Japan Week 1
Here's my write-up of my first week in Japan. It's 2000 words long so make sure you're sitting comfortably. Links to pictures included.
There’s something about Heathrow airport that makes me feel sick. Possibly it’s the rush of people heading in all directions, possibly the fact that every time I go there I seem to be in a zombified state, having not slept the previous night. Anyway, it was no different this time. Checking in was the usual boring wait in line, where your IQ slowly leaks out of your ears. In fact, it’s just like the Henry Rollins sketch “ Airport Hell”. I was checking in, when the obviously blind girl at the check-in desk seemed totally oblivious to the VISA staring her in the face. She seemed intent on my certificate of eligibility, and kept telling me that I needed a visa. “ I’ve got one”, I replied, pointing at the page. She looked at it, looked at me like I was some kind of moron, and then got up from her seat and wandered away.
“ You know you’re in deep shit when the lady leaves”, says Henry, and suddenly I felt my stomach fall away in panic. What if the Japanese Embassy got it all wrong, and put, not my Visa in my passport, but just some stupid piece of official looking paper instead. I was running things over in my head - was there anything else I should have brought with me? Was I going to fly to the other side of the world only to be turned back by a grumpy immigration official (have you ever met a pleasant one)? After a few minutes she came back, checked my baggage, told me I was 9kg in excess and that I owed KLM £108! From one sick feeling to another as I realised that I had two cards on me, both of which had been declined in the previous week, despite there being money in the accounts. I paid up and went for tea.
I was accompanied to the airport by Gideon and my parents, and met by Oumim who gave me a lovely farewell card and a pen with a ladybird on. Unfortunately she had to go back home, so I saw her for all of 5 minutes, which was a shame. I think she’s heading back to Thailand this weekend too.
Farewells were rather tearfully said, and then I had to go through security. Because I quite obviously look like a terrorist, or some sort of drugs mule, I was subjected to a ‘random’ security scan. This doesn’t involve KY and latex gloves, merely standing in front of a carpeted screen and told to stand in a variety of uncomfortable positions. It was the boots that did it. Voltaire says in “What is Goth?” that he discovered that walking through an airport looking vaguely abnormal is bound to get you bent over, so he tried a suit and was not bothered the whole way. I will do this next time.
Plane journeys are plane journeys, and we all know what they’re like so I’ll skip through to Tokyo, where I was met by my trainer and the other trainee teacher. I had to repack my suitcases, as I was told to send one on ahead to Ina. This was a slightly irritating and embarrassing affair, as I’d spent so much time packing, and people were going to get glimpses of my underwear, potions and various items I felt were necessary to bring with me. All of which seem stupid and unnecessary when you’re faced with the prospect of rearranging them.
The train from Narita to Tokyo was interesting. I was woozy from lack of sleep, and it seemed that the area surrounding the airport was just like ever other airport I’ve ever been to. Was I in Boston? Was I in Heathrow? Who knew? The first thing that made it clear I was in Japan was the architecture. There’s initially nothing that makes it stand out, more the arrangement of apartment blocks, which seem to have been slotted in the gaps between other buildings facing in different directions. Then the appearance of a temple in the middle of all this urban sprawl, of houses forced in-between each other, roads knotting themselves into disorientating balls, is strange in its stalwart, ornate presence.
Tokyo was as expected, bustling. The trip through seems rather a blur. I do recall almost falling backwards at one point as I could barely stand up. We checked into our hotel and I showered and fell asleep for a couple of hours.
Once rested I felt energetic enough to take a walk around Gotanda, the area of Tokyo we were staying in. I was evening, and dark, but the tall building about me were pulsing their day-glow lights into the night to the auto-chatter of talking sidewalk adverts. Above, from Gotanda station came the ice-cream van ring of singsong announcements and their associated jingles. Traffic noise, beeping horns, the bird-like chirrup of crossing signals. The noise is curious in its musicality, its constant bombardment, and casual distraction. No wonder so many people on the subway wear earphones.
On my second night in Tokyo I met up Yusuke, one of my former London students. We agreed to meet at Ikebukuro station at 9.30pm. Not only was I late from my appointment at the Apple store in Ginza (that’s another tale), we had not agreed which exit we would meet at. Ikebukuro has four. I tried west and east, before heading to the north exit where I watched on the hip kids walking past me. I felt mightily untrendy standing there waiting, and eventually decided to try Yusuke’s mobile phone. A few minutes later he and his friend Chihoku came in sight and whisked me away from beer and food at an izakaiya. Pubs, in the English sense, don’t seem to exist in Japan, the closest you’ll get is this cross between a bar and restaurant. And it is unlike any pub you’ve been to.
