Sunday, June 6

After three weeks in Japan, I finally got to take a trip to Tokyo. We left sometime around 9 to have breakfast and meet up with another Canadian intern in Yokosuka Chuou. We actually ate at McDonald's. It was the first American restaurant I've eaten in since I've been here. I had a McGriddle, which was no different than the ones back home, but one guy had a hot dog. Why? Because he could.

The train to Shibuya (prefecture in Tokyo) took about an hour and cost about ¥800 (we changed trains once in Yokohama), so including the bus to Chuou, it took about an hour and a half.

Here're Ken and Steven.

And here're Alan, Alice, and I (stupid English language requiring subject pronouns after linking verbs).

As soon as we arrived, Steven and Alice both split off to go shopping (separately) as Shibuya is a big shopping area. The three of us that were left went to get Ken a cell phone.

This intersection in Shibuya is the busiest in the world. Part of the cycle for the traffic lights includes all of them turning red so pedestrians can cross, not only all sides, but diagonally as well. ("An elevator can only go up and down, but the Wonkavator can go sideways and slantways and longways and backways..." "And frontways?" "And squareways and frontways and any other ways that you can think of.") Also, that Starbucks is one of the busiest in the world as well.

When fake black music just won't do...

Now we get into Harajuku. Harajuku is actually a train station in Shibuya, but the name is often used for the area around it. The nearby Jingu Bridge is a popular gathering spot on Sundays for young people involved in different fashions and subcultures. I was a little disappointed by the turnout (also, the bridge was much smaller than I had expected), but I was in a group and didn't get to stay long. Next time, I'll probably be by myself and will be able to take my time.

These two are sweet lolitas (Japanese: 甘ロリ - amaloli).

I completely forgot about the free hugs people.

The really weird part is that just past the bridge is the entrance to the Meiji Shrine. The shrine is in a large forest. Can you imagine stumbling upon a 175 acre forest in the middle of Tokyo? It's crazy. This gateway is called a torii. They mark the entrances to Shinto shrines (and occasionally Buddhist temples). Symbolically, they're supposed to mark the entrance to the spirit world.

Yeah, this place was huge. We didn't make it to the shrine. I'll have to go back again later.

We met back up with Steven (Alice just shopped all day) and took a short trip to Akihabara. The first stop was to a used game shop to look for more N64 games. I snapped a shot of some Famicon games (Japanese NES. Short for family computer).

We hit up another used game shop later that had a small arcade on the top floor. They also had this chair made out of Famicon games.

Akihabara is famous for two things: electronics shops and maid cafes. Sure enough, that's about all we saw. We also noticed that there were very few females walking around. Seriously. If I had counted, it probably would have been less than 10 and all of them were with their boyfriends. The only other women we saw were dressed as maids advertising for their cafes.

Ken wanted to buy a larger antennae for his wireless router, and after looking through at least 20 shops for it, I'd say you could probably find just about anything else except that (although, if I were a betting man, I'd say it exists somewhere; we just didn't know where). I have never seen so many specialized electronics parts in one place before. We were moving pretty quickly, so I didn't get many pictures. Next time I'll take more just to show the scope of what I'm talking about.

This, I was seriously not expecting. I'm not too sure about it, but I think the "Linux Cafe" is just the porch to an actual coffee shop where some people (read: men) hang around and, you know, talk about Linux. I saw three or four guys sitting around with netbooks.

When we finally gave up on Ken's Quest (TM), we headed back to Shibuya. Steven had previously made plans, and the rest of us went to an all you can eat pizza place. It was about $20, but I think I ate my money's worth, though, the other two ate more than I did.

Next time: an unexpected adventure in Yokohama.

Friday, June 4-Saturday, June 5

On May 30, I had ￥2500 left. On May 31, I was paid for 11 days of work, reimbursed for my plane ticket, and given my entire travel expenses from the dorm to work and back for the duration of my stay. I could finally afford to do something besides sit around in the dorm. Everyone else had plans to go to Tokyo on Saturday, but I wanted to play Go on Saturday, so I was trying to find someone to go on Sunday (yeah, yeah, a Go pun. You can't really avoid them. Get over it) so I wouldn't have to figure out the trains by myself for my first visit there. It turns out I didn't have to.

To begin Friday night, we went to get yakiniku (焼き (yaki) - to bake or grill; 肉 (niku) - meat. Not terribly creative). Someone told us about some place a few minutes away that was pretty cheap, so we went. We mostly just had regular pork and beef, but we had some beef tongue.

It worked out to about ￥1500 per person. We'll probably go back.

