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.

Sunday, May 16

I learned a new word: 二日酔い (futsukayoi) – hangover. I slept about 12 hours, but I still felt awful. It took me most of the day to write down the Thursday/Friday and Saturday's entries. Napped from 1-3. Felt a little better for a while, but I eventually went to the bathroom to through up. I drank a lot of water during the day plus some juice and 7up from the vending machine. Around 7:00, I finally decided to go get some food, but my stomach still hurt, so I just wanted a light meal. I wasn't feeling very adventurous due my situation, so I just went back to the same restaurant. The same waitresses were there as before as was Uchida-san. I told them I was only drinking water, and I tried to ask them what meals they served with rice. The look they gave me when I asked if I could get something without meat was amazing[0]. We finally settled on some stir-fry dish. I had to wait a while, though, because they brought the bowl out with a gas burner underneath, and I had to wait for the rice to cook. I stayed for several hours to talk and study Japanese before finally going home to shower and sleep.

[0] Everything in Japan has meat or some meat product. Fish paste, broth, small pieces of meat, it's in everything. If you're a vegetarian, you'll have a pretty hard time with the food. If you're a vegan, just resign yourself to buying everything at the supermarket (ingredients only, nothing pre-mixed) and never eating out.

Saturday, May 15

I woke up at 5:30 Saturday morning. Even after only sleeping 4 hours on Wednesday night and about 3 hours on the plane, my body wouldn't let me sleep any more. I should also mention that the sun was up by this time. I took a shower and soaked in the tub for about 10 minutes. In Japan, the bathtub is only used for soaking, and you have to shower first because everyone uses the same water. It stays covered when not in use so it will stay hot. The manager told me that the bathroom is cleaned every morning at 10:00, so I assume they change the water then as well. After bathing, I studied for a few hours before Takamura-san arrived.

My dorm is in a large suburban area. There's one main road that has some shops and restaurants, but off that road is almost nothing but tightly packed houses. There are a few really small shops, a few parks, and there are probably a few schools around, but mostly houses. I'll come back to this because I'm skipping ahead a little bit in the story. We drove about 30 minutes to get to a bigger department store. We started at a hyakuen shop (hyakuen - ¥100). A hyakuen shop is similar to a dollar store in the US, but a dollar store usually just means that items are priced to the nearest dollar. In a hyakuen shop, everything is ¥100 unless specifically marked, and the shop we went to was pretty big. I bought a trash can, laundry detergent, a 6-pack of coat hangers, and slippers[0] for the dorm all for ¥100 each. I also bought some sandals for work for about ¥300.

After the hyakuen shop, we went to a nearby department store[1] to look for a pillow and bed cover. It looked a lot like Ikea, but it was much more expensive. We couldn't find a pillow for less than ¥3000 or a bed spread for less than ¥6000. Takamura-san talked to an employee and found out that the floor below us had cheaper items. I said we were on the non-college student floor. We went downstairs and bought a pillow for ¥600 and a bed cover for ¥960. Once we finished shopping, he took me to an Italian restaurant for lunch. Everything was really cheap, apparently because it was a chain restaurant. My spaghetti with spinach and cream sauce was around ¥450, and I had a small glass of wine for ¥100 just for the sheer novelty of it.

After lunch, he took me back to the dorm, and I finished unpacking. I then decided to do what was inevitably going to happen at some point: get lost. I went for a long walk down the main road, but I eventually turned off to go exploring. After two or three turns, I still knew where I was enough to go back the way I came to the main road, but if you know me, you probably know I didn't backtrack. After a few more turns, I was all in. The best part was I didn't take anything with me. I have a copy of my passport in my backpack for a good reason. I also didn't have the address of my dorm, and I don't know if it's common knowledge that NTT has a dorm in the area. So, I continued through row after row of houses until I eventually made it back to the main road. I remembered which road I took to get to the main road, and when I got there, it had been about an hour and a half since I left. From that point, the dorm was less than 5 minutes away, but you can probably guess what happened next. I didn't know how to get back to the dorm, but I did know I was really close, so I started walking through each street trying to find it. I must have passed the same park and river at least 5 times. I eventually found a little restaurant that Takamura-san and I had passed on the way to the dorm the night before, so I knew I was really close. About 15 minutes later without finding it, I went back to the restaurant to try from that point again. I walked from it to the end of the street and stopped to look around. Lo and behold, the dorm was right there at the end of the street. From the time I left the main road until I returned to the dorm was about another hour and a half, so in total, I walked for about three hours.

