Asia 2006: May 28 - Jun 03

Well, I'm in my first foreign country (sorry Canada, you don't count). I arrived in Japan at 2pm on Tuesday (that's 6am Monday for you west coasters) and took a bus ride from the airport in Narita to Ikebukuro in Tokyo. The bus dropped me off at Sunshine City Prince Hotel and I had to walk a few blocks to my hotel (Hotel Wing International Ikebukuro). I had a little map to get me there, but the streets on the map weren't marked and even if they were, they would be in Japanese! But I found it without a problem by just counting the streets.

By the time I got to my room it was 5:30pm, so I decided to walk around a bit and see what I could see. What I saw were a lot of Japanese people and a lot of Japanese signs. After a while it started raining and hundreds of umbrellas instantly appeared, which was fine except I didn't have an umbrella of my own. It wasn't raining too hard, so I pressed on… until it WAS raining too hard. Then I stood under a covering and waited for the rain to stop... but it didn't. So I ran across the street to AM/PM and bought some Japanese candy (stuff Billy recommended) and an umbrella.

Buying something in Japan goes something like this: I put the items on the counter. The cashier rings them up and talks in Japanese. I stand there wondering if he/she is asking me a question. The price comes up on the register, I hand some money to the cashier. The cashier says some more stuff; I stand there like an idiot. Change is handed to me, I say "thank you" and walk away. Oh yeah, and I keep trying to give them my money too soon. Once they ring everything up, they start bagging the items. But I have already seen the total and stuck my money out. So they stop what they are doing, take my money, give me change, and THEN go back to bagging my items... Don't mind me, I'm just a little slow...

With umbrella overhead, I walked back to my hotel. Yeah, let me tell you about my hotel room. Imagine a closet... now add an RV bathroom. Billy warned me that the room was small, but I was STILL surprised when I saw it. There is only a twin sized bed, pushed in the corner of two walls. Then there is maybe 2 feet of walking room around the other two sides of the bed, and a desk lining those two walls. You can't pull the chair all the way out from the desk because it hits the bed. The bathroom really does feel like an RV bathroom. Everything is plastic, but then the toilet is high tech (it's got a bidet and 'toilet shower' with a 'preparation' button to purge the cold water before it sprays you down).

I did not sleep well that first night... the bed and pillow are ROCK HARD. Plus, I woke up around 2:30AM (7:30AM in Hawaii) and couldn't fall back asleep!

Wednesday was my first day of work here. I met Tomo in front of a giant store called PARCO (Tomo says it’s pronounced “Palcoh”) at 8am so that he could show me how to take the trains to work.

I’m staying in Ikebukuro but my work is in Nakano-sakaue (both are sections or wards of Tokyo) so I have to take two trains each morning. The train stations are similar to the bigger subway stations in New York, but here the different train lines are operated by different companies. So you have to make sure you buy the right ticket for the train you need to take! The first train I take is the JR Yamanote Line from Ikebukuro to Shinjuku. The train goes very fast, and it seems that one arrives every two or so minutes! And the stories of jam packed trains are true… people just keep getting on and getting on even after you think there is no more room. After I get off at Shinjuku Station, I have to make my way to the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line. This train is usually less crowded and it’s also a shorter trip. The trains thankfully display the next stop in English, so I have some idea of when to get off!

The office is a short walk from the train station, located on the 23rd floor of Harmony Tower. When you enter the lobby, there is a giant crowd of people waiting to get onto the elevators. When an elevator door opens, the crowd lurches forward and fills the elevator to the brim. On the way up, I actually feel the pressure change in my ears… I guess 23 floors is pretty high up! The office has a lot of windows, and it’s a pretty amazing view! Tokyo is incomprehensibly large, the city just sprawls out as far as you can see in every direction. And I’m talking big city, not suburbs!