For the rest of the night, we went back to the dorm and played Super Smash Brothers 64. Someone had the great idea (read: awful) of playing 2v2 with the losers taking a shot at the end of the round. During this time, one of the Japanese residents came in and joined us. To make a long story short, the other guys drank a lot more than I did and were too hung over on Saturday to go to Tokyo, so they decided to go on Sunday instead. やった！

On Saturday, I went with two of them to eat lunch at Yokosuka Chuou. We had some Korean style spicy ramen. After lunch, they stayed around there, and I took the train towards the Keikyuu Kurihama station to play Go. When the train came to a stop at the wrong station, I knew something was amiss.

Some of the regular train lines (as in, non-express type) split at times. Part of the train will continue on the normal route, and part of the train will branch off to another area. The branch is usually only a few stations, and at the end of the line, it waits for a few minutes before going back in the opposite direction. If you're in the wrong section of the train at one of these branches, you have to get off and transfer to another train. I did not know this. Fortunately, it only took me about 30 minutes to get everything straightened out, and since the fare is only determined by your entry and exit points, it didn't cost me anything extra.

I made it to the Go club and played for 4 or 5 hours (it's ￥1000 for no matter how long you stay). I played mostly teaching games with the same guy from last time, but at the end, he had me play against someone who he said was also around 1 dan. It was really intense. I did really badly in the opening and was behind for most of the game, but I was able to start a really big fight that lasted for a large part of the game. In Go, black has the advantage of having the first turn, so white is given 6.5 points at the end for compensation (the number varies a little in different places). I won by 4.5 points. It was a great game. Afterwards, we took the train one stop over to YRP Nobi and walked to his house so he could drive me home.

Moving right along

The latest bus I can take and be on time for work leaves at 8:46. The earliest bus I can take from work to go home is at 6:28. As you can guess, this doesn't leave a lot of time for much else during the week. I mostly hang out with the Canadian guys. Sometimes we go out to eat, sometimes we play the N64 they picked up in Akihabara (a brilliant decision I might add). Most nights, we have dinner, and then we flip through the 8 or so channels we get in the dorm. I also go to Iroria (the restaurant nearby) a few times a week after dinner for a drink and to practice Japanese. All things considered, not all that exciting. To make matters worse, I didn't get paid until May 31, so I didn't do much on the weekends in order to save money. Since I already talked about my first trip to the Kurihama Go Club, that moves us up to June 4. And here we go.

Saturday, May 22

A friend of mine, Amir Sattari, has been studying at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since last September. We sent a few emails back and forth and decided to spend the day in Yokohama. See, Amir goes to school in Tokyo, but he lives about 20 or 30 minutes from Yokohama. In the 8-9 months he's been there, he has never been to Yokohama, so I decided we had to fix that. Unfortunately, he still has never been to Yokohama, because we didn't go.

As I got off the bus at Yokosuka Chuou, I couldn't help but notice the dozens of vendors selling different kinds of food or hosting different games. They were having a festival (Japanese - (お)祭り - (o)matsuri). I was at the station the night before and saw them setting up, but I asked someone when they were having it, and he said on Sunday. In retrospect, I think he probably meant that the parade part was on Sunday. In any case, I hadn't been to a Japanese festival before, so I called Amir and asked him if he wanted to come to the festival instead. I then had to endure seeing and smelling all the different foods for about an hour and a half until he finally arrived.

For those of you who don't know Amir, he is very soft spoken. And a ninja. We didn't know he was going to Japan until he was already there. Months after he left, we were still expecting to see him appear out of nowhere whenever we looked over our shoulders. When he was getting close to the station, I stood in an open area and watched every direction from which he could possibly appear. I'm not even kidding. He ended up not sneaking up on me, but I was completely suspecting it.

I should have taken more pictures of the food. This first one is probably takoyaki (たこ焼き). It looks a little big, though, so I may be wrong. Takoyaki is a fried octopus ball. They're really good, but the inside is really hot, and I always seem to burn my mouth on them.

The next is two are cartoon shaped pastries filled with a red bean paste (Japanese: 餡子 - anko). I should have taken a closer picture of the first one. They're shaped like Pikachu. In the second picture, they're shaped like Doraemon and Hello Kitty. Also, look at the little man in the middle of that banner (between Pooh and Pikachu). It took me a while to figure out that his name is Anpanman. Anpan is bread with anko inside, and Anpanman is just a cartoon version of it. You can even buy Anpanman shaped anpan.

Cotton candy.

Chocolate bananas (バナナチョコ - banana choco)

A few games.

A portable shrine

We stayed at the festival for a while and then walked around the area a bit. We ended up at Mikasa Park.

