My first hours in Japan
On March 23rd, 2006 I stepped off a plane in Narita Airport and into a new life that continues to this day. For those who know me well enough I'm pretty crappy with dates, but that one really sticks out in my mind and ain't going anywhere either. I might as well have been reborn that day; so much has changed for me.
I remember stepping off the plane and being in the limbo of the airport for a good long while before getting out. Having traveled a good deal in my lifetime, it strikes me how airports are kind of like a neutral ground, almost like an international village that doesn't really give you the full impression of the country itself. I was to work for Nova, the largest English conversation school in the country and one of their representatives met me at the airport, helped me get a bus ticket and told me another rep would meet me at the bus stop I got out on. I sat around for another hour and a half before the bus I needed finally came. Then I sat on that bus for just about as long, as I was driven into the largest metropolis in the world.
My friend Phil told me once that the moment it really hammered into him that he "wasn't in Kansas any more" was riding into the city and noticing that the tall buildings just kept on going and going even after over an hour of driving. Though San Diego and LA are large cities for the US, they really ain't shit compared to Tokyo. They're also mostly flat and spread out and to use SD as an example, downtown (the only place in SD with tall buildings) subsides after about 20 mins or so if you drive through it. Tokyo is like a giant steel and concrete monster that lay down and never got up, and we who live in it, are a lot like insects crawling all over and in its carcass.
I was met by the second representative at the bus stop. The guy told me he was from Liverpool and he had a dirty sort of British accent, but he was friendly enough and got me where I needed to go. My roommate at the apartment I was going to (also set up by Nova) was a British guy as well I was told, but when we got there he wasn't in and I found only a note saying he'd be back later at night. Liverpool guy left me his email for cell phone and told me he and some friends were goin out for karaoke later, but at the moment the thing I'd wanted most was to take a shower and wash the last 11 or so hours of plane ride off of myself. After that, I thought a little about giving the guy a call but instead decided I'd try first to get a hold of Phil so I walked back to a phone booth at a supermarket we'd passed on the way, and fumbled around with the unfamiliar coins and receiver trying to get it to do what I wanted. I remember listening to the ringtone at-that-time-alien to my ears, high-pitched and nasal compared to the low droning of its US counterpart as it finally gave way to an answer and a voice. "Hello"
"Uh, hello?" I asked to the voice that answered.
"Dan..." the voice lit up in a grin of friendliness that told me he'd been expecting the call sometime soon. I told him I'd arrived and was on my own at the moment.
"You gotta come out here and see us," he said. "do you think you can make it out here on your own?"
I remember thinking up until that point just how daunting and even frightening the city of Tokyo was, me being new and understanding nothing. "Umm, I don't know man, I'm not too sure how to get there."
"It's easy man" he said back, followed by some directions trying to explain to me which line to take, all of which I made no sense to me, and followed by the most helpful piece of advice he could give me: "Just remember you need to get to Kichijoji Station. And if you get lost just ask a worker at the station for help."
The prospect of getting lost in translation out in the world's biggest city and unable to find my way home on my first night didn't really much appeal to me, but then again, I didn't come half way around the world to not take chances either. I found a map with a ton of train lines on it in the things I'd received from Nova, and then braved out into the belly of the beast called Tokyo.
The train system out here is just about the best in the world, with the only really big drawback I can think of being that it all stops at about 1:00AM. But for the foreigner just arrived, it was all a confusing mess. Used to completely unnerve me seeing waves upon waves of people all come flooding out the gates all at once. It only hit me later that this was because those people had all just gotten out of a train and were leaving at the same time. Shibuya and Shinjuku stations were both insane in terms of of how big, crowded, and busy they were. Both were names I'd heard before watching anime, but seeing them in person knocked me on my ass. I asked the station employees at every transfer I went about which line to take, which thankfully was very easy to explain since the lines were numbered and very clearly labeled. Most of those conversations really only required me to say "Kichijoji?" like a question and could've been answered by the station worker simply saying a number and pointing which way to go. On the Chuo Line it hit me that I might be on an express train that wouldn't stop at Kichijoji and so the first time I had to muster up what I knew and use any Japanese out there was to ask another passenger if the train we were on was going there. I didn't know the word for train yet, I said it in katakana and thankfully the guy was able to figure out what I meant. The train we were on was indeed stopping there. It amazes me just how helpful Japanese people can be, the guy made it a point to tell me exactly when we arrived that this was the stop I wanted, it was almost as if he decided I was his responsibility after I asked him for help. It's weird how I no longer even think about the convenience of having a car. I really barely missed it after the first few months and in a lot of ways, not having to worry about it is actually an improvement of sorts.
I arrived at Kichijoji and called Phil from another payphone. After waiting a few minutes I was shocked to see Phil greet me at the gates in crutches. Apparently he'd broken his heel just a week or so before I arrived. Then we went to a bar called "The Hub" for drinks. It was a British-style pub, something I gave them a little bit of shit about later asking them why they'd brought me to a place like that instead of a more Japanese style place when I'd just arrived, but I soon learned that the bar was something of a hangout for foreigners (in this case I mean non-japanese) like ourselves. Then we walked through the Inokashira Park drinking beers, looking out at the lake, and getting drunker and drunker while they asked me about San Diego and I asked them about Japan. Then we made our way back to Parkside House, which at the time was one of the coolest places I could think of to live in all of Japan.
