2 Weeks In

See bottom for lots of pics!

Once again, a LOT has happened in the past week. Where do I begin.

First and foremost, I GOT A JOB!

Starting October 1st, I will be teaching business English for the company Linguage, an unpredictable combination of the words "link" and "language" (yes, I guess linguistics too).
I had only applied to a couple jobs before I started getting emails back from the companies, and I set up an interview for Thursday with one of them. Their office is in Shinjuku, about 25 minutes by subway, and then a nice 10 minute walk through a very crowded downtown shopping district. I was about 15 minutes early for the interview but I was greeted as soon as I walked in by the supervisor of instruction, Tomas Fuji. His english ability was incredible and the fact that he was so nice and easy to talk to made the whole process easier. The interview was pretty straight forward. After the usual questions, I was given the chance to do a demo lesson, where I had 10 minutes to prepare a class for 2 beginners, and it was my goal to teach them the difference between words like "usually" and "sometimes" and so on. I was nervous and stumbled a few times but overall the lesson went great, and Mr. Fuji welcomed me to the team shortly there after. I was ecstatic.

I figured everything would fall into place once I got a job, but it turns out I'm still in Japan, and everyone speaks Japanese. This was made especially apparent when I tried to open a bank account that same day. The man at City bank was not as proficient as Mr Fuji at english, so our google-translate guided conversation led me to realize I needed to get an Inkan (a stamp with my name on it). Conveniently enough, that was already on my list of things to do, so I went to the nearest Inkan-ya and picked up my very own stamp (a day later of course).
The banks were closed until Tuesday so I had some time to relax before opening an account for my NEW JOB!

I decided to celebrate by going out every single night that weekend (I probably would have felt guilty if I didn't get the job, since all the plans were made ahead of time haha, but for once I got lucky).

Friday night I went out with Simon and the rest of the Borderless House to an Indian food restaurant. Cultures were colliding over drinks and foods and conversation from all over the world. Even with 2 native Japanese speakers, we still managed to accidentally order way to much food, but good times were had and the atmosphere was great.

On Saturday I met up with another English enthusiast over drinks in Jinbocho. We went to a pretty famous Takoyaki restaurant (deep fried octopus balls), and ordered lots of beer and balls. Unfortunately my first experience with Japanese takoyaki, as delicious as it was, was a traumatic one. The insides of these Takoyaki were a mixture of octopus, sauce, bread, and liquid hot magma. I can still feel the burn to this day... But I had a lot of fun with Yoshi as she laughed at my misfortune. I learned a lot of things that day, including apologizing for my lateness and getting lost, the proper use of "yonin" (so that) and most importantly, about Izakayas, which are eating and drinking establishments with a possibility for an all-you-can-drink option for 1000 yen (10$). Needless to say, we made arrangements to go on the next available date.

Sunday was a much more sight-seeing filled day with a conversation exchange friend of mine. I took the train to Asakusa, and waited patiently at the 1A exit for Mio to arrive. Future goers beware that there is more than one 1A exit for Asakusa station. How cruel of them. Hour long delays aside, our first stop was a very authentic Katsu (pork cutlet) restaurant. We couldn't see in, we weren't allowed to wait inside, and when we finally received an invite, our shoes were not extended the same courtesy. But the wait was worth it. The atmosphere was some homely, and the ground level tables and pillow seats made the quaint shop almost worth the 25$ piece of meat. I had the cheese stuffed cutlet with miso soup and rice, which was very good, although I think it was just a one time experience for me. We then walked through the Asakusa shrine, past a lot of touristy shops and tents, to the main shrine, where I supposedly cleared myself of all illness by patting smoke on my head, SUGOI!

When Tuesday rolled around, I went back to the City bank, Inkan and translator phone in hand, and set up my very own Japanese bank account. Now all I have to do is count the days until I start making that yen.

Ganbarimasu!

On a side note, meeting all these language exchange students has been fun, but a lot of the time it didn't really feel natural, since we are both there to help each other get better at our language of choice, and not just to keep each other company. But yesterday I got to hang out with a half Austrailian, half Japanese gamer, and that was the most fun I've had since coming to Japan. We just talk about whatever, we walked around Shibuya and went for the best food I've had, possibly ever, at a really cool Izakaya. He knew the area inside and out, so he just kept suggesting things to do and I was like, hell ya, drinks and billiards, fro-yo, rhythm games at the arcade, lets do it. And he knew all the best places to go so the night was a lot more fruitful than my Asakusa adventure haha. I even learned some Japanese on the side. If you want the house's draft beer, you can just say the Japanese word for raw, which is "Nama". I love nama. I think it has replaced "atatamemimasu" (please heat it up)  as my new favourite phrase.