After resting for a little bit, I walked back to the restaurant down the street. I had no idea at the time what an awesome decision that was. The fun started when they handed me a menu. I could only read bits and pieces of it, but I studied it for a good 10 minutes before ordering anything. The first mistake was when I asked for “osake.” You may know that Japanese rice wine is called sake. What you may not know is that “osake” is the word for any alcohol. It was a small slip, but it took at least five minutes to explain that I just wanted sake. I could hear them in the back asking if anyone knew English. Eventually, they brought out a girl who knew some English to help me order. It got even more fun here since I couldn't read most of the menu and was trying to ask what they served. The best part was when the girl called someone on her cell phone who knew more English than she did and had me talk to her. That helped some, but her English wasn't perfect either. We finally settled on tuna sashimi[2].

There was an old man sitting next to me who I spent most of the night talking to, or at least trying to. He only knew a few words in English, but I tried my best to talk with him in Japanese. We also talked a bit with the waitress. I told them that I had just arrived the day before and was interning with NTT until November and staying at the dorm. The man was 60 years old, and I think he said his name was Uchida. He had a pitcher of green tea and a bottle of what I think he said was “Japanese Vodka,” though I was never quite sure that that's what he said, and he was mixing the two together. He had me try it with and without the green tea. He said that the alcohol was “hard” and that mixing them together made it “soft.” At this point, he started buying food and drinks for me. I don't think that's all that uncommon, but it was interesting, not to mention unexpected. He bought another bottle of his drink for us. At some point he asked me if I liked his drink or sake more. When I said sake, he bought me another order of sake. It starts getting fuzzy after that. He bought two pieces of yakitori[3], one was pork with salt and the other was chicken with soy sauce. He asked me which I liked better, and I said the pork. Towards the end of the evening, I was surprised by a sparkler in someone's dish. It turned out to be ice cream with a sparkler sticking out (I don't know if that's common in Japan or not). I didn't realize it, but he ordered one for me. Shortly after that, we paid up and left. My bill was about ¥1300, but his was over ¥5000. I made the short walk back and went straight to bed around 9:30.

[0] It's customary in Japan to take off your shoes when you enter many buildings (not usually stores and restaurants, but usually homes and sometimes offices). Many places will have a few pairs for guests, but if you will be at a place for an extended time, you usually get your own. I have never been so glad to have small feet before now. I wear an 8.5, and the guest slippers just barely fit me. If my feet were any bigger, I would not have been able to find any slippers that fit me in the hyakuen shop.
[1] Department stores are usually very large and several floors in Japan (think Macy's or Bloomingdale's). The store we went to was called Home's and had three floors. As an aside, there was a smaller clothing store inside called Uni Qlo (I don't know if it's supposed to be two words or just one. It was in all caps and the two parts were on two lines). My best guess is that it's a contraction of “unique look.”
[2] Sushi is raw fish on top of rice. Sashimi is just the fish. Sometimes it may come with other things, but mine only came with diced radish and wasabi. The waitress and Uchida-san seemed surprised that I knew what the wasabi was (the waitress even more so that I ate it), but I told them that Japanese restaurants are common in the US.
[3] Yakitori is pretty much just grilled meat on a stick. It's served either with soy sauce or salted.