Parkside House and my brief time at the other apartment
Phil had learned about the place through Nick, a friend of his from back in California, who I'd known too, though not as well. Parkside House was a complete mix of foreigners. It had a very international feel to it. There was John who grew up in southern California in a town near where I grew up, who liked DJing and played in a ska band; Tommy from Chicago and Brendan from Australia who both played hand drums in the park; Raury from Scotland who painted; Steve and George from England; Joel from Australia who played guitar in his room a lot and skated in his spare time sometimes; another Scot named Jenny who left just after I arrived; Ludovick and Sonia from France who hadn't met before coming out to Japan; Sue and Jessie, 2 Korean girls studying photography and Japanese at a university; Chris from Canada who played drums in a band; Peter, a German guy who had a little bit of a British accent because he'd lived there several years; Dom, a South African and total party animal who'd lived in Australia; Hiro a Japanese guy studying architecture; Maki, who worked in a sort of store for hippies; Kelly, a Chinese american from Boston; and also a few others whose names I can't remember. Just about everyone in the house spoke English fairly well. Just about everyone who wasn't Japanese had job teaching English as a second language, or in the case of Ludo and Sonia, French.
The rooms were small by US standards, but normal by Japanese ones (6 tatami mats in size). A lot of the public spaces were shared, kitchen, bathrooms, dining area, balcony, and a large TV room. It gets me how in the US balconies are often seen as an uncommon luxury, but out here they're pretty damn close to being a requirement. People seldom lounge around on them either, they (along with patios) are used almost exclusively for hanging and drying clothes. Electric dryers themselves are pretty uncommon out here in apartments, though Parkside House, being a guesthouse did have one that took 100¥ coins like a laundromat would.
All in all, it felt like being in an international dorm. And having missed out on the dorm experience in college, became pretty endearing to me pretty quickly. Because most everyone ate together in the dining room, people would always be coming in, going out, saying hello, talking with each other. With everyone being from a different country, we were exposed to a large number of different opinions. The kinds of discussions that could go anywhere and made you realize just how different your way of thinking was when put on the world stage instead of just compared to others in your own country. It got me just how much English unifies the world giving us a common way to communicate, and also made me accutely aware of how many countries out there call English their "primary" language; the US, England, Canada, and Australia always seemed to pop immediately to mind, but Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and Singapore tend to slip under the radar. It also strikes me how we tended to band together with others who spoke the same language. It wasn't as if we isolated ourselves into Chinatowns or anything quite like that, but your friends have tendency to be those you can still manage to have a relaxed and yet still in-depth conversation with.
I stayed there the first night with Phil, he let me crash out on his floor, and knew almost immediately that I wanted to live there. There were rooms available, and put down a deposit the very next day not even knowing what Nova's policy was gonna be regarding the apartment of theirs I'd already agreed to live in (it would turn out I had to stay there, or at least pay rent there for one full month so I amended my move into Parkside to make it a couple weeks later). My first month in Japan ended up being a strange mix of hanging out there occasionally and staying at the Nova apartment I'd been assigned in Kawasaki.
Taking a quick break from describing Parkside, I wanted to mention my apartment back in Kawasaki. I returned to it my second day in Japan to meet my British roommate, a guy named Jon. He turned out to be very friendly, liked anime a lot, spoke a bit of Japanese, and had worked for Nova for some time, though he didn't have all that many good things to say about them (more on that later). I remember getting along with him really well and thinking to myself, that had I met him my first night there, I might not have ended up making the snap decision to move to Parkside House (really glad things turned out as they did instead). A little under a week later, our new roommate arrived, he was a cat named James who was also from England. He was just about a complete opposite to Jon: noisier and much more out-going, he partied, drank a lot, liked drugs, loud music and women. I got along with him too right from the start. Jon was quieter and tended to spend more time with his girlfriend. But both were from England and I remember listening to the two of them talk about the things they remembered from back home, British comedians and pop culture references, and being completely lost. It was weird to me that in the end, despite them both being British, I think I might actually have had more in common with either of them than they did with each other. Jon because of the anime and the fact that we both could be focused when it came to work (James had a habit of quitting jobs after only a few days, and in some cases, only hours after starting). James and I had a lot in common with in regards to musical tastes and partying (we had both been much more wild when we were in college). James, in particular, being a new arrival like myself was much more adventuresome and because everything was new to him as well as me we ended up hanging out quite a bit in the beginning.
I remember once we went to try and meet Jon who was at a pub in Shimokitazawa, a very cool and trendy area with lots of little boutique style stores and small bars. Because the pub was on the basement level though, Jon's phone had no reception and we couldn't get ahold of him, so we instead simply went wandering around exploring Shimokita, getting drunk at bars, and encountering my first (and ironically still best) experience with okonomiyaki in Japan.
If there was one thing both Jon and James had in common, it was their love for soccer or "football" as they called it, though they both had different teams back in England that they liked. We went and saw a game out in Yokohama once, and I got to experience firsthand how little I knew about the game and its culture as the two told me all they could think of on the matter, everything from what teams and tournaments they liked to how the firms worked and operated (turned out it was quite different from what I'd see watching "Green Street Hooligans").
In the end, James left Nova before completing training. I remember teasing him about it saying he'd just completed the ultimate in rapid job quitting. He'd told me he'd quit several jobs after only a few hours and said he once hadn't even bothered to ask, but instead simply went to the bathroom and climbed out a window never to return to work at one of his past positions. "This time you traveled all the way to Japan just to quit a job!" I joked with him. We still keep in touch by email, though Jon's I've lost since it was cell phone contact info for both of us and after we both upgraded phones once or twice we lost touch.