 Elevator to Linguage

 

  Linguage Lobby

 

Asakusa 

 

Katsu-Ya 

 

Inside the Katsu-Ya 

 

My Katsu 

 

Asakusa Shrine Entrance 

 

Asakusa Tourist Central 

 

Asakusa Shrine 

 

Asakusa side Shrine 

 

Inside the Shrine 

 

Downtown Shibuya 

 

Izakaya Food (amazing photgraphic skills) 

1 Week In

Mina-san, Konnichiwa!

So the past week has been amazing. Before I came to Japan, I did a lot of research into Japanese culture, and what it would be like to live here as a foreigner. But there are some things that you honestly can't know until you experience them, and I want to touch on them before talking about what I've been doing.

Let me start off by saying, everyone that I've tried to talk to (shop clerks, friends, etc.) has been really, really nice, and they never seem to get frustrated because I can't speak Japanese very well. They just smile or laugh and try really hard to understand my meaning (which usually after I start saying random words as clues they understand and are eager to continue). I find this really refreshing when I think about some people in NA who just get mad or give up if someone's english isn't up to par with their standards, which, in my experience, happens quite a bit.

Simon also noticed a reoccurring theme in the way we were commenting on Japanese technology. I knew beforehand that Japan (in the cities) was ahead of the curve, but we found ourselves saying, "Wow, that's such a good idea" on many different occasions. To name a few, when you flush the toilet, there is a tap on top of it that begins to run so you can wash your hands, and this water is used to fill the toilet. How efficient. Another one along the lines of cleanliness is that McDonalds has a hand washing station next to the door as you leave, grease be gone! The country is just so convenient, and its beginning to shine through the more I try new things.

Anyways back to some cultural differences, they always said that the Japanese keep to themselves in public, because they don't want to be a Meiwaku (a bother). When I first heard about the "train molestors", I always shocked, and wondered why the women wouldn't just call out for help. But after being here for a week, I'm starting to get why they might just stand in silence. Everyone really, REALLY keeps to themselves. Even in restaurants, a lot of the people will just sit and eat, or perhaps have a really quiet conversation. When Simon and I go out it feels like we are the only ones conversing in the world. I wonder if we just look like a couple of loud americans.

I know I rambled a lot but I really wanted to express just what it feels like to be a foreigner, and it may take a lot of change before I start feeling like I fit in (if at all). So back to the blog.

The past week has actually been quite busy for me. I applied to a bunch of English teaching jobs, and even heard back from a few of them already. They seem really eager to meet me and want to set up interviews for this week. I'm pretty excited and also a little nervous, since one of the interviews requires a demo lesson. But then I remember that all I have to do is speak my native tongue and follow the rules set out by by TEFL class and I should be fine.

To prepare, Simon and I ventured to find a Uniclo the other day to pick up some spiffy collared shirts. After getting very lucky with our aimless wandering, we bought some cheap, stylish shirts while listening to vulgar english music that went seemingly unnoticed to the non-english speakers of the store.

In the process of applying for interviews, I also signed up for a site called "Conversation Exchange". Since I don't really know anyone here, I thought it would be a good to meet some Japanese locals who can speak a little English. Right away I was receiving messages and responses from a variety of japanese-english enthusiasts, and I even met up with one them yesterday over tea. Having friends is going to make this whole experience a lot easier, and yesterday was the most fun I've had since arriving.

Not everything is looking up Mil-house however. A week straight of eating from the konbini food and mcdonalds has taken its toll on our stomachs. The food isn't particularly unhealthy, but it doesn't leave you wanting more. So to change things up, I went shopping at a grocery store and bought what I believed to be ingredients for curry, but once again, it was all in this foreign language, and the only successful ingredient was rice. Cooking is hard. So after that we transitioned back into konbini bentos, but like Simon says, "after I eat this meal, I feel like I have nothing to look forward to in life". He says it all in good fun but there is some truth to it. I learned a useful phrase from my conversation exchange friend. "Chanto tabenakuya dame", You must eat properly.

Also, side-bar. For a country with basically no garbage on the streets, there are absolutely no garbage disposals. I don't know where to put something when I'm out, so if you buy a vending machine drink, you better be prepared to carry it all the way home and wait until garbage day haha (I learned this the hard way).

So that concludes my week 1 experience. On the list of things to do... attend the job interviews, meet more people from language exchange, and for the love of god, chanto tabemasu!

Day 5

In an attempt to regulate my sleep schedule from its' seize-the-2am morals, I decided to nap for a short while around noon yesterday. Not unlike my other unflappable strategies to accustom myself to life here in Japan, it inevitably ended in failure (when will I learn). So I help myself to a nice 11pm breakfast and spend next few hours waiting for my roommate to catch me watching J-Dramas at 5am in the common room ... as she came home from late night Karaoke-ing with friends.  We had a really nice meet and greet after that, until she retired to bed and I was left waiting for sunrise and the second half of my day to begin.