“Irashimase!” they shout as you enter (and as they do in every trading establishment), and that’s just the beginning of it. You order beer, they shout “Sapporo!” across the room to the bar. When you want some attention you yell “Sumimasen!”, and they throw back a rousing “Hai!” Strange as it may seem, this noise, as do the many other noises of Tokyo, make for amusing background noise, and the front of house staff seem to be a hardened but courteous bunch.
Yusuke and Chihoku kindly ordered a great selection of veggie food on my behalf (my ability to read Japanese is limited to about 5 minutes per word) - salad, natto omelette, soba, tempura lotus root, cucumber in umeboshi sauce and onigiri… oh, and sake (of course). As you might say in Japanese: gochisosama - it was a real feast.
On the way back home Yusuke taught me to say “It’s fucking cold” in Japanese, which I thought was hilarious as I’d never heard him swear before. It was a lovely night out, and I was glad to see a familiar face and experience one of the anonymous little places I walked past so often.
One of the things I’ve noticed since I got here is how easily one can get upset about the smallest of things. It’s little frustrations that contribute to culture shock, not just the enormous language barrier, though the bigger ones are much more obvious to spot. On my first night in Tokyo I discovered that my iPod and my Powerbook weren’t working. The iPod isn’t such a big deal, but it’s a nuisance. The Powerbook is another one of those situations that brings one out in a cold sweat with panic. My whole LIFE is on my baby - addresses, music, my DVD player, my writing - so the thought of not being able to access it was not something worth entertaining. I was up most of the night worrying about it and at 3am was in the hotel foyer on the internet trying to find the Apple store in Tokyo. The following night I hurried up to Ginza, having to navigate the idiosyncrasies of the subway system, and was overjoyed to exit the station to find the Apple sign glowing into the night in front of me. Even better, the guys at the Genius bar speak English. It transpired that my memory card had come loose in the Powerbook, and that the hard-drive had had some sort of fit in my iPod. We got them working in the shop, but when I got home I found that the Powerbook was all broken again! So I was back in Ginza the following night. It appears that the memory slot is damaged. I had to spend £10 on DVDs to back up my hard drive (it was that or £100 for an external hard-drive). My writing and photos are at least safe now. I couldn’t get the iTunes smaller than 11GB so I’ll have to take my chances. It’s only temporarily fixed though, so I need to send it off at some point to be fixed. I don’t want to part with it, so I’m going to ride it out as long as possible.
Technical catastrophes aside, the following evening me and Luke (the other trainee teacher) took a wander around Shinjuku. We had no idea where we were going so wandered in circles for much of the time. It’s another busy place, much like Ikebukuro, but the kids hanging about have a slightly more alternative edge to them. Opposite one of the station entrances we watched a rock band busking while all about and above them huge TV screens blasted out music and adverts in garish primary colours. People hung about in oversized coats advertising restaurants while less-than-innocent-looking men in suits lingered at crossroads. Down streets glowing with McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks we eventually found ourselves in the ‘Soho’ of Shinjuku, except that the wares available are not so subtly advertised. A young pseudo-policeman in YMCA-style PVC cap stood on one street corner singing and drumming up business; salary men stepped unconsciously out of strip joints and bouncers stood guard outside numerous anonymous clubs.
I’ve mentioned that little things can be thoroughly depressing, but equally they can be the most uplifting. Buying a ticket on the subway, negotiating your way round a soba bar menu, ordering a beer and asking for a bill - all these are tiny little successes. Mostly, my uplifting experiences have been in Ina. The first success was getting off the bus at the right stop. The second was managing to buy food in a supermarket, the next, finding my way to the shopping mall and buying a pair of work shoes today. There have been small annoyances. Not being able to get my heating to work, or the gas stove. But I’ve found that when I start getting frustrated about these things, I have to look out the window.
Ina is in the middle of two mountain ranges, the Southern and Central Alps. Though I’m told it doesn’t get as much snow as the cities to the north, it does get bitterly cold. I wasn’t really sure what kind of view to expect when I got here. I had images of hills, and mountains in the distance, but I didn’t expect what I saw out of the window yesterday morning. It’s pretty awe-inspiring. I took myself for a long walk yesterday (okay, I had company - a stinking hangover) and walked up a long hill and found myself with quite a good view of the mountains. Unfortunately the sun was directly behind them so I couldn’t take a picture.
I’m quite excited to be here. It’s nice to be away from the hectic pace of Tokyo, and to be able to make my own dinner (Yasuko helped me turn the gas on), a cup of tea and snuggle up in a warm room (I also got Yasuko to translate the air-con handset for me).
Sometimes it gets a bit lonely. It’s lonely when you’re cold and hungry and could do with a phone, but I think I’ve got that figured out now. The next big challenge is to get my alien registration card, open a bank account and get a phone. I move to a new apartment in three weeks time, so that’ll also be one to add to the list.