As spring went on and the time I shared between the two apartments began to shift more towards Parkside House, I got to experience my first "Hanami", which in Japanese roughly means "flower watching" and refers specifically to the Cherry Blossoms which bloom only for a couple weeks in the spring. The Japanese go absolutely nuts over it. They use the opportunity to get out as much as possible, flood into parks and other areas with lots of cherry trees, roll out ground mats and then spend hours just hanging out, eating food and snacks, getting drunker and drunker, and louder and louder and cheering over things like the wind blowing through the glades to send white pedals snowing down on them. You really do see a different side to them during this season; they're easier to talk to, more open and celebratory. The start of the business year is the end of March and beginning of April, and it's also the start of the new school year unlike the US which opens every September. Someone once told me that the cherry blossoms sort of signified a time for new beginnings for them out here. It's a special time indeed.
Another thing that was very unique for me at that time was the World Cup Soccer tournament which only happens once every 4 years. That year was the year it was held in Germany, and Japan, the US, England, Australia, all were in it too. World Cup in Parkside House was a total blast. Every time a game came on people would crowd into the TV room to watch it. With people from all different countries gathered around everyone seemed to be going for a different team. Even if the teams playing weren't your own, something was often at stake, tensions ran high, and the cheering and the taunting and the bragging went on sometimes till the early hours of the morning. Then Italy won leaving everyone pissed off and calling soccer the stupidest game ever.
It's kind of weird how the two roommates I think I connected with the most during my first few months at Parkside were Steve, a British guy who had the room next to mine, and Peter, who was German and as I mentioned before spoke English with a slightly British, slightly German accent. I got to know the two of them best I think because they were also both new to Japan like me and willing to go out just to look around and explore, whereas many of the others had become used to things, settled into routines, become busier, and just in general no longer had the same need to go out and look at the details. It's kind of weird how we can sometimes find a kindred spirit in others for no other reason than because they are at the same point as us in life. I felt considerably close to both of them despite both being there for what was actually a relatively short time given the breadth of how long I've been here now. It came as a little of a jolt and disappointment that both of them had to leave after only a few short months (Peter to Australia to be with his girlfriend who was moving there, Steve back to England).
Which I guess brings me to the other thing I realized only then, not just about Parkside House but also about the foreigner situation in Japan in general: people tend to exit your life suddenly. Japan for most of the foreigners who come to visit is not really a long term thing, but rather usually just a year or so of adventure and travel and occasionally study before heading back to one's home country or continuing on to another. In Parkside House, and in many of the jobs I've had here (which often employ many other foreigners like myself), it seems like someone's visa is always about to expire and won't be renewed, someone is always on their way out the door, someone new always coming in. That's the foreigner experience in Japan in a nutshell. Temporal, shifting, and for me at first, a wild, raging blur at the speed of it all.
I suppose something like that could turn a person cautious about getting to know the new guys when they might just be gone the next day. We even speculated once that one of the other roommates who'd been there a long time was kind of bitter at watching others go all the time, adopting a sort of "What's the point of even talking to them?" sort of attitude, though at the time I just looked forward to seeing new people come to fill the spaces: Matt from England, Matt from Canada, Andy from Atlanta, and in the end I outlasted all of them as well. I ended up being a long timer there and in Japan too. Countless faces filled the halls of Parkside House during the three years I spent there. Some of the coolest people I've met in my life, most of whom I still have some contact with. The Parkside I knew then when I first moved in, however, was just a snapshot of an entity that changed form like water. For me, however, things were different. I understood almost from the beginning that I'd want to stay longer than just a year: at least two if not three or maybe even more. I began digging in almost immediately, saving money and not being in the biggest hurry to see all the major sites in and around and near Tokyo, almost as if saving them for later as well. For me the story continued in Japan.
Why did I come to Japan?
To this day I'm asked quite often by people I meet exactly why I came out here, though it was much more common when I first arrived, particularly by new students I met at work. I'm not even entirely sure of the answer myself anymore. I had an early interest in Japanese games, manga and anime which I first became aware of in late grade school and early junior high. This addiction I fed all the way through high school and when I got to college I even took Japanese as it looked interesting.
The language was tough beyond measure, but the class so interesting and enjoyable that I didn't even notice for a long time. I made several good friends in those classes, including Phil, who along with his girlfriend at the time, Mio, became my first roommates when I moved out for the first time. I minored in Japanese after realizing it would be easier to do so with it than any other field in at school, though I also was well aware that nothing short of going to the country itself was gonna make me improve to the level I wanted. On that topic I wasn't even sure I wanted to anyways (advance in skill I mean). I wasn't sure if it'd be useful at all, and though I'd become enthralled by the culture and had already made up my mind to travel there someday, I pushed what thoughts of the language I had to the back of my head and instead just focused on finishing school and swimming through the drudgery of life. For two years after graduating I wandered in and out of jobs and places to live, settling in at a government job that was comfortable but plain, until Phil moved out to Japan for a second time and asked me if I wanted to come out too.
Though I was certain it was time for me to go and see the country since I had a friend there who could show me around, I wasn't sure if living there was for me or not. Looking back on the details of my life just before I left it's hard not to feel they were rather mundane. I had been living with mom and dad for a little while, wanting to move out, but in need of a more reliable car which had kept me there longer than I wanted in order to save money. While greater San Diego is a fun place with a lot going on, my home town of Santee itself is comfortable but out of the way and a bit dull. Phil was pretty much like: "C'mon on man, you know you wanna come out here to live, just go about it the right way this time and get yourself a job through one of the English Schools like Nova or Aeon or something." I decided in the end I'd nothing to lose by trying and that I'd give it a go. There wouldn't even be a choice if I wasn't offered a job, and in that case, I'd just go out for a visit. On the other hand, I also sort of knew that if I was granted an interview I'd almost certainly be accepted. I know my level, and teaching English would be absolutely no problem for me.
