Flight in and week one (May 9th/10th to May 17th)

I wish I'd the opportunity to write this sooner, but I haven't really had the free time until now. I've been cleaning my apartment all day, so I'm pretty exhausted, especially since today was the first time I'd jogged in about a month. Busy day all around I guess. Anyways, let's get right to it.



The Departure and Flight.

I realize that this post is titled for the 9th to 17th, but I must relate a story from the 8th before I begin. After the last day of training in Vancouver, myself and a few of the other male trainees went out to take care of a large amount of shopping that we had left (naturally) until the last possible moment. We spent nearly seven hours running around downtown Vancouver. The most remarkable part of this however was what happened to one of my fellow teachers to be. Early in the day, he left a folder that contained all of his paperwork from the week long training session, including his plane ticket, at a currency exchange office. We ran back there and got the folder fine. However, towards the end of the shopping at about 7PM, we realized that he had left it again. What followed was one of the most hectic searches I've ever taken part in. He and I managed to find the folder in only 1/2 hour though, and so everything ended up being okay.

We woke up at around 8 on Friday in time to make it to the airport about 3 hours before the flight. A number of us were staying in the same hotel and taking the same flight, so we had all agreed to leave at the same time, 9 AM. With the exception of some trouble getting loaded up into taxis on account of 4 cruise ships having come in that morning, we managed to make it to the airport in plenty of time. I ended up riding by myself which was too bad. On the other hand, it did let me appreciate Vancouver one more time. I swear, it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I understand why my grandmother loved growing up in the rockies so much.

I made it through the security checkpoints in the airport without any problems. They didn't even swab my computer amazingly. Guess my new khakis and polo shirt made me look as clean cut as possible. My last meal in Canada was a Tim Hortons Breakfast Sandwich and an apple fritter. Appropriate, no? We got on the plane without any problems. Vancouver's airport is really quite beautiful. They have a very impressive aquarium in the departures lounge. Certainly I nice final look at Canada's flora and fauna.

I flew to Japan on a 747, largest plane that I've ever been on by far. Our group all checked in together, which was very handy. We ended up sitting in the middle row, four people filling one row and myself and one of my roommates from training, Kevin, sitting alone in the next seat up. Despite a little friendly feud with the teacher behind me, the trip was excellent, if somewhat cramped. Leg space wasn't really available, so I was incredibly cramped by the end of it. On the plus side, they had a halfway decent selection of in-flight movies. Okay, not really. They had one good movie. I saw Sanjuro first and was INCREDIBLE. Especially the last 4 minutes. Some of the best film making I have ever seen. Totally worth watching. I highly recommend it. The next one was Jumper, which had a great idea, good effects, but ultimately week acting from the lead actor and actress and a pretty abysmal script. "Did I just teleport?" says it all. I also watched the first half of I Am Legend with Kevin. That's all the good parts of the movie, so that ended up being okay. The rest of my time was split between playing Final Fantasy: Crisis Core and reading the graphic novel for V for Vendetta. Also, I got a nice little bottle of red wine with my lunch, so that was really great!

We took off from Vancouver at 12:45 PM. When we landed in Narita Airport in Japan, it was a little before 2 PM the next day. The flight path took us basically up the coast of North America past Alaska and down over the Aleutians past Kamchatka to Japan. Never thought I'd be able to say that I'd flown over such remote places.

It took us about 2 hours to make it through immigration and customs in Japan. I was exhausted by this point already. I had only slept about 4 hours the night before due to one of our roommates leaving at 2 AM. We gave him a hand on the way out, which didn't leave for much time to pack and sleep. We met the teacher that would escort us to Tokyo and beyond outside customs. He was very nice and gave us a hand getting all of our large luggage shipped to our apartments (I'm glad I packed some extra clothes in my carry on.)

We rode the Narita express to Shinjuku station in the middle of Tokyo. The whole way there the students were quizzing our escort one what to do and how to get around setting up in Japan. I was trying to pay attention, but honestly I spent most of the time staring out the window. I was amazed. There were so many things I hadn't seen before: rice patties, tiled roofs, bamboo stands...everything was so new and amazing. It was rainy, but it somehow added to the mystique of things. Especially when we hit Tokyo and things started to get very, very large. I have since said that when looking out a trains window at the cityscape of Tokyo one has the impression that they could walk over the roofs of the buildings in any directions for hours with little to no difficulty. It's so very, very dense.

Sadly, this train ride didn't really prepare me for the insanity that was Shinjuku station. I thought i'd seen busy places before, but I was wrong. Our escort chauffeured us around, ultimately meeting up with the other two teachers that would ferry groups of two out to their appropriate schools and apartments.

I was the second student to be dropped off. The new escort took me and the other new teacher to a different station (I have no idea where) and we all got off, ready to go. I had, unfortunately at this point, lost my train ticket. I have no idea where it went. The upshot of this was that I had to wait behind the gate at the station while the escort took the new teacher to her school.