Thursday, May 13

My flight from Mobile to Atlanta left at 10:30, so Dad took me to the airport around 8:30. I was told at Wachovia that they could exchange currency at the Mobile airport, but I had to wait until I got to Atlanta. After going through security and getting some coffee, I sat down to watch Star Trek: DS9 while waiting for the flight. I was eight episodes away from finishing the series (this will be important later), but I got through an episode and a half before boarding. Note that this was the last time I was able to charge my laptop (also important). On the flight to Atlanta, I finished the second episode and just started on the third before we arrived.

I only had an hour layover, so I headed straight to currency exchange. I had been watching the yen exchange rate all semester with an app on my laptop that showed the rate on my desktop. All semester, it stayed around 90-95 yen per dollar. Imagine my surprise when I went to exchange my money, and they were selling at 80 yen per dollar! Either the app I've been using was wrong, or that was one heck of a service charge[0]. After trading my right arm for ¥50000, I stopped at the restroom and then at Arby's before heading to the gate. The plane was already boarding when I arrived, but I sat down to eat my sandwich as there was a pretty long line. When I finally got to the counter, I couldn't find my boarding pass (keep in mind that this was last call). Looking back on it, I think I probably left it on the first plane. Fortunately, I walked up to the counter and told them what happened, and they were able to look up and print out a new boarding pass in about 30 seconds. I got on the plane, and we took off around 2 pm eastern time (3 am Tokyo time).

The flight was long but mostly uneventful. I don't think I slept more than three hours total, and I only got up once to use the restroom around 10 am. They played a few movies on the flight, but they mostly played episodes from different tv shows. It started over after around 10 hours. I only watched a few episodes, but I want to know who thought it would be a good idea to show the episode of 30 Rock where the guy is in love with a Japanese body pillow. Four seasons to pick from, and you pick the most culturally offensive episode possible. In any case, I was mostly concerned with finishing DS9. I got down to the last two episodes when my laptop finally ran out of juice, however, I had planned ahead and copied the episodes to my thumb drive[1], so once the laptop was done, I pulled out my netbook to finish it. I saw the ending, and everything was right with the world (I promise this is an important part of the story. Just wait).

Going through customs and immigration wouldn't be nearly as stressful if you could do it before you leave. It wouldn't be even remotely practical to do, but you wouldn't have to worry about there being a problem with your entry and having to be sent back home without even making it out of the airport. When I went through immigration, I had to wait in a room by myself while they processed everything. I had no idea what they were doing, but I remember that it was 5 pm because I heard someone say, “お疲れ様でした” (otsukaresama deshita – literally something like, “you're tired,” but it's said at the end of the day when someone is leaving and can be translated as “thanks for your hard work today”). After a few minutes, the guy came back in, told me he had attached a piece of paper to my passport, and sent me on my way. That's really all he said. The trip through customs was less eventful. It went something like this:

<Do you speak Japanese?>
<A little.>
<Is this all you have?>
<Yes.>
<OK.>

And I was off.

Once I made it to the entrance to the airport, I realized how little I was actually prepared for the trip. I pulled out my netbook to get on the internet, but I wasn't successful, so I resumed my journey. The train station was in the airport, so I went to the counter to buy a ticket. <I need to go to Yokosuka.> <???> <I don't understand.> Fortunately, she spoke English. It only cost about ¥1000 more to take the 特急　(tokkyuu – limited express train) instead of the normal train, and it cut about 45 minutes from the trip. I went downstairs into the station and asked someone at the information desk which train I needed to take. My seat was in the very front car, and it took me about 3 minutes to walk to it. The train left less than two minutes after I stored my luggage and sat down. If I had stopped to use the restroom like I wanted (that one time on the plane that I got up to use the restroom about 7 hours before this? Yeah, that was the last time I used the restroom), I would have missed the train.