My friend Phil told me once that the moment it really hammered into him that he "wasn't in Kansas any more" was riding into the city and noticing that the tall buildings just kept on going and going even after over an hour of driving. Though San Diego and LA are large cities for the US, they really ain't shit compared to Tokyo. They're also mostly flat and spread out and to use SD as an example, downtown (the only place in SD with tall buildings) subsides after about 20 mins or so if you drive through it. Tokyo is like a giant steel and concrete monster that lay down and never got up, and we who live in it, are a lot like insects crawling all over and in its carcass.
I was met by the second representative at the bus stop. The guy told me he was from Liverpool and he had a dirty sort of British accent, but he was friendly enough and got me where I needed to go. My roommate at the apartment I was going to (also set up by Nova) was a British guy as well I was told, but when we got there he wasn't in and I found only a note saying he'd be back later at night. Liverpool guy left me his email for cell phone and told me he and some friends were goin out for karaoke later, but at the moment the thing I'd wanted most was to take a shower and wash the last 11 or so hours of plane ride off of myself. After that, I thought a little about giving the guy a call but instead decided I'd try first to get a hold of Phil so I walked back to a phone booth at a supermarket we'd passed on the way, and fumbled around with the unfamiliar coins and receiver trying to get it to do what I wanted. I remember listening to the ringtone at-that-time-alien to my ears, high-pitched and nasal compared to the low droning of its US counterpart as it finally gave way to an answer and a voice. "Hello"
"Uh, hello?" I asked to the voice that answered.
"Dan..." the voice lit up in a grin of friendliness that told me he'd been expecting the call sometime soon. I told him I'd arrived and was on my own at the moment.
"You gotta come out here and see us," he said. "do you think you can make it out here on your own?"
I remember thinking up until that point just how daunting and even frightening the city of Tokyo was, me being new and understanding nothing. "Umm, I don't know man, I'm not too sure how to get there."
"It's easy man" he said back, followed by some directions trying to explain to me which line to take, all of which I made no sense to me, and followed by the most helpful piece of advice he could give me: "Just remember you need to get to Kichijoji Station. And if you get lost just ask a worker at the station for help."
The prospect of getting lost in translation out in the world's biggest city and unable to find my way home on my first night didn't really much appeal to me, but then again, I didn't come half way around the world to not take chances either. I found a map with a ton of train lines on it in the things I'd received from Nova, and then braved out into the belly of the beast called Tokyo.
The train system out here is just about the best in the world, with the only really big drawback I can think of being that it all stops at about 1:00AM. But for the foreigner just arrived, it was all a confusing mess. Used to completely unnerve me seeing waves upon waves of people all come flooding out the gates all at once. It only hit me later that this was because those people had all just gotten out of a train and were leaving at the same time. Shibuya and Shinjuku stations were both insane in terms of of how big, crowded, and busy they were. Both were names I'd heard before watching anime, but seeing them in person knocked me on my ass. I asked the station employees at every transfer I went about which line to take, which thankfully was very easy to explain since the lines were numbered and very clearly labeled. Most of those conversations really only required me to say "Kichijoji?" like a question and could've been answered by the station worker simply saying a number and pointing which way to go. On the Chuo Line it hit me that I might be on an express train that wouldn't stop at Kichijoji and so the first time I had to muster up what I knew and use any Japanese out there was to ask another passenger if the train we were on was going there. I didn't know the word for train yet, I said it in katakana and thankfully the guy was able to figure out what I meant. The train we were on was indeed stopping there. It amazes me just how helpful Japanese people can be, the guy made it a point to tell me exactly when we arrived that this was the stop I wanted, it was almost as if he decided I was his responsibility after I asked him for help. It's weird how I no longer even think about the convenience of having a car. I really barely missed it after the first few months and in a lot of ways, not having to worry about it is actually an improvement of sorts.
I arrived at Kichijoji and called Phil from another payphone. After waiting a few minutes I was shocked to see Phil greet me at the gates in crutches. Apparently he'd broken his heel just a week or so before I arrived. Then we went to a bar called "The Hub" for drinks. It was a British-style pub, something I gave them a little bit of shit about later asking them why they'd brought me to a place like that instead of a more Japanese style place when I'd just arrived, but I soon learned that the bar was something of a hangout for foreigners (in this case I mean non-japanese) like ourselves. Then we walked through the Inokashira Park drinking beers, looking out at the lake, and getting drunker and drunker while they asked me about San Diego and I asked them about Japan. Then we made our way back to Parkside House, which at the time was one of the coolest places I could think of to live in all of Japan.
Parkside House and my brief time at the other apartment
Phil had learned about the place through Nick, a friend of his from back in California, who I'd known too, though not as well. Parkside House was a complete mix of foreigners. It had a very international feel to it. There was John who grew up in southern California in a town near where I grew up, who liked DJing and played in a ska band; Tommy from Chicago and Brendan from Australia who both played hand drums in the park; Raury from Scotland who painted; Steve and George from England; Joel from Australia who played guitar in his room a lot and skated in his spare time sometimes; another Scot named Jenny who left just after I arrived; Ludovick and Sonia from France who hadn't met before coming out to Japan; Sue and Jessie, 2 Korean girls studying photography and Japanese at a university; Chris from Canada who played drums in a band; Peter, a German guy who had a little bit of a British accent because he'd lived there several years; Dom, a South African and total party animal who'd lived in Australia; Hiro a Japanese guy studying architecture; Maki, who worked in a sort of store for hippies; Kelly, a Chinese american from Boston; and also a few others whose names I can't remember. Just about everyone in the house spoke English fairly well. Just about everyone who wasn't Japanese had job teaching English as a second language, or in the case of Ludo and Sonia, French.
