black screen
At the bottom of the screen the following words fade-in:
At the bottom of the screen the following words fade-in:
Communications Uplink
Week 2
Fade to black
Week 2
Fade to black
End obnoxious opening. Anyone who plays a select PC shooter named after the process of radioactive decay will get that.
So, onto the second week of this most amazing of working vacations. When last we left our protagonist he was enjoying a wonderful dinner of Japanese beer and Korean BBQ at a neighborhood eating establishment. Good stuff.
Sunday and Monday! My first real weekend since I got here. No time to relax though, as this was also the first chance I really had to poke around the city I'm in. And so it came to pass that on Sunday morning I pulled out my trusty Canon S5 IS (that's a camera) slung it around my shoulder and headed off to find Koganei park, which is noted for it's cherry blossoms and being the location of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural museum.
The park, as it turns out, is only about 2 minutes from my apartment, although it took me much longer to get there the first time I went. There's a bridge right on my road that takes me into the park, so it's quite easy to get there.
I didn't go into the museum while I was there. I spent most of my time just walking around, admiring the fact that there is a HUGE park in the middle of this (dense to me) city. Very impressive and very very nice. The trees are very old and quite large, and there were a lot of nice flower beds. Hell, the canal that runs through part of the park had Koi in it! It was very nice. There were a large number of crows around the park (or Ravens, whatever they are, they're huge). It was pretty busy in the park but that's to be expected because after all:
A: it was a nice day and
B: This is Japan.
I walked around for about three hours then headed home and did some shopping. I have a ton of pictures, but they're all posted on Facebook, so you'll need an account there to see them.
The rest of Sunday was fairly unremarkable. I cleaned the house a bit more and continued to nuke my sink with drain cleaner and my washing machine with...washing...machine...cleaner...stuff.
Now Monday. Monday was a trip. Monday was pivotal. Well, not really, but Monday did allow me to post this.
Monday started for me around about 10 o'clock. I had breakfast and left the house at around about 12. Headed down to Musashi-Koganei station...
break.
My mother just informed me that I should write this as though my grandmother was my only audience. I'll try to get this finished within the next year, but the amount of details necessary to accomplish this feat is quite daunting.
Train Stations. These are the arteries that pump life into the monolithic metropolis that is Tokyo (alliterate that!). They operate in a fairly unconventional (for a North American) manner. Fortunately their signage is mostly bilingual as well. Anyways, before you get into the station, and unless you have a Suica card, you have to buy a ticket. This is an interesting process. You crane your neck and look at the huge colour-coded map of the Tokyo rail system and figure out your location and your destination. The destination on the map is accompanied with a value in Yen. You then key that value into the machine, deposit the money, grab your ticket and put it into the gate.
Now you're in the station proper. Depending upon the size, they're either difficult to navigate or simplistic. Musashi-Koganei is simple. Shinjuku is not. As my esteemed coworker once exclaimed "It's like a fucking airport mate!". As the kids say these days, tru dat. The two times I transferred in there I spent quite a while just wondering around. The other unusual thing is that the trains play this bizarre jingle every time they leave the station. I hear it all the time from my classroom. The trains themselves are fairly typical I guess. Except for the LCDS that play commercials and give news reports while you're riding them. That's pretty cool. Also, advertisement, and lots of it. Now, when you get off the train at your destination, there's one very important thing to remember. If you haven't put the right amount of cash on your ticket YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE STATION. The first time I took a trip on a train I was totally confused when the gate closed on me. I had a serious feeling of everyone in the station pointing, laughing and saying "look at the stupid gaijin." That probably wasn't the case, but I still felt like an idiot. Anyways, you have to go the fare adjustment machine and pay some extra money to leave the station. Weird? I thought so. Maybe I'm just some wide-eyed country boy though.
This trip, much like my previous ones on the train, did not fail to be entertaining. I love riding the train. Even on the way home from losing at poker this past weekend, drunk. Still loved it. There's just so much to see, whether it's the colourful billboards, the neon signs, or the neighbourhoods that look like they've been built and rebuilt for the last 2 centuries. Which they kind of have been. Anyways, it truly is a unique city.