The plan for the day was to meet with a language exchange friend of mine; Masae, at some point in the morning, somewhere in Tokyo. After exchanging hopeful facebook instructions with Masae, Simon and I depart for our first one directional trip on the subway. When we arrived, there were probably 20+ ticket booths in the station, with N-S-E-W ends and several similarly named lines. But luck was finally with us, FINALLY, because the first terminal we entered was actually the right one. Of course we couldn't help but wander the entire mall-sized station to eliminate any chance of a doppelganger terminal hosting a young Japanese language exchange student.

Three strong, we went to have some Japanese curry (another check for my japucket-list) at a humble restaurant that seemed to take the best cafe ideas from more than one of the Back to the Future movies. I got lots of chances to practice my Japanese, and with Masae there to help me, I felt more confident than ever. Unfortunately my skills did not follow my confidence up the ladder and I fell on my face more than once throughout the day. But it was still an amazing experience.

With a quick stop at a pseudo-accessible iPod repair store atop a quaint cafe, we headed for Harajuku, a popular tourist spot known for its' shopping and scenery. And I must say it delivered on both fronts. Takeshita Street (see pictures below) was described by an anonymous source as "gomihito"which roughly translates into people garbage, and the metaphor really started to make sense as we joined the sea of said gomihito.

We stopped at several places on Takeshita Street. My favourite, for anyone who knows me, was the amazing candy shoppe dubbed "Candy a Go-Go", while Simon was more partial to the hilarious times had at Purikura (pictures coming soon). These are the rather famous, high-tech photo booths that attract more Japanese school girls than a surprise Bieber concert ever could.

Emerging from the garbarrage of people on Takeshita Street to the open air of the Meiji Jingu shrines was such a breath of fresh air and even water. Seriously, we drank water from an old style washing vat outside the main shrine in a very tedious, almost religious method. The grounds were incredibly well kept, with lush greenery that appeared to be trimmed and styled by either jet pack operators or very, VERY tall people. I can't be sure, but it really was a spectacle, and among all the beautiful shrines and forestry, we got to witness a traditional japanese wedding as they marched through the main shrine into the garden. Passing by the ancient mosaic of sake jars again on the way back, we began to say our goodbyes to Masae, who we couldn't thank enough for touring us through the best of Harujuku before leaving for Kenya for 6 months. It was an amazing day, and it was all thanks to her.

The long awaited Monday is just around the corner, and Simon and I will be picking up our Alien Registration Cards and cell phones first thing tomorrow morning.

Ganbarimasu!

Day 3

Once again, my day begins at 3am, after a long and comfortable sleep atop my futon palace. Wide awake and raring to go, it`s a short 4 hours until Simon and I depart for our second attempt at conquering Tokyo Metro. On the list of things to buy in Akihabara, a laptop and cellphone were high on my list of priorities. I had once again done my research on which subway we needed to take and where we needed to go, but once again I was ill prepared.

For some reason, with no time constraints whatsoever, we randomly decided to travel in Tokyo in the middle of transit rush hour. It seemed that a majority (if not all) people in Japan have a tap-and-go transit card, which we had heard about from our landlord the day before. We both really wanted to get these cards to make our lives easier, and part of me knew it wasnt going to be as easy as buying a single ticket.

There were 3 machines, 2 of which had pictures of 2 different cards, Passmo and Suica. With a 50/50 shot I decided to test my luck with the passmo card. 2000 yen, 2 cards, 1 lost reciept, a confused tokyo metro employee and a broken passmo card dispenser were among the things that fell victim to my Gaijinitis (foreigners disease). Simon, my trusty "waits for me to get it right before trying" partner, was for some reason much more efficient in his escapades. So we walked down to the subways, and travelled in a classic 1 stop back, 5 stops forward fashion with the help of 2 very coordinated transit commissioners manning the gates to the east/west stations. At this point we knew we had to transfer but it was only 1 stop north and neither of us were feeling the confidence for round 2. So we surfaced.

Akihabara really is everything I was expecting. Even though we arrived well before most of the shops were open, the atmosphere was electric. We had a quick meal at Mos Burger (which incidentally was one of the restaurants I really wanted to try here in Japan, and we walked in by sheer luck) and then stopped by some arcades before arriving at Softmac, which I can only describe as a multi level Best Buy.

Cell phones were first and foremost our most desired piece of technology, so we b-lined it for the Keitai section. The employees were very helpful, and after sifting through their many translation strategies (including phone apps and a 3 way game of telephone) we were almost ready to sign the papers for our new best friends when they realized we didn't have anything with our address on it. Better luck next time, so we went to the other sections and drowned our sorrows with laptops and tvs.

Electronics in hand, we were exhausted and on route to the station when we were pulled aside by representatives of Japan TV and interviewed about our favourite animes. I got to do an awesome impression of a Kamehameha, and Simon was praised for his extensive knowledge of the field. After that we were absolutely otsukare (a very common Japanese word for exhausted). So the day had come to an end, ... at 2pm.