The rooms were small by US standards, but normal by Japanese ones (6 tatami mats in size). A lot of the public spaces were shared, kitchen, bathrooms, dining area, balcony, and a large TV room. It gets me how in the US balconies are often seen as an uncommon luxury, but out here they're pretty damn close to being a requirement. People seldom lounge around on them either, they (along with patios) are used almost exclusively for hanging and drying clothes. Electric dryers themselves are pretty uncommon out here in apartments, though Parkside House, being a guesthouse did have one that took 100¥ coins like a laundromat would.
All in all, it felt like being in an international dorm. And having missed out on the dorm experience in college, became pretty endearing to me pretty quickly. Because most everyone ate together in the dining room, people would always be coming in, going out, saying hello, talking with each other. With everyone being from a different country, we were exposed to a large number of different opinions. The kinds of discussions that could go anywhere and made you realize just how different your way of thinking was when put on the world stage instead of just compared to others in your own country. It got me just how much English unifies the world giving us a common way to communicate, and also made me accutely aware of how many countries out there call English their "primary" language; the US, England, Canada, and Australia always seemed to pop immediately to mind, but Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and Singapore tend to slip under the radar. It also strikes me how we tended to band together with others who spoke the same language. It wasn't as if we isolated ourselves into Chinatowns or anything quite like that, but your friends have tendency to be those you can still manage to have a relaxed and yet still in-depth conversation with.
I stayed there the first night with Phil, he let me crash out on his floor, and knew almost immediately that I wanted to live there. There were rooms available, and put down a deposit the very next day not even knowing what Nova's policy was gonna be regarding the apartment of theirs I'd already agreed to live in (it would turn out I had to stay there, or at least pay rent there for one full month so I amended my move into Parkside to make it a couple weeks later). My first month in Japan ended up being a strange mix of hanging out there occasionally and staying at the Nova apartment I'd been assigned in Kawasaki.
Taking a quick break from describing Parkside, I wanted to mention my apartment back in Kawasaki. I returned to it my second day in Japan to meet my British roommate, a guy named Jon. He turned out to be very friendly, liked anime a lot, spoke a bit of Japanese, and had worked for Nova for some time, though he didn't have all that many good things to say about them (more on that later). I remember getting along with him really well and thinking to myself, that had I met him my first night there, I might not have ended up making the snap decision to move to Parkside House (really glad things turned out as they did instead). A little under a week later, our new roommate arrived, he was a cat named James who was also from England. He was just about a complete opposite to Jon: noisier and much more out-going, he partied, drank a lot, liked drugs, loud music and women. I got along with him too right from the start. Jon was quieter and tended to spend more time with his girlfriend. But both were from England and I remember listening to the two of them talk about the things they remembered from back home, British comedians and pop culture references, and being completely lost. It was weird to me that in the end, despite them both being British, I think I might actually have had more in common with either of them than they did with each other. Jon because of the anime and the fact that we both could be focused when it came to work (James had a habit of quitting jobs after only a few days, and in some cases, only hours after starting). James and I had a lot in common with in regards to musical tastes and partying (we had both been much more wild when we were in college). James, in particular, being a new arrival like myself was much more adventuresome and because everything was new to him as well as me we ended up hanging out quite a bit in the beginning.
I remember once we went to try and meet Jon who was at a pub in Shimokitazawa, a very cool and trendy area with lots of little boutique style stores and small bars. Because the pub was on the basement level though, Jon's phone had no reception and we couldn't get ahold of him, so we instead simply went wandering around exploring Shimokita, getting drunk at bars, and encountering my first (and ironically still best) experience with okonomiyaki in Japan.
If there was one thing both Jon and James had in common, it was their love for soccer or "football" as they called it, though they both had different teams back in England that they liked. We went and saw a game out in Yokohama once, and I got to experience firsthand how little I knew about the game and its culture as the two told me all they could think of on the matter, everything from what teams and tournaments they liked to how the firms worked and operated (turned out it was quite different from what I'd see watching "Green Street Hooligans").
In the end, James left Nova before completing training. I remember teasing him about it saying he'd just completed the ultimate in rapid job quitting. He'd told me he'd quit several jobs after only a few hours and said he once hadn't even bothered to ask, but instead simply went to the bathroom and climbed out a window never to return to work at one of his past positions. "This time you traveled all the way to Japan just to quit a job!" I joked with him. We still keep in touch by email, though Jon's I've lost since it was cell phone contact info for both of us and after we both upgraded phones once or twice we lost touch.
As spring went on and the time I shared between the two apartments began to shift more towards Parkside House, I got to experience my first "Hanami", which in Japanese roughly means "flower watching" and refers specifically to the Cherry Blossoms which bloom only for a couple weeks in the spring. The Japanese go absolutely nuts over it. They use the opportunity to get out as much as possible, flood into parks and other areas with lots of cherry trees, roll out ground mats and then spend hours just hanging out, eating food and snacks, getting drunker and drunker, and louder and louder and cheering over things like the wind blowing through the glades to send white pedals snowing down on them. You really do see a different side to them during this season; they're easier to talk to, more open and celebratory. The start of the business year is the end of March and beginning of April, and it's also the start of the new school year unlike the US which opens every September. Someone once told me that the cherry blossoms sort of signified a time for new beginnings for them out here. It's a special time indeed.