Which is an interesting point I have to bring up about the architecture. I find that all the buildings seem very tall, but this isn't really the case. They're just very narrow. It makes buildings that are 10 or 11 stories tall seem deceptively tall. Still, pretty neat.
Anyways, so here I was on my way to Tachikawa, the largest city that is close to my apartment and school. Tachikawa felt like a movie when I got there. My destination was the Leopalace offices in order to cajole their fine employees into giving me access to the inter-web. The route to their offices was almost entirely over elevated walkways that spanned the city streets. Very impressive. Really smart way of taking pedestrians off the road. It was very odd walking along the walk though. To either side of it were either blank office tower walls, streets or odd little buildings that looked like they'd sprung up spontaneously one morning at the whim of a particularly enterprising individual.
Tokyo is rife with juxtapositions between the old and the new, the defunct and the ultra high-tech.
Leopalace's offices were interesting. It took me 45 minutes or so to get through the process. The apartment I'm living in is very old, it's been used by GEOS teachers for about 10 years. So, although I'm SUPPOSED to get internet for free with the apartment, due to the length of the contract I'm stuck paying 3500 yen a month. $35 is more then worth it though. Thankfully, the process was sped up due to a timely phonecall from the Japanese English Teacher at my school who assisted with some translating of the highest of standards. The only real downside of the visit was looking at the advertisements for other Leopalace apartments playing in loop on the televisions in the lobby. My apartment is a hell of a lot dirtier and more disorganized then those are. Eh, you can't have everything.
I left the offices of Leo Palace feeling pretty accomplished. After all, that was my first major interaction that I had with someone who spoke the bare minimum of English, much like my grasp of Japanese. Well, that's unfair. The Leopalace representative had a little bit of spoken English, so it wasn't so bad.
Anyways, after stopping to gawk and take a few pictures of Tachikawa (seriously now, facebook damn you) I hopped back on the train for the hour long ride to downtown Tokyo. I remembered on this trip that my first trip, down to Yokohama, I'd heard a baby crying. The thing that had occurred to me at the time, while I was beneath that crushing culture shock, was that, oddly enough, no matter where you go, every baby cries in the same language.
I wasn't feeling nearly so melancholic this train ride.
I made it to Shinjuku station without any problems and, after getting turned around a couple of times, made it onto the Yamanote line. This line circles downtown Tokyo and hits most of the major cities: Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku. The last was my destination. I'd heard tell from one of my coworkers that Harajuku was home to a legendary SoftBank store that had full English service. SoftBank is a cell phone company in Japan, and guess what I was on the hunt for.
This process went very smoothly, took about half an hour and I got a free coke out of the deal. I was now the proud owner of an INCREDIBLY powerful cellphone. The camera in this phone is within spitting distance of the $400 camera I bought to Japan, just much more compact. Proof, again, is on Facebook. The store itself was very odd. Everyone was wired up with a headset and moved around in black suits like a Secret Service detail. When I asked the first guy I saw "Eiigo-ga wakarimas-ka?" he put his hand to his ear and within seconds I was speaking English with a very nice Japanese woman. She had to pins on her blouse, both shaped like pigs, one coloured with the Chinese flag, the other with the American. I assumed this meant that she knew English and Mandarin, but that was merely an assumption.
I saw very little of Harajuku after I got the cell. I was quite tired and headed home. The one thing I did notice about this city was the large number of gaijin (foreigners) around. All the way out to Tachikawa and back I could count the number of non-Japanese on my hands. Especially in Koganei. In the two weeks I've been here, I've only seen 2 other gaijin. Harajuku was foul with us gaijin though. I heard at least French and German, and other English. Eh, I guess it's a pretty touristy spot.
I headed home after that, totally exhausted. I went to bad around about 11:30 and shortly after I hit the futon, realized that the rain that had started at ten pretty heavily had not only failed to lighten but was in fact getting heavier. I love falling asleep to the sound of rain, so I slept well that night.
I woke up at 8 the next morning. That was a luxury I wouldn't have for the rest of the week. It was still POURING rain in the morning. As it turns out Tokyo had been hit by a small Typhoon which had developed due to a warm air pocket off the Pacific coast. Pretty crazy. The drainage system is pretty advanced though. By the time I left for work at 12 the rain had stopped and you never would have been tell that so much rain had fallen.