I have no idea how long that took.

It felt like a year. I think that may be the longest I have ever waited. I felt so...isolated standing in that station. It was complete sensory overload. Everyone was moving around so fast and I was completely disoriented. I consider myself to be a fairly aware person. I read everything, everywhere that I go, signs, T-Shirts, whatever. It was so bizarre standing in a place where everything that was said sounded like gibberish and I couldn't even read anything to figure my way through things. It was extremely disconcerting. It was also the first time I felt what it was like to be a minority. That's kind of unusual. This short time also gave me my first feeling of being unusually tall. Never thought I'd feel that either.

Anyways, after a scary length of time, my escort showed up again and we headed out to my new school. We rode the Chuo line. We had a little bit of conversation along the way, but I gotta say, I think I made a complete ass of myself. "Wow, look at this! Look at that! I can't believe what I just saw..." etc. etc. etc. What do you expect, it was my first time there!

So we stopped by Musashi-Koganei school briefly. I met the NET (Native English Teacher) and the JET (Japanese English Teacher) and a couple of my students that were there. Then Karen and I trudged off through the pissing rain to my apartment. It was a 30 minute walk to the place and the whole time I was kind of freaking out. Sadly, it didn't get better after I got to the my new place of residence.

The apartment was a shit hole. I can't stress that enough. It was dirty as hell and to top things off, at some point, the previous resident had managed to lose the drain trap for the sink. The sink also didn't have a kink in the pipe to prevent vapors from rising up from the sewer. So the whole house smelled like raw sewage. That was a nice way to get an introduction to Tokyo. The escort and I trudged back through the rain to the Family Mart down the road where I got some food and the first of many Nikkuman, which is a meat bun similar to the one my aunt Theresa used to cook for me.

After returning to the apartment I sent to the task of unpacking a little bit and getting my bearings in the place. Like I said, it was a mess, and I'm very happy that as of this writing I'm mostly finished cleaning it. I unpacked my futon and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how it worked. But eventually I got it set up (wrong) and went to sleep. The futon was three pieces: A small mattress, the futon itself, which is a larger, softer mattress, and a small comforter. They're supposed to go on the floor in that order. I had it set up with the futon on the floor, mattress on top, and comforter on top of that. Oh well, it was still comfortable.

I got up decently early the next day, which was good. My plan of not sleeping ultimately paid off, letting me synchronize with Japanese time a little bit easier.

Sunday was a hard day to make it through. I distracted myself in the morning with a little bit of cleaning and unpacking. My larger bags showed up at 9 o'clock, so I unpacked those and started setting the place up a a little bit.

There were two critical points on this day that I made it through, which I found kind of surprising that I managed to make it past. The first was leaving the apartment for the first time. I've made it fairly well known that my natural tendency is towards maintaining the status quo. Change is a scary thing and should be avoided. Every part of me was saying that I should just fortify my position in the house and stay the fuck away from the outside world. Play a video game or something, just don't go out.

Well, I managed to squash that instinct.

I headed out to the station area to get some food for the house. I ended up missing Seiyu (more on this later) and going to it's competitor mall which was about a half block down. Honest mistake on my behalf, the building were so close together that I didn't even realize that I was going into a different building. Just not used to the tight proximity of everything.

I must take an aside for this right now. The proximity of everything in Japan is AMAZING. People DO NOT have lawns in Japan. If they're lucky, they have a little fenced in garden with a few small trees. It's very beautiful and, honestly, I think I prefer this to the way neighborhoods are organized in North America. Everything is so much more efficient. Anyone who's seen my pictures knows whats I'm talking about. For those who haven't...

Anyways, shopping took much longer then anticipated. It's a hell of a lot longer to do when you can't read what's on the packages. I still can't figure out what's soy sauce. I found myself gravitating towards western products, so I ended up with some Frosted Flakes, a bunch of Ramen, Oreos and Ritz crackers. Taking my bounty home I was still freaking out pretty hardcore. I wasn't listening to my Ipod like I would normally because I wasn't used to the traffic patterns yet. Cars drive on the opposite side of the road in Japan, and there are no sidewalks on the back streets. Furthermore, people on bikes ride very fast on the sidewalk most of the time. Kinda dangerous. I'm used to it now, but at the time I was pretty paranoid.

It helped walking to the store that day. There's a few familiar things along that route. Namely the 3 Seven Elevens, a Denny's and a KFC. I'll have to stop by one of those restaurants at some point, but I'm content with the Japanese food for now.