Another thing that was very unique for me at that time was the World Cup Soccer tournament which only happens once every 4 years. That year was the year it was held in Germany, and Japan, the US, England, Australia, all were in it too. World Cup in Parkside House was a total blast. Every time a game came on people would crowd into the TV room to watch it. With people from all different countries gathered around everyone seemed to be going for a different team. Even if the teams playing weren't your own, something was often at stake, tensions ran high, and the cheering and the taunting and the bragging went on sometimes till the early hours of the morning. Then Italy won leaving everyone pissed off and calling soccer the stupidest game ever.
It's kind of weird how the two roommates I think I connected with the most during my first few months at Parkside were Steve, a British guy who had the room next to mine, and Peter, who was German and as I mentioned before spoke English with a slightly British, slightly German accent. I got to know the two of them best I think because they were also both new to Japan like me and willing to go out just to look around and explore, whereas many of the others had become used to things, settled into routines, become busier, and just in general no longer had the same need to go out and look at the details. It's kind of weird how we can sometimes find a kindred spirit in others for no other reason than because they are at the same point as us in life. I felt considerably close to both of them despite both being there for what was actually a relatively short time given the breadth of how long I've been here now. It came as a little of a jolt and disappointment that both of them had to leave after only a few short months (Peter to Australia to be with his girlfriend who was moving there, Steve back to England).
Which I guess brings me to the other thing I realized only then, not just about Parkside House but also about the foreigner situation in Japan in general: people tend to exit your life suddenly. Japan for most of the foreigners who come to visit is not really a long term thing, but rather usually just a year or so of adventure and travel and occasionally study before heading back to one's home country or continuing on to another. In Parkside House, and in many of the jobs I've had here (which often employ many other foreigners like myself), it seems like someone's visa is always about to expire and won't be renewed, someone is always on their way out the door, someone new always coming in. That's the foreigner experience in Japan in a nutshell. Temporal, shifting, and for me at first, a wild, raging blur at the speed of it all.
I suppose something like that could turn a person cautious about getting to know the new guys when they might just be gone the next day. We even speculated once that one of the other roommates who'd been there a long time was kind of bitter at watching others go all the time, adopting a sort of "What's the point of even talking to them?" sort of attitude, though at the time I just looked forward to seeing new people come to fill the spaces: Matt from England, Matt from Canada, Andy from Atlanta, and in the end I outlasted all of them as well. I ended up being a long timer there and in Japan too. Countless faces filled the halls of Parkside House during the three years I spent there. Some of the coolest people I've met in my life, most of whom I still have some contact with. The Parkside I knew then when I first moved in, however, was just a snapshot of an entity that changed form like water. For me, however, things were different. I understood almost from the beginning that I'd want to stay longer than just a year: at least two if not three or maybe even more. I began digging in almost immediately, saving money and not being in the biggest hurry to see all the major sites in and around and near Tokyo, almost as if saving them for later as well. For me the story continued in Japan.
Why did I come to Japan?
To this day I'm asked quite often by people I meet exactly why I came out here, though it was much more common when I first arrived, particularly by new students I met at work. I'm not even entirely sure of the answer myself anymore. I had an early interest in Japanese games, manga and anime which I first became aware of in late grade school and early junior high. This addiction I fed all the way through high school and when I got to college I even took Japanese as it looked interesting.
The language was tough beyond measure, but the class so interesting and enjoyable that I didn't even notice for a long time. I made several good friends in those classes, including Phil, who along with his girlfriend at the time, Mio, became my first roommates when I moved out for the first time. I minored in Japanese after realizing it would be easier to do so with it than any other field in at school, though I also was well aware that nothing short of going to the country itself was gonna make me improve to the level I wanted. On that topic I wasn't even sure I wanted to anyways (advance in skill I mean). I wasn't sure if it'd be useful at all, and though I'd become enthralled by the culture and had already made up my mind to travel there someday, I pushed what thoughts of the language I had to the back of my head and instead just focused on finishing school and swimming through the drudgery of life. For two years after graduating I wandered in and out of jobs and places to live, settling in at a government job that was comfortable but plain, until Phil moved out to Japan for a second time and asked me if I wanted to come out too.
Though I was certain it was time for me to go and see the country since I had a friend there who could show me around, I wasn't sure if living there was for me or not. Looking back on the details of my life just before I left it's hard not to feel they were rather mundane. I had been living with mom and dad for a little while, wanting to move out, but in need of a more reliable car which had kept me there longer than I wanted in order to save money. While greater San Diego is a fun place with a lot going on, my home town of Santee itself is comfortable but out of the way and a bit dull. Phil was pretty much like: "C'mon on man, you know you wanna come out here to live, just go about it the right way this time and get yourself a job through one of the English Schools like Nova or Aeon or something." I decided in the end I'd nothing to lose by trying and that I'd give it a go. There wouldn't even be a choice if I wasn't offered a job, and in that case, I'd just go out for a visit. On the other hand, I also sort of knew that if I was granted an interview I'd almost certainly be accepted. I know my level, and teaching English would be absolutely no problem for me.
Nova had the more streamlined approach for recruiting applicants, they responded quickly and offered me an interview in LA, which I had to take a day off of work to go to. That aside, it was pretty fast and easy and left me feeling good about it all since one of the other interviewees had been to Japan before and said getting hired was not too difficult since foreigners working in Japan, whatever the company, were always leaving to go back to their home countries, creating a constant demand for new ones. Nova offered me a job before Aeon even responded to my initial e-mail.
I requested the greater Tokyo area and got Kawasaki which was about 30 minutes or so from the center of the city, and at this point began my embarkation to the country, thus bringing me back to the beginning.
I requested the greater Tokyo area and got Kawasaki which was about 30 minutes or so from the center of the city, and at this point began my embarkation to the country, thus bringing me back to the beginning.
