right into it, and I felt a smidgen bad. Just a smidgen though.
When 3:15 came around, I had had enough. "Whatever happened to Japanese being super-ultra punctual?" I thought angrily. Sticky with sweat, lugging my now downright aggravating bags of video consoles that I just had to bring, I went to the payphone and dialed HQ. Keep in mind that by this time, considering that each phone call is 100 yen (roughly a dollar), I had spent almost 8 bucks just on freakin' phone calls. I explained my situation and read them the number, and sure enough it was wrong, so the boss says to call back in five minutes. Lug lug back to the exit, wait, lug lug back to the phone. "Well, that bit about the number being wrong is strange, but someone will be there within the next 20 minutes. If not, call me back." Lug lug, stand. I finally decide to whip out my DS - I had tried reading earlier but so many people walking literally inches from me was far too distracting to get into Dickens - and about 2 minutes into my game my man finally shows up. I contained my irritation and he explained about a traffic jam which held him up. He also turned out to be a really nice guy, showing me around and being generally very informative. He also spoke decent English, which was a nice break for me, and he said he did a year abroad in the UK.
Much to my delight, my apartment was in a quiet part of town, in a little 3-story building. It's bigger than I expected, right next to the pisser, and I don't have any direct neighbors, just ones down the hall. There is also a sink, fridge and hotpan right in it, so although kitchen and bathrooms are shared facilities, I can do a lot without even leaving my room. After going through all the boring paperwork, details about how earthquakes and man-eating termites aren't liabilities of the housing agency, we wrapped up and I waited for the arrival of my luggage, so I could charge mein comp and get on the internet, finally. I did this, made some calls to the parents, and was starving by this time so I went out with the intention of buying something cheap, but ended up spending 1000 yen (about 10 bucks) at a ramen shop.
OK, American ramen is what, dried noodles and a packet of flavoring? Japanese ramen is pure deliciousness, and besides being made right in front of you it includes delicious broth, a slice of pork, a slice of hard-boiled egg and some seaweed. That and another Ahashi ("EKUSUTURA DORAI," as the slogan goes) had me feeling OK. I made casual conversation in Japanese with the owner, and a nice enough guy who only seemed to have two teeth that weren't black or rotting in his mouth. I felt a little offended when the owner made some kind of comment in really quick Japanese to the other customer, something probably along the lines of "who the heck orders ramen and a beer?" But I'm trying to be tolerant, really. Once I got the impression that the owner had enough of my poor Japanese and random questions about the area I scooted, and prooooooactively mdae my way home, feeling way more juiced than a man should after only one beer and a meal. I guess that stuff really is like Molson Canadian: "extra strong" should be the slogan.
Still, taking some directions I got from the housing agent dude I went to the local "conbini" (convenience store) to buy some stuff, realized just how marked up it all was, and went out instead to the 100 yen store where I got some cheap soap, notebooks and garbage bags. Next stop, despite my feeling incredibly tired was the "depatoh" (department store) where I was completely blown away: 5 huge floors of consumer goodness, making Walmart look like a friggin' mom and pop shop! I was really too tired to look for everything I needed, but found some cheap beer, fish, and the latest volume of one piece manga for enjoyment and reading practice.
I sluggishly made my way home before typing out all this in a desperate fashion before I crash out on my new bed. Plans for tomorrow include buying a TV and maybe a camera at Akihabara (a part of Tokyo famous for its electronic stores), and relaxing. Saturday, Caliban and Loyal to the Grave at Club Asia in Shibuya. Expect many, many, many more pics in the future, with the advent of my upcoming super advanced Japanese camera.
Overall, I like it here.
"It's hard to know, where we should go, one hopes to find a way and, here's a hollow place where people come, to softly hum, songs that scare you most, believe me, I'm scared enough!" - Polar Bear Club