It wasn't the most successful day of shopping, and we may have came home with a few items we didn't mean to (I had accidentally purchased crown glasses from Mcdonalds when trying to upsize our small-sized medium drinks to medium-sized large drinks), but overall it was an amazing first experience, and we plan on going back tomorrow to retrieve the illusive japanese Keitai.

Ganbarimasu!

Day 2

After spending 5 hours waiting through the morning, 7am finally rolled around and we checked out of Nikko Hotel. With a swift trip back to the wrong end of Narita Airport, we followed the bottom half of the signs to navigate to the lower levels, where we had a nice young lady convince the very Japanese ticket machine to allow us passage to tokyo.

For about 2700 yen (28$), we spent the next hour and 40 minutes on one of the most comfortable train rides I've ever been on. The scenery was great, even the trolley food was oishii! (delicious for you westerners) Everything seemed to be going our way, ... until we arrive at Tokyo station.

It was my belief at this time that it was a short, 30 minute subway to kikukawa station, which meant we would arrive 30 minutes before our landlord at the meeting spot. And I may have been correct, but what I did not (seriously) account for was the massive confusion that comes with navigating one of the most intricate subway systems in the world with nothing but a pdf and a rudimentary understanding of the dominant language.

By looking at the map, it was apparent we had to ride the red "m" line north, then transfer over and take the green line east to kikukawa. It was not apparent however that there are also railway lines in the mix of the madness I thought I had conquered. So we walked for about 20 minutes to what felt like the other side of the city and arrived at the red "m" line. This was the railway, not the subway. oops. So by this point time had become an issue and I was ready to swallow what pride I had left and ask for directions. I had a very exciting game of charades with a tokyo transit officer and managed to get broken English directions as my prize for winning. Simon and I frantically followed them to another corner of the city to the boarding platform aimed at Narita Airport. Shit. Wrong again.

By this point it was almost 10am, and we knew we would be late, so with no more knowledge of how the subway system works, we thought we should cut our loses and head to the surface, where the taxis could guide us to our presumably upset landlord.

Turns out surfacing is a feat in itself, and after several turmoils (including, but not limited to arriving at a train platform and pleading to a toll booth operator to let us leave) we managed to finally arrive at the taxi section of Tokyo station, where we patiently waited in line (for a taxi?) for 10 minutes. The pleasant surprise about our failure of a trip was that the cabs were really cheap, and kikukawa was fairly close, so we were only about 30 minutes late and 2000 yen poorer (20$), which according to our confirmed chuckling landlord was not even close to the record times he's had to wait in the past.

After that everything went really well. We chatted a lot with the landlord and went through all the paperwork, and after all was said and done, Simon even attempted his first solo mission to the atm, which also ended in failure but hey, we live and we learn.

Tomorrow, we go shopping in akihabara for some serious shit, not just hangers and spatulas like we did today.

Ganbarimasu!

Day 1

Japan is amazing. I arrived in Narita at 415pm (Tokyo time), and spent my first hour or so here wandering around the airport.

Everything was really accessible, and pretty much everything at the airport had an English option. Even the wifi, which after I spent countless minutes navigating the Japanese interface, had a translate to English option (which I didn't even notice until Simon logged on in record time).
After buying a power converter for Simons laptop (which ended up being the wrong one lol), we stepped outside into the extremely hot Japanese weather (they weren't kidding) and took a shuttle bus to our hotel. I had a chance to practice my Japanese a bit in the airport when I was asking for directions to the bus terminal and the electronics shop. I was nervous so my accent sounded really thick (I could tell), but the employees were really nice and directed us without issue).

By the time we checked in it was 6pm, and I was exhausted. My clockwork sleep schedule in Canada never prepared me for this jet lag, so I basically went straight to sleep upon arrival (sleeping on the plane was really touch and go). The room is very nice, a kind of mix between Japanese and Western style (hopefully I can upload some pictures), and there's even a Bidet, which I must admit I was too afraid to use haha (maybe in the morning). We turned on some Japanese tv and winded down for the day.

So after a nice 6 hour snooze, I find myself wide awake at 1230 am, ready to start a new day. Oh man. I can't sleep anymore so I get dressed and begin my midnight wander of the hotel in seek of food and entertainment. I stumbled upon the only open store in the lobby, a "conbini", and bought some very Japanese looking food. Again I hope I can upload the pictures but that might have to wait until I get a laptop. Lets just say I had no idea what was waiting for me inside the rice triangles but it tasted great.

And such was my first day in Japan. in 6 hours we check out and have our first attempt at navigating the Tokyo transit, because we need to make it to Kikukawa by 10am this morning to meet our landlord/lady.

Ganbarimasu!