You know when you're driving on the interstate and someone doesn't just pass you but flies by you? That's about the difference between the limited express train and the normal trains that we passed. It's no bullet train, but it is noticeably faster. There is another train called the express train (急行 – kyukou), but I think they travel the same speed, and the difference is just that the limited express stops more often. The ride took about an hour and 45 minutes to Totsuka where I had to get off and change to a local train. At one stop, the train sat for a few minutes before a janitor saw me and told me I had to change to another train to go to Yokosuka. I don't know why that train didn't continue on the route, but the train I needed to change to was already there. I finally arrived at the Yokosuka station somewhere between 7 and 7:30 where I was supposed to meet my supervisor, Takamura-san, who would take me to the dorm. At least, that's what I thought.

I waited for at least 20 minutes all the while regretting that I had not printed out the information I needed such as when and where we were meeting, not to mention his contact information. I didn't have a cell phone to call him, but I may have been able to ask someone to borrow one. Although I didn't print it out, I had it in my email, however, remember all the Star Trek episodes I mentioned? I didn't have enough charge to even turn on my laptop to pull up the email I needed. I pulled out my laptop charger and the adapter I needed (Japanese outlets are similar to the US, but there's no third prong for ground) and started looking around for an outlet. I found two in the area: one was out of reach and the other was next to the entrance of a convenience store, so it was a little in the way, but I didn't have much choice. I plugged in my laptop, pulled up the email, and wrote down what I needed.

The email said I needed to be at the east exit on the second floor. As I was on ground level, I assumed I was at the west exit and needed to go to the other end. Unfortunately, there was no way to get to the other side besides buying a ticket and walking through the station, and the attendant had closed the window. I bought the cheapest ticket I could (¥130. I don't even know how far that would have taken me), and walked to the other side. I soon realized, there was no other exit, but there was another window for the attendant that was still open, so I walked back to talk to him. He was an elderly man who didn't speak English and didn't seem too concerned with helping me, but we finally figured out that I needed to go to the Yokosuka Chuou station (that information was actually in the email, but I didn't realize it was a different station). It took a few more minutes for me to find out from him that I needed to take a bus there, not a train. The buses were right outside the station, but I had to ask a taxi driver where the stop was. When the bus arrived, I didn't know how I was supposed to pay for it. I was also having more and more trouble trying to communicate in Japanese the later it got. I asked someone how I was supposed to pay (in English), and, fortunately, she knew enough English to tell me I had to pay after the ride. I wasn't completely sure that this bus even went to the Yokosuka Chuou station, but I got on anyway, and sure enough, it did. When we arrived at my stop, I put a ¥1000 bill in the machine and took what I thought was my change. Turns out, it only made change for the bill and didn't collect any money. The bus driver stopped me before I got off and took the fare from the change I had in my hand. Good thing since I didn't know how much the trip cost.

The bus stop wasn't quite at the station, but I asked someone where it was and found out it was just down the street on the other side. I got to the station and took the escalator to the second floor, and Takamura-san was waiting for me. He had said 8:30 in the email, and it was around 8:30 when I got there, but I think he came earlier because he saw that my flight arrived 40 minutes ahead of schedule. In any case, we grabbed a tempura bentou (like a to-go box) on the way to the bus stop and then took the bus to the dorm. The bus ride took about 30 minutes, so we talked a bit on the way, though I had a little trouble staying awake. The dorm manager met us outside the dorm and took us in. It's a good thing Takamura-san was with me as the manager didn't understand English and talked very fast. I got the tour of the place and got my luggage in my room. Before Takamura-san left, I asked him if I could send mom an email from his phone to let her know I got in. We also decided that he would pick me up at 10:00 the next morning to go shopping for anything I might need. After that, I was finally able to eat dinner (not to mention use the restroom), and got to bed around 11:00.

[0] It turns out that exchanging money in the airport is one of the most expensive ways. It would have cost less to use an ATM in Japan and pay all of the fees.
[1] That thumb drive didn't make it off the plane with me. I just bought it right before I left, too.

First Post!

For once in my life, I actually have a reason to have a blog: being in Japan. In order to not contribute further to the hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs that exist with only two posts (a first post and an apology a few months later for not posting more), I will begin posting my backlog of entries right now.