Wednesday, May 19

If you stay in Japan for an extended amount of time, you have to register with the city hall to get an alien registration card. I also needed to open a bank account and get a cell phone, so instead of going to work, I was supposed to meet up with Takamura-san at Yokosuka Chuou to get everything done. I made one mistake, though. I thought we were going to meet at the train station like we did when I first arrived, but Takamura-san wasn't there. There was a pay phone nearby, but I didn't have his number. After waiting for about an hour, I finally asked someone if there was an internet cafe nearby. Sure enough, the building right next to me had one on the 6th floor. It was only ￥100 for half an hour, so I logged onto my email, found his mobile email address, and sent him an email asking what happened. I got a reply within a few minutes. Turns out I missed that he had said to meet at the bus stop. I left the internet cafe and walked the, oh, 200 feet from the station over to the bus stop to find Takamura-san waiting for me. Hopefully, this will be the last time that happens since I'll have a cell phone after this trip.

The trip to city hall was pretty uneventful. I just had to fill out some form and wait a little bit. Since the card takes a little while to process, we had to fill out another form to get something we could take to the bank so I could open an account. On our way to the bank, we stopped to look at cell phones. The biggest cell phone carrier is DoCoMo (stands for DO COmmunications over MObile networks (emphasis mine); also "dokomo" is Japanese for "everywhere"), and they are also a subsidiary of NTT. We found out that they don't do any pre-paid plans, so we had to go with another company called SoftBank. We had to get a phone before we could purchase the service, though, but there was a secondhand phone shop just down the street. We found one for about ￥6300 and then went back to purchase the service. In a perfect world, I would only have to pay the ￥300 per month is costs for unlimited text and email, but the cheapest pre-paid card you can buy is ￥3000. Since it's good for 60 days, I'm basically paying about $15 a month for it. The remaining money can be used for calls, though at ￥90 per minute, it'll be mostly for emergencies, however, I can call SoftBank customers for free. Three of the four Canadian interns plus Amir, one of my fraternity brothers who is currently in Yokohama, have SoftBank, so it worked out pretty well.

Our last stop was Mizuho bank. The night before, I had thought about reviewing the chapter in my text book about going to the bank, but I forgot. It wouldn't have mattered. There's no way I could have done this my myself. Takamura-san told me what to fill out and did most (read: all) of the talking. He translated the things I needed to know. My favorite part was when he told me I had to agree not to do anything illegal. I assumed that meant not using my account for any illegal activities like money laundering. No, it meant anything illegal at all. I guess that as a Mizuho customer, committing a crime would bring shame upon them and dishonor their name. In any case, I made the minimum deposit of ￥1000, and we finished up. We stopped to get some ramen for lunch, and then we returned for the last few hours of work.

Saturday, May 29

I skipped a bit, but I promise I'll go back. I had to jump to the present before I forgot about it.

Today, I decided to find a place to play Go (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) if you're not familiar with it). I searched online a bit and found a site where you can search for Go clubs in Japan (http://www.igonavi.com). Let me just say that Google translator is one of the best things ever. In any case, I found that there are about 20 clubs in Yokohama but only 1 in Yokosuka. While I don't claim to be an optimist, I figured one was better than none, so I decided to find it.

I didn't get up until 12:30, and I showered, did a load of laundry, and called mom, so I didn't leave until 3:00. The bus to the YRP Nobi station didn't arrive until 3:22, so I went across the street to the bakery called "Pain de Mie." I haven't mentioned this bakery yet since I jumped ahead, but they have some good stuff. My favorite is the melon bread. It tastes like happiness.

Anyway, I took the bus to YRP Nobi and took the train one stop to Keikyu Kurihama. The club's site had a map with directions from the station (again, yay for Google translator), and it was only about a minute walk away. I walked inside, and as I expected, I was the youngest person by at least 30 years (no joke). There were maybe 15-20 people inside. The woman at the counter gave me a look that said, "Are you sure you know where you just walked into?" She was very surprised when I told her that I wanted to play. Someone (I think the owner, and I think the lady behind the counter was his wife, but I could be wrong) took me in and paired me up with a man who was in his 70's, if not his 80's. When he asked me how strong I was, after I responded, he apologized to my opponent (read: he's much stronger). They put down four handicap stones for me, and I asked what his rank was. He said 5 dan. Now, if you're not familiar with the ranking system, the amateur ranks go from 30-1 kyu, and the advanced amateur ranks go from 1-7 dan (after that are the professional dan levels from 1-9). I'm about 5-6 kyu, so this guy was quite a bit stronger than I am.