Nova
My time at Nova was my first few formative months in the country. They had certainly adjusted the process to make the transition for newcomers smoother, though at the same time, just starting out as a newbie in the country, I felt like we were also at their mercy since most of us knew no one and didn't understand how things worked.
I mentioned before that they provided places to live for new teachers, which in itself was a bit of money making scheme for them as well since they had put Jon, James, and myself in an apartment that really was only supposed to be a two-bedroom place (my large tatami room was I think intended to be the living room but had doors on it so they made it a "bedroom") though they of course charged all three of of rent and we paid them directly rather than the apartment complex without knowing the true cost of rent.
They provided on the job training for us as well, which was very helpful, but due to a mix up on my initial training day, I ended up arriving late and very nervous. It's difficult to describe just how nerve racking it can be to go into a classroom of adult students and try and teach them for the first time when you're not sure just what you're doing at all. Because it was English as a second the language, the concepts were easy, and the drills and exercises set up in a pretty clear way for the most part, but doing it for the first time was still very disorienting, and the fears we had of messing up, not doing something satisfactorily were always there. While anyone would be happy to have a trainer watching you in the beginning so they can help or even take over if you get confused or completely stuck, it also made things all the more frightening for us; you knew they were sitting there watching your every move, judging you to some extent or another.
I was trained in a completely different place than where I'd end up working. The place I ended up at was special; it had not only an Area Trainer (a mid-level supervisor who had begun training new teachers), but also an Area Manager (a still higher up supervisor who was in charge of several nearby locations) who were both stationed there regularly, only moving around to other schools occasionally. From the very start I had an unusual feeling about the Area Manager (AM), who was named Cate. She seemed friendly enough, though firm, but also strangely out of it all the time. She'd been told I seemed a bit nervous during training and might benefit from further training. That was all it took for her to schedule me to be observed every single week until my probation expired. The Area Trainer (AT) was a guy by the name of Toby, who spoke very good Japanese and he would be the one doing the follow up observations.
I met the other employees there too. Adrian was a black guy from England who'd been in Japan for 7 years at the time and also spoke excellent Japanese. He had a really great sense of humor too; I remember he used to joke that his family back in home was made up of Yardies (Jamaican gangsters who live in Britain) and I was both impressed and floored at the impressions he did of various ethnic groups speaking Japanese (I'm a sucker for people who can do a good accent but he could do it in Japanese as well as English, priceless). Then there was Raury, an Irish guy who was also really funny, another Brit named Alan who started when I did, an Australian girl who was indonesian by ethnicity, as well as two Canadians whose names I can no longer remember.
At first, the job was new and enjoyable, despite being a bit of a challenge to learn. The students were the best part by far. They were interesting and provided not only a view into the new culture I had entered into, but also an inspiration as to what could be accomplished if you really pushed yourself to learn the new language. I enjoyed most the times where I was given free rein to do open conversations since it gave me the chance to ask them anything I could want to know about Japan.
After a while, however, the thing that was giving me the most trouble was the constant observations and follow up sessions. Admittedly they did help me a lot in the beginning, but putting someone under a high number of observations puts a lot of stress and pressure on them, and especially when they've just come to a new country and started a new job, it was yet another unwanted distraction. I began to feel they'd really singled me out, and it also became apparent that because of the high number of observations and follow ups, Toby had run out of fundamentals to teach to some one of my level (that of someone who was just beginning) and began trying to teach me more advanced and difficult teaching techniques. While some of this did help me to learn faster, his prodding also forced me into a lot of uncomfortable situations I couldn't handle, and on occasion things fell flat in class. And I began to suspect the guy (who was a new trainer and probably just wanted more experience training someone) actually wanted me to make more mistakes just so he could give me more of his "guidance".
Most new employees of Nova were only observed 3 or 4 times in their first 6 months (the probationary period), and most aren't observed 10 times in their first year. I was observed 10 times in 2 months. I remember whining a little bit about it once, after hours, to some of the other coworkers there just to let off some steam. I was brought in to talk to Cate the following day, who said she'd "gotten wind" of it, and told me she believed "there's no such thing as too much training" to justify what she was doing. From Jon, my first roommate in Japan, I'd heard before that some Nova branches actually had "drones" who reported things they'd overheard others say to the bosses, and that they even logged such comments in a book at some locations. Until it actually happened to me, however, I'd thought it was simply something of a rumor or rarity. If the other employees working at my branch knew of this, they certainly knew how to get around it, or who not to talk around, since most of the others there made no secret they had a deep sense of dislike and mistrust for both Toby and Cate. Shit like this (spying on employees and using hearsay to call someone into the office and reprimand them) would scream lawsuit back in the US, but in Japan... no one really seemed to know the rules. In addition to this, I'd taken up a lot of overtime hours to make money since I really needed it immediately after moving to the country, and the fact that I'd moved to Parkside House after my first month had basically doubled my commute time, putting further stress on me by stealing nearly all the free moments I had.
A teacher in a cultural anthropology course I'd taken back in college once said that moving to a new culture would always produce moments of difficulty right around 2 or 3 months just after moving there. And it was indeed around this time that I really began to feel that perhaps I'd made a big mistake in coming out here, that I might've gotten in over my head, that things may not be okay in the future. The big city can be exciting, interesting, warm, and welcoming at times, but also desolate and cold, impersonal and distant. Feelings of homesickness for the places and people I knew started to overwhelm me and only made things harder for me to cope with at work.