Work was work. I didn’t stay late even though most of the guys there work from 9am to 9pm or later (often MUCH later). There is actually a chime at 9am to announce the start of the work day, and one at noon for lunch, at 1pm to signal end of lunch, and the last one at 5:30pm to announce ‘end of day.’ As far as I can tell, 5:30pm is when you can technically leave for the day, but no one actually does. The only other thing of note is the bathroom… there are no towels in the bathroom. You know how annoyed you get when you discover that a bathroom only has those stupid hand blowers and no towels? Yeah, well you don’t even get a hand blower at this place! Apparently you are supposed to bring your own towel? I saw one guy pull a washcloth out of his pocket to dry his hands… I have to wipe my hands on my pants.

I left work a little before 6pm because I was meeting someone in Ikebukuro at 6:30pm. That someone was Akiko Takeuchi, a foreign exchange student that my family hosted 15 or so years ago. We’ve stayed in pretty regular contact with her since then, last time I saw her was 4 years ago when she came to visit Portland and Seattle. Our plan was to meet in front of PARCO, and I secretly wondered if I would be able to pick her out of a sea of Japanese faces. I figured even if I couldn’t, she’d have no problem finding the one white dude standing around! But I did recognize her, so we talked a little and decided to grab some dinner. She took me to a place that served Tonkatsu, which is breaded pork. I got the meal that came with pork, shrimp, and potato all breaded and fried in the same batter. It was pretty tasty! After dinner we walked around a bit and she took me into a giant electronics store. We went up to the 3rd floor to look at video games (she desperately wants a Nintendo DS, but they are constantly sold out everywhere in Japan). I didn’t know of any games that I might want to import for the DS, so I just looked around a bit. After that, she had to go, so we said goodbye and I found my way back to my hotel.

Thursday was another uneventful day at work. I left work around 6pm and walked to the train station. When I got there, I discovered that the type of machine that I know how to buy tickets from was out of order. The working machines were much lower tech and didn't have any English on them... This is kind of a big deal, because you don't just buy any old ticket. You buy a ticket worth a certain amount of yen depending on how far you are going to go. For this leg of the trip I needed to buy a 160 yen ticket, so usually I push the 160 yen button, drop the money in and away I go. But these machines didn't have a button marked "160 yen." So I decided to just stand there and watch a few people use the machines.

Almost every person would walk up to the machine, drop their money in, and then hit the upper left button. I figured they all weren’t going the same distance, so the upper left button must be a “sell me a ticket worth the amount of money I just put in you” button. So, I went up to the machine, dropped in 160 yen, and sure enough the LED on the button lights up “160 yen.” Booya.

Once I got to Shinjuku, I only bought a 130 yen ticket because I planned to make a stop in Takadanobaba. Earlier in the day I searched online for English bookstores and found a store called The Blue Parrot that wasn’t too far from the Takadanobaba station. Yes, I bought a book before I left Hawaii (Ender’s Game, more on that once I get back) but it was SO good that I finished it by Wednesday morning! I hoped to find the sequel called Speaker of the Dead, but they didn’t have it… I browsed all of their fiction section and finally decided on Dune: House Atreides. I’ve kind of been avoiding this book for quite some time, but now I didn’t have much of a selection…

Walked back to the station and rode the train to Ikebukuro. There was a DS game I decided to import, so I went back to BIC cameras to see if they had it. I had to search for SO long because I knew the game in English characters (Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan) but it was labeled in Japanese characters. I knew this going in, but I figured I would recognize the game box… but all the games were on their sides, so only the titles on the box spines were showing! So, I pretty much had to pull each game out and look at the front of the box to find it!

Walked back to my hotel, read my new book, played my new game. Slept.

Friday was my last work day in Tokyo. Left before 7pm. I wanted to check out Akihabara, but I had all of my work equipment. So, I went back to Ikebukuro, dropped off my stuff, then went back to the station. The ride to Akihabara took about 20 minutes, and by the time I got there it was nearing 8pm. I looked around a bit, but was a little disappointed. Everyone said it was Otaku central, so I was hoping to find a bunch of super obsessed people dressed up like anime/videogame characters… but I only saw a few girls dressed up like English maids. And then everything started closing, so oh well.