Anyways, I got home around about 1 o'clock. On the train from Narita the previous days the new teachers and I that lived in the Tokyo area had decided to try and meet at Yokohama the next day. I had no idea where Yokohama was and I was really, really set against going. This was mostly because I didn't have a cell phone or anything to help me if I got lost other then an incredibly rudimentary knowledge of Japanese and a small Japanese-English dictionary. I spent a long time sitting in my apartment debating whether I should go or not. A long time. Nearly two hours. This was the second salient point for me on this trip. I fervently believe that if I hadn't left the apartment that day, I wouldn't have been able to make it through the first two weeks here. Fortunately, I did. I managed to navigate that train system for the hour long trip down to Yokohama. I spent the whole time gawking like an idiot out the window of the train and everything in the city. It's pretty neat riding the train in Tokyo. You'll be looking at blank condominiums for the longest time, then suddenly see a quick glimpse of a scramble crossing with brightly lit TV screens and everything. It's like a glimpse into a fantasy world of some kind, very cool.

I arrived at Yokohama and hour and a half late and completely disoriented. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet the rest of the group and the station was incredibly busy. I ended up walking out and around a little bit. I passed over a beautiful canal where a Japanese Woman handed me my first handbill. Then I took a right and passed by a cat that was standing beside a small fountain right next to a building. It was kind of comforting seeing something as familiar as a cat in that environnment. Right after that I took a right and left one of the major streets. I had this weird moment of clarity as I walked between the buildings on that pedestrian walk. It seemed so quiet despite being so downtown. The path was lined with large stones that had been sawn in half and polished to act as seats I suppose. On the right there was a hospital of some kind I think. The wall on the building was glass and all I could see were beds and nurses. Very strange. However, I felt this huge sense of accomplishment the whole time. I had made it halfway across Tokyo by myself. If I could do this, I could do anything. I left about 1/2 hour after I arrive, as awestruck as I had been on the way there. I forget what I did the rest of the day, but I know I slept well.

Monday was unremarkable. I went out and spent another couple hours staring at store shelves in the not-Seiyu super market and ended up with some more food stuffs, including four apples that cost me 600 yen ($6). They're good, but I've only 2 so far, a week later. I also cleaned my kitchen today, which was absolutely filthy, like the rest of the apartment.

Tuesday I began my 3 day training session with a sub-teacher. It went pretty well, I spent most of the day observing how he taught and getting some lesson planning practice. My trainer was kind enough to set me straight and bring me to Seiyu rather then the other department store. We also went out to lunch that afternoon.

This was not a good thing.

Oh, I was happy to go out for lunch, but the food I got did not inspire confidence for the rest of my year in Japan. When we were ordering I just pointed at the dish I wanted. It ended up being composed of 5 things: Rice, Natto (a sticky, tasteless bean), some kind of vegetable I'd never seen, and a thin white paste. Oh, and a raw egg. I had to mix that all around and then eat it. After I poured some of these peppery-seasame seeds and a bunch of wasabi it was pretty good, but before that it was just tasteless mush. Nothing else remarkable about Tuesday. I was exhausted by the end of it, jet lag being what it is. Went home, slept.

Wednesday saw me teach my first class, which was a KH class, children between 10 and 12. It went pretty well all and all, even though I only had one student. Again, more planning and whatnot, nothing else too special. The trainer and I got a sushi bento for dinner (a bento is a sort of boxed lunch in Japan, but is generally used to refer to any packaged meal). This meal proved that I do in fact like sushi. I was unsure if I did before but I dug everything in this meal. If I remember correctly the bento contained the following: 2 tuna rolls (the rest were pieces of fish on sticky rice), a larger piece of tuna, some kind of mollusk, a prawn, another kind of fish, salmon roe, a fish paste and... that's it. Oh, ginger of course on the side, as well as soy sauce. Very good stuff.

Thursday I taught a couple more classes and planned some more lessons. Towards the end of the day the trainer and I went out to Jonathan's, a western-ish restaurant for dinner. It was pretty damn good, I had some curry soup and sticky rice. Thursday was also my 24th Birthday. Yay. I only told my trainer about it. He bought me a very nice soup bowl and chopsticks, which I'm looking forward to using the first chance I get. On the way home that night I bought an Orange Kit-Kat and a large can of Sapporo. It was a pretty shoddy celebration, but I felt good anyways. I got the email from everyone the next day.

Friday was the big day. Teaching by myself for the first time. I wish I could say I wasn't nervous, but that would be a lie. I was dying at the beginning of the day. Friday is very busy for me, 5 classes with a few short breaks to plan more lessons. I made it through okay, although by the end I was wrecked.

Saturday was worse then Friday. I got up very early to plan a few lessons and made it with plenty of time to get going. I managed to pull it off though. At the end of the day my new coworker, the other NET, took me out for Korean Barbecue, which was excellent, although the weather was terrible. It actually had been all week, quite rainy and cold, not what I was expecting.

That was it. The first week. Very intense over all. I'll post about the next week tomorrow probably. As it is, I have to head to bed shortly. Thanks for reading and, as I always, I will continue to provide impressions of Japan from the Canadian Eye.