The first three days of the week at school were fairly unremarkable. I got more and more into the swing of teaching while getting a little faster at planning lessons. I taught many of my students for the first time, which was nice, but stressful. On Thursday I taught kids classes for the first time by myself. I'd been worried about these since the interview way back in January. So far *knocks on wood* They've been quite good. Tuesday night I went to 7-11 and bought what the Japanese call a "Kok-sai Terefone Cardo" or International Phone Card for $35 and talked to my mom for all of 26 minutes before I burned through it. It was nice to hear her voice though.
Thursday the internet arrived and was installed before I left for work. I couldn't sign in until Friday morning due to some kind of administration thing, but that was pretty much it.
Friday I made my first contacts with everyone online, which was quite nice. I also bought a desk and brought it home. That, as it turns out, was incredibly hard to do. Lugging along an 11kg box that's about 3 feet tall is kind of annoying. I was also very tired.
Ah, an aside. The sun rises incredibly early in Japan. I'm talking around about 4:00 Am. Totally bright. I'm guessing that has something to do with the way the Earth is angled. It goes down much sooner then it does in Canada. It's usually pretty dark by around 8 these days. Because of this, I spent the whole week snapping awake at 4 in the morning thinking it was time to go to work only to realize that I could sleep for another 4 hours. Ah well.
Saturday ended the week pretty solidly. I was completely exhausted due to the lack of sleep stress of teaching for the first week. A couple of guys and girls from the training group were going out Saturday night to go clubbing and dining in Shibuya. I really wanted to go, but was far too exhausted to marshal my forces enough to head off. I'm sorry I missed it, but I should see them this weekend.
Anyways, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll get this updated before next Sunday, but we shall see. I kinda like the idea of doing this on a bi-weekly basis. Opinions?
later everyone!
Oh, and a final word. I have a theme song for this trip to Japan. Click the blue.
This was the first song I listened to when I took off from Vancouver.
So, onto the second week of this most amazing of working vacations. When last we left our protagonist he was enjoying a wonderful dinner of Japanese beer and Korean BBQ at a neighborhood eating establishment. Good stuff.
Sunday and Monday! My first real weekend since I got here. No time to relax though, as this was also the first chance I really had to poke around the city I'm in. And so it came to pass that on Sunday morning I pulled out my trusty Canon S5 IS (that's a camera) slung it around my shoulder and headed off to find Koganei park, which is noted for it's cherry blossoms and being the location of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural museum.
The park, as it turns out, is only about 2 minutes from my apartment, although it took me much longer to get there the first time I went. There's a bridge right on my road that takes me into the park, so it's quite easy to get there.
I didn't go into the museum while I was there. I spent most of my time just walking around, admiring the fact that there is a HUGE park in the middle of this (dense to me) city. Very impressive and very very nice. The trees are very old and quite large, and there were a lot of nice flower beds. Hell, the canal that runs through part of the park had Koi in it! It was very nice. There were a large number of crows around the park (or Ravens, whatever they are, they're huge). It was pretty busy in the park but that's to be expected because after all:
A: it was a nice day and
B: This is Japan.
I walked around for about three hours then headed home and did some shopping. I have a ton of pictures, but they're all posted on Facebook, so you'll need an account there to see them.
The rest of Sunday was fairly unremarkable. I cleaned the house a bit more and continued to nuke my sink with drain cleaner and my washing machine with...washing...machine...cleaner...stuff.
Now Monday. Monday was a trip. Monday was pivotal. Well, not really, but Monday did allow me to post this.
Monday started for me around about 10 o'clock. I had breakfast and left the house at around about 12. Headed down to Musashi-Koganei station...
break.
My mother just informed me that I should write this as though my grandmother was my only audience. I'll try to get this finished within the next year, but the amount of details necessary to accomplish this feat is quite daunting.