Well, it turns out that both he and the next guy I played said that on the Japanese scale, I'm probably closer to 1 dan (the second guy said the Japanese scale is a little more inflated than the American one). I was able to play 3 games. I lost to the first man with a 4 stone handicap, lost my first game to the second man with a 5 stone handicap, but I played another game with the second guy with only a 4 stone handicap and won (I lost a big fight in the first game and couldn't come back from it). I talked with him for probably an hour afterwards. His name was Kajiwara-san. He told me he was 69 years old and works on the floor above me at NTT (about 1000 people work in that building, so it's not too surprising that I would run into someone else who works there). After they closed up, the owner and his wife (or so I think) drove both of us home. Kajiwara-san runs the website for their club, and he posted a picture of us as well as a paragraph about me on it. http://homepage3.nifty.com/hsg/HASE/ I also took the picture below completely by accident, but it ended up being awesome. I'll take a picture of the entrance next time.

Today was an awesome day.

Monday, May 17

First day of work. Woke up at 5:30 again. Went back to sleep but kept waking up, so I finally got up around 7:30. Usually, I have to be at work by 9:30, but my Takamura-san wanted me to go in a little early. He said he'd be in around 9. With nothing better to do, I left probably around 8. He gave me a "Passmo" card on Saturday that can be used for most public transportation. It's RFID, so you just hold your wallet up to the reader when you get on and off. You can also reload it when it runs out. Well, I got there super early and didn't know what to do, so I sat down in a covered area to play my DS. About two minutes later, a security guard came over to tell me I couldn't sit there. I explained the situation as best as I could, and he told me I could wait inside. After Takamura-san arrived, I got a guess pass, and we went to have my picture taken for my permanent one. For probably the next half hour, he introduced me to different people. Most of them were shocked when I introduced myself in Japanese, especially the ones who said, "Nice to meet you," and received 『はじめまして』 (Hajimemashite) in response. Finally, he had me stand in front of the office, got everyone's attention (who all stood up to see me), and introduced me to the office (probably 70-80 people). He asked me to say something, but he'd already said most of what I would have said, so I just said a few words, and everyone clapped. It was a little weird.

At lunch, he showed me how to buy and reload the dining card. The cafeteria is pretty nice, not to mention cheap. Most meals are around ￥500 or less. I had a bowl of udon. There's one quirk, though. Around 12:20 when the first person finishes and leaves, if it's not too loud, you can hear this girl whose entire job during lunch seems to be standing there and saying, 『ありがとうございました。お願いいたしま す。』 (Arigatou gozaimashita. Onegai itashimasu. Roughly translated as "Thank you. Please come again," although it's really polite). The thing is, as long as there's someone in the checkout area, she will keep saying it, and once the first person has finished, the line to leave is constant for the rest of the hour. The amazing part is that she builds up a rhythm to it and never deviates. Even her pitch stays the same. After about 10 minutes, it'll drive you crazy. In any case, to pay for lunch, all you have to do is put your tray down on the counter. The dishes all have RFID tags so a reader can scan your items, figure out what you had, and tell you how much you owe. It's pretty neat.

Work itself wasn't too exciting. Takamura-san gave me a rough overview of his work with a presentation he gave at Stanford a few months ago. After that, I spent most of the day setting up my desktop. He had already done a clean install of Windows 7 before I got here (in English, thankfully), so It was just a matter of installing programs that I needed. The first thing I did, though, was download a program that can remap keys on your keyboard (changing keys is just a matter of changing the registry, so I just found a program that will do it for you). The space bar on Japanese keyboards is about an inch and a half. If you rest your hands naturally, your right thumb sits over one of the transform keys (usually, you type in hiragana and use the transform keys to change it to kanji). The little bit that I need to type in Japanese, I can do without them, though, so I decided it would be more important to not be missing the space bar for every other word and mapped that key be space bar (translation: I now have two keys that will create a space). I also had to download a few programs more than once because I had some trouble getting to the English version. If a site is available in multiple languages (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.), it will default to the location of your IP. Google was the easiest. There was a big link in the bottom that said, "Go to Google English." Other sites weren't always so easy, but I managed to figure everything out. It's a nice computer, too. Really nice. It has 4 quad-core Xeon W5580 processors (about $1700 each), 2 GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards (each has 2 cores, about $500 each), and 12 GB of DDR3 memory (in the neighborhood of $300-$500), although, they probably bought the system as a whole, so I couldn't say how much they spent on it. 

If you're ever staying in another country for a while and are trying to learn the language, there are two important things you should do. The first is to make some friends who don't speak any English. When the people around you know English, even if you try to speak Japanese with them, you always have a crutch to fall back on. Talking with people who don't know any English takes away that crutch. The second important thing is to make friends with people who DO speak English. I met four interns from Canada, and I hadn't realized how much I had missed being able to easily communicate. Two of them are half Japanese, and one is Chinese (though I think he's American by birth?). In any case, I think I've got most of my bases covered.

I've put a few pictures up at http://www.hazmatt.org/pictures/japan. There will be more later, and I'll eventually start showing some here.