There’s something about Heathrow airport that makes me feel sick. Possibly it’s the rush of people heading in all directions, possibly the fact that every time I go there I seem to be in a zombified state, having not slept the previous night. Anyway, it was no different this time. Checking in was the usual boring wait in line, where your IQ slowly leaks out of your ears. In fact, it’s just like the Henry Rollins sketch “ Airport Hell”. I was checking in, when the obviously blind girl at the check-in desk seemed totally oblivious to the VISA staring her in the face. She seemed intent on my certificate of eligibility, and kept telling me that I needed a visa. “ I’ve got one”, I replied, pointing at the page. She looked at it, looked at me like I was some kind of moron, and then got up from her seat and wandered away.
“ You know you’re in deep shit when the lady leaves”, says Henry, and suddenly I felt my stomach fall away in panic. What if the Japanese Embassy got it all wrong, and put, not my Visa in my passport, but just some stupid piece of official looking paper instead. I was running things over in my head - was there anything else I should have brought with me? Was I going to fly to the other side of the world only to be turned back by a grumpy immigration official (have you ever met a pleasant one)? After a few minutes she came back, checked my baggage, told me I was 9kg in excess and that I owed KLM £108! From one sick feeling to another as I realised that I had two cards on me, both of which had been declined in the previous week, despite there being money in the accounts. I paid up and went for tea.
I was accompanied to the airport by Gideon and my parents, and met by Oumim who gave me a lovely farewell card and a pen with a ladybird on. Unfortunately she had to go back home, so I saw her for all of 5 minutes, which was a shame. I think she’s heading back to Thailand this weekend too.
Farewells were rather tearfully said, and then I had to go through security. Because I quite obviously look like a terrorist, or some sort of drugs mule, I was subjected to a ‘random’ security scan. This doesn’t involve KY and latex gloves, merely standing in front of a carpeted screen and told to stand in a variety of uncomfortable positions. It was the boots that did it. Voltaire says in “What is Goth?” that he discovered that walking through an airport looking vaguely abnormal is bound to get you bent over, so he tried a suit and was not bothered the whole way. I will do this next time.
Plane journeys are plane journeys, and we all know what they’re like so I’ll skip through to Tokyo, where I was met by my trainer and the other trainee teacher. I had to repack my suitcases, as I was told to send one on ahead to Ina. This was a slightly irritating and embarrassing affair, as I’d spent so much time packing, and people were going to get glimpses of my underwear, potions and various items I felt were necessary to bring with me. All of which seem stupid and unnecessary when you’re faced with the prospect of rearranging them.
The train from Narita to Tokyo was interesting. I was woozy from lack of sleep, and it seemed that the area surrounding the airport was just like ever other airport I’ve ever been to. Was I in Boston? Was I in Heathrow? Who knew? The first thing that made it clear I was in Japan was the architecture. There’s initially nothing that makes it stand out, more the arrangement of apartment blocks, which seem to have been slotted in the gaps between other buildings facing in different directions. Then the appearance of a temple in the middle of all this urban sprawl, of houses forced in-between each other, roads knotting themselves into disorientating balls, is strange in its stalwart, ornate presence.
Tokyo was as expected, bustling. The trip through seems rather a blur. I do recall almost falling backwards at one point as I could barely stand up. We checked into our hotel and I showered and fell asleep for a couple of hours.
Once rested I felt energetic enough to take a walk around Gotanda, the area of Tokyo we were staying in. I was evening, and dark, but the tall building about me were pulsing their day-glow lights into the night to the auto-chatter of talking sidewalk adverts. Above, from Gotanda station came the ice-cream van ring of singsong announcements and their associated jingles. Traffic noise, beeping horns, the bird-like chirrup of crossing signals. The noise is curious in its musicality, its constant bombardment, and casual distraction. No wonder so many people on the subway wear earphones.
On my second night in Tokyo I met up Yusuke, one of my former London students. We agreed to meet at Ikebukuro station at 9.30pm. Not only was I late from my appointment at the Apple store in Ginza (that’s another tale), we had not agreed which exit we would meet at. Ikebukuro has four. I tried west and east, before heading to the north exit where I watched on the hip kids walking past me. I felt mightily untrendy standing there waiting, and eventually decided to try Yusuke’s mobile phone. A few minutes later he and his friend Chihoku came in sight and whisked me away from beer and food at an izakaiya. Pubs, in the English sense, don’t seem to exist in Japan, the closest you’ll get is this cross between a bar and restaurant. And it is unlike any pub you’ve been to.