Train Stations. These are the arteries that pump life into the monolithic metropolis that is Tokyo (alliterate that!). They operate in a fairly unconventional (for a North American) manner. Fortunately their signage is mostly bilingual as well. Anyways, before you get into the station, and unless you have a Suica card, you have to buy a ticket. This is an interesting process. You crane your neck and look at the huge colour-coded map of the Tokyo rail system and figure out your location and your destination. The destination on the map is accompanied with a value in Yen. You then key that value into the machine, deposit the money, grab your ticket and put it into the gate.
Now you're in the station proper. Depending upon the size, they're either difficult to navigate or simplistic. Musashi-Koganei is simple. Shinjuku is not. As my esteemed coworker once exclaimed "It's like a fucking airport mate!". As the kids say these days, tru dat. The two times I transferred in there I spent quite a while just wondering around. The other unusual thing is that the trains play this bizarre jingle every time they leave the station. I hear it all the time from my classroom. The trains themselves are fairly typical I guess. Except for the LCDS that play commercials and give news reports while you're riding them. That's pretty cool. Also, advertisement, and lots of it. Now, when you get off the train at your destination, there's one very important thing to remember. If you haven't put the right amount of cash on your ticket YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE STATION. The first time I took a trip on a train I was totally confused when the gate closed on me. I had a serious feeling of everyone in the station pointing, laughing and saying "look at the stupid gaijin." That probably wasn't the case, but I still felt like an idiot. Anyways, you have to go the fare adjustment machine and pay some extra money to leave the station. Weird? I thought so. Maybe I'm just some wide-eyed country boy though.
This trip, much like my previous ones on the train, did not fail to be entertaining. I love riding the train. Even on the way home from losing at poker this past weekend, drunk. Still loved it. There's just so much to see, whether it's the colourful billboards, the neon signs, or the neighbourhoods that look like they've been built and rebuilt for the last 2 centuries. Which they kind of have been. Anyways, it truly is a unique city.
Which is an interesting point I have to bring up about the architecture. I find that all the buildings seem very tall, but this isn't really the case. They're just very narrow. It makes buildings that are 10 or 11 stories tall seem deceptively tall. Still, pretty neat.
Anyways, so here I was on my way to Tachikawa, the largest city that is close to my apartment and school. Tachikawa felt like a movie when I got there. My destination was the Leopalace offices in order to cajole their fine employees into giving me access to the inter-web. The route to their offices was almost entirely over elevated walkways that spanned the city streets. Very impressive. Really smart way of taking pedestrians off the road. It was very odd walking along the walk though. To either side of it were either blank office tower walls, streets or odd little buildings that looked like they'd sprung up spontaneously one morning at the whim of a particularly enterprising individual.
Tokyo is rife with juxtapositions between the old and the new, the defunct and the ultra high-tech.
Leopalace's offices were interesting. It took me 45 minutes or so to get through the process. The apartment I'm living in is very old, it's been used by GEOS teachers for about 10 years. So, although I'm SUPPOSED to get internet for free with the apartment, due to the length of the contract I'm stuck paying 3500 yen a month. $35 is more then worth it though. Thankfully, the process was sped up due to a timely phonecall from the Japanese English Teacher at my school who assisted with some translating of the highest of standards. The only real downside of the visit was looking at the advertisements for other Leopalace apartments playing in loop on the televisions in the lobby. My apartment is a hell of a lot dirtier and more disorganized then those are. Eh, you can't have everything.
I left the offices of Leo Palace feeling pretty accomplished. After all, that was my first major interaction that I had with someone who spoke the bare minimum of English, much like my grasp of Japanese. Well, that's unfair. The Leopalace representative had a little bit of spoken English, so it wasn't so bad.
Anyways, after stopping to gawk and take a few pictures of Tachikawa (seriously now, facebook damn you) I hopped back on the train for the hour long ride to downtown Tokyo. I remembered on this trip that my first trip, down to Yokohama, I'd heard a baby crying. The thing that had occurred to me at the time, while I was beneath that crushing culture shock, was that, oddly enough, no matter where you go, every baby cries in the same language.
I wasn't feeling nearly so melancholic this train ride.
I made it to Shinjuku station without any problems and, after getting turned around a couple of times, made it onto the Yamanote line. This line circles downtown Tokyo and hits most of the major cities: Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku. The last was my destination. I'd heard tell from one of my coworkers that Harajuku was home to a legendary SoftBank store that had full English service. SoftBank is a cell phone company in Japan, and guess what I was on the hunt for.
This process went very smoothly, took about half an hour and I got a free coke out of the deal. I was now the proud owner of an INCREDIBLY powerful cellphone. The camera in this phone is within spitting distance of the $400 camera I bought to Japan, just much more compact. Proof, again, is on Facebook. The store itself was very odd. Everyone was wired up with a headset and moved around in black suits like a Secret Service detail. When I asked the first guy I saw "Eiigo-ga wakarimas-ka?" he put his hand to his ear and within seconds I was speaking English with a very nice Japanese woman. She had to pins on her blouse, both shaped like pigs, one coloured with the Chinese flag, the other with the American. I assumed this meant that she knew English and Mandarin, but that was merely an assumption.
I saw very little of Harajuku after I got the cell. I was quite tired and headed home. The one thing I did notice about this city was the large number of gaijin (foreigners) around. All the way out to Tachikawa and back I could count the number of non-Japanese on my hands. Especially in Koganei. In the two weeks I've been here, I've only seen 2 other gaijin. Harajuku was foul with us gaijin though. I heard at least French and German, and other English. Eh, I guess it's a pretty touristy spot.
I headed home after that, totally exhausted. I went to bad around about 11:30 and shortly after I hit the futon, realized that the rain that had started at ten pretty heavily had not only failed to lighten but was in fact getting heavier. I love falling asleep to the sound of rain, so I slept well that night.
I woke up at 8 the next morning. That was a luxury I wouldn't have for the rest of the week. It was still POURING rain in the morning. As it turns out Tokyo had been hit by a small Typhoon which had developed due to a warm air pocket off the Pacific coast. Pretty crazy. The drainage system is pretty advanced though. By the time I left for work at 12 the rain had stopped and you never would have been tell that so much rain had fallen.
The first three days of the week at school were fairly unremarkable. I got more and more into the swing of teaching while getting a little faster at planning lessons. I taught many of my students for the first time, which was nice, but stressful. On Thursday I taught kids classes for the first time by myself. I'd been worried about these since the interview way back in January. So far *knocks on wood* They've been quite good. Tuesday night I went to 7-11 and bought what the Japanese call a "Kok-sai Terefone Cardo" or International Phone Card for $35 and talked to my mom for all of 26 minutes before I burned through it. It was nice to hear her voice though.
Thursday the internet arrived and was installed before I left for work. I couldn't sign in until Friday morning due to some kind of administration thing, but that was pretty much it.
Friday I made my first contacts with everyone online, which was quite nice. I also bought a desk and brought it home. That, as it turns out, was incredibly hard to do. Lugging along an 11kg box that's about 3 feet tall is kind of annoying. I was also very tired.
Ah, an aside. The sun rises incredibly early in Japan. I'm talking around about 4:00 Am. Totally bright. I'm guessing that has something to do with the way the Earth is angled. It goes down much sooner then it does in Canada. It's usually pretty dark by around 8 these days. Because of this, I spent the whole week snapping awake at 4 in the morning thinking it was time to go to work only to realize that I could sleep for another 4 hours. Ah well.
Saturday ended the week pretty solidly. I was completely exhausted due to the lack of sleep stress of teaching for the first week. A couple of guys and girls from the training group were going out Saturday night to go clubbing and dining in Shibuya. I really wanted to go, but was far too exhausted to marshal my forces enough to head off. I'm sorry I missed it, but I should see them this weekend.
Anyways, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll get this updated before next Sunday, but we shall see. I kinda like the idea of doing this on a bi-weekly basis. Opinions?
later everyone!
Oh, and a final word. I have a theme song for this trip to Japan. Click the blue.
This was the first song I listened to when I took off from Vancouver.
3 comments:
i'm glad you're near a park, It'll be a good way to stay fit and sane.
Also nice pictures, i checked them all out on facebook, some really good stuff. It's also good to see that you're not having all that much trouble integrating yourself into your new surroundings.
I'll look forward to your updates.
Oh and i forgot to ask, what's up with that bicycle in that glass box in the third picture?
You're guess is as good as mine! I'll check it out next time I'm out that way.
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