“Irashimase!” they shout as you enter (and as they do in every trading establishment), and that’s just the beginning of it. You order beer, they shout “Sapporo!” across the room to the bar. When you want some attention you yell “Sumimasen!”, and they throw back a rousing “Hai!” Strange as it may seem, this noise, as do the many other noises of Tokyo, make for amusing background noise, and the front of house staff seem to be a hardened but courteous bunch.
Yusuke and Chihoku kindly ordered a great selection of veggie food on my behalf (my ability to read Japanese is limited to about 5 minutes per word) - salad, natto omelette, soba, tempura lotus root, cucumber in umeboshi sauce and onigiri… oh, and sake (of course). As you might say in Japanese: gochisosama - it was a real feast.
On the way back home Yusuke taught me to say “It’s fucking cold” in Japanese, which I thought was hilarious as I’d never heard him swear before. It was a lovely night out, and I was glad to see a familiar face and experience one of the anonymous little places I walked past so often.
One of the things I’ve noticed since I got here is how easily one can get upset about the smallest of things. It’s little frustrations that contribute to culture shock, not just the enormous language barrier, though the bigger ones are much more obvious to spot. On my first night in Tokyo I discovered that my iPod and my Powerbook weren’t working. The iPod isn’t such a big deal, but it’s a nuisance. The Powerbook is another one of those situations that brings one out in a cold sweat with panic. My whole LIFE is on my baby - addresses, music, my DVD player, my writing - so the thought of not being able to access it was not something worth entertaining. I was up most of the night worrying about it and at 3am was in the hotel foyer on the internet trying to find the Apple store in Tokyo. The following night I hurried up to Ginza, having to navigate the idiosyncrasies of the subway system, and was overjoyed to exit the station to find the Apple sign glowing into the night in front of me. Even better, the guys at the Genius bar speak English. It transpired that my memory card had come loose in the Powerbook, and that the hard-drive had had some sort of fit in my iPod. We got them working in the shop, but when I got home I found that the Powerbook was all broken again! So I was back in Ginza the following night. It appears that the memory slot is damaged. I had to spend £10 on DVDs to back up my hard drive (it was that or £100 for an external hard-drive). My writing and photos are at least safe now. I couldn’t get the iTunes smaller than 11GB so I’ll have to take my chances. It’s only temporarily fixed though, so I need to send it off at some point to be fixed. I don’t want to part with it, so I’m going to ride it out as long as possible.
Technical catastrophes aside, the following evening me and Luke (the other trainee teacher) took a wander around Shinjuku. We had no idea where we were going so wandered in circles for much of the time. It’s another busy place, much like Ikebukuro, but the kids hanging about have a slightly more alternative edge to them. Opposite one of the station entrances we watched a rock band busking while all about and above them huge TV screens blasted out music and adverts in garish primary colours. People hung about in oversized coats advertising restaurants while less-than-innocent-looking men in suits lingered at crossroads. Down streets glowing with McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks we eventually found ourselves in the ‘Soho’ of Shinjuku, except that the wares available are not so subtly advertised. A young pseudo-policeman in YMCA-style PVC cap stood on one street corner singing and drumming up business; salary men stepped unconsciously out of strip joints and bouncers stood guard outside numerous anonymous clubs.
I’ve mentioned that little things can be thoroughly depressing, but equally they can be the most uplifting. Buying a ticket on the subway, negotiating your way round a soba bar menu, ordering a beer and asking for a bill - all these are tiny little successes. Mostly, my uplifting experiences have been in Ina. The first success was getting off the bus at the right stop. The second was managing to buy food in a supermarket, the next, finding my way to the shopping mall and buying a pair of work shoes today. There have been small annoyances. Not being able to get my heating to work, or the gas stove. But I’ve found that when I start getting frustrated about these things, I have to look out the window.
Ina is in the middle of two mountain ranges, the Southern and Central Alps. Though I’m told it doesn’t get as much snow as the cities to the north, it does get bitterly cold. I wasn’t really sure what kind of view to expect when I got here. I had images of hills, and mountains in the distance, but I didn’t expect what I saw out of the window yesterday morning. It’s pretty awe-inspiring. I took myself for a long walk yesterday (okay, I had company - a stinking hangover) and walked up a long hill and found myself with quite a good view of the mountains. Unfortunately the sun was directly behind them so I couldn’t take a picture.
I’m quite excited to be here. It’s nice to be away from the hectic pace of Tokyo, and to be able to make my own dinner (Yasuko helped me turn the gas on), a cup of tea and snuggle up in a warm room (I also got Yasuko to translate the air-con handset for me).
Sometimes it gets a bit lonely. It’s lonely when you’re cold and hungry and could do with a phone, but I think I’ve got that figured out now. The next big challenge is to get my alien registration card, open a bank account and get a phone. I move to a new apartment in three weeks time, so that’ll also be one to add to the list.