The final straw came when I was told they were extending my probation by one more month. I felt like I'd been pushed harder than necessary by Toby, just so he could get more experience training someone, that I'd been pressured into taking chances trying out more difficult things than advisable only to then be punished when I failed to make him look good. I was furious that I was apparently good enough to work 24 lessons of overtime so they could make money off me, but not good enough to be paid the full amount (probationary salary was lower) or considered a full employee after putting up with their very annoying, anal retentive, backwards, disrespectful system for two months. It felt like they were just completely using, bullying, and taking advantage of newcomers who didn't know how things worked there yet. I came very close quitting without having another job lined up, despite the insecurity of being in a foreign country and the instability it would cause me. I came even closer to marching into Cate's office to tell her exactly what I thought of her and that I even was considering going over hers and Toby's heads to complain and try to get transferred making them both look bad in the process.
I mentioned that a lot of newcomers lack information, contacts and resources when they first arrive, but there were a few advantages I did have that others didn't. I understood some Japanese and more importantly knew people doing other things (one aspect I think Nova also hoped to control by placing as many of its workers in the same apartments to limit conversation about other jobs in Japan). One of my roommates in Parkside, Tommy, had told me he had bitched at them for over half a year to get a transfer closer to where he lived and that they had given him the run around the entire way. Finally he became infuriated and threatened to quit, and wouldn't you know, suddenly a position closer to home was opened and they could transfer him like he'd wanted all along. I was strongly considering making threats of my own, but in the end didn't have to. Another roommate turned me on to Gaba, a competing English Conversation School that was something of a rising star at the time, and very much in need of new teachers to fill demand. I was interviewed and hired the same day, though I hung around Nova for an additional few weeks, because I'd been told by someone else they could withhold some of our pay if we quit suddenly and without notice.
The observations stopped immediately, and Toby and Cate fell completely silent whenever I was around; there was no longer any use talking to me and a lot of things better left unsaid. I remember my final day working for them I ended up going to one of their Shibuya branches instead of my usual one. Looking at how much cleaner and more comfortable it was, I wondering to myself how different things might have been if I'd ended up at that location and with different supervisors instead. Part of the irony is that I had actually considered the possibility of moving up within that company had things been comfortable and the job something I felt I could do, but after my time there, I didn't want to be anything like those above me let alone have anything to do with the company anymore. In the space of only 2 months, I went from being completely enthusiastic and eager to progress, to absolutely burned out and sour on the whole company. It turned out to be a very fortunate choice in the end; a little over a year later Nova went bankrupt, leaving thousands of its teachers unpaid and making me very glad I actually hadn't found success with them.
I could've been like a ghost my final weeks there, but instead I treated my time there like an opportunity to do as I felt, enjoy my lessons and time with the students as I'd always wanted to before, and even hang out with some of the others there. I saw my first concert during this time, Wu Tang's Ghostface Killa played at Club Ageha, and I went and saw him with Adrian, his girlfriend and a few others. I also began dating a former student named Sachiko after running into her by chance at a DVD store and having her ask me for my number.
Sachiko
It kind of gets me sometimes just how many foreigners come to Japan as English teachers and end up dating one of their students. "It's almost inevitable", one of my roommates told me, "that if you spend any extended amount of time in an English Conversation School, a chance will come up and if you feel like trying at all, it'll happen." What's kind of funny about the whole thing is that it of course is supposed to be against the company rules ("not endorsed" if not outright forbidden) and yet the number of stories I'd heard, somewhere close to everyone in the guesthouse I lived in had done so at least once. At any rate, I had just left Nova and in something of an "up yours" attitude could really have cared less what they thought of me since they couldn't do anything to me anymore.
Sachiko worked in nursing, taking care of the very old (a profession that's becoming more and more needed with Japan's population that is both shrinking and aging). I learned a lot from her since she was the first one I went out with after coming to the country. She spoke just about the same amount of English as I did Japanese, though we both improved a lot after a very short period of time seeing each other. I remember once a friend telling me that the best way to learn another language is to date someone who speaks it as their first and that way you can channel all your frustrations over communication into learning more. I used to read manga with her and she'd help me when I stumbled over words I didn't know. We watched a lot of movies and often listened to music together, finding we had similar tastes in both regards. I also learned how much of an advantage it was to date someone who was a citizen of the country you'd emigrated to, since she knew how to and could help me do things like fill out forms that were only in Japanese, look up directions, and just in general find information that wasn't in my language. Phil and I used to joke around about the advantages of dating a Japanese girl while living out here: "It's great. You can be like 'I have to go to the Immigration Office to redo these forms, and then you bring her along with you so she can help you with the translation and explanation of it all, and then after it's all done you can be like: "By the way, that counts as a date! ^o^"" Things didn't work out with her in the end, but I still thought she was a pretty cool girl and she certainly had a big impact on me while I was still in the formative years of my time in this country.
Izu
Rodney, a friend of mine and Phil's came to Japan to visit his family for a couple weeks in the summer that year. Half black, and half Japanese, he had an aunt and a cousin on his mother's side who were in Izu at the time, and so, after staying with Phil and I for a few days in Parkside House, we headed out to Izu, a peninsula south of Tokyo with lush forests inland and nice beaches on the exterior.
The time we spent together in Tokyo was brief. Phil and I kept trying to find a girl for him so he could get laid, but to no luck. We went to a few bars and clubs in Roppongi and for the first time found out just how full of scams it was (based on our experience that night, it's right up there with Tijuana and Shanghai amongst the worst in my own personal history). We also checked out the controversial Yasukuni Shrine (several class A war criminals are enshrined there) which has a pretty cool war museum in it as well.
Then Rod went ahead of us to his aunt's place in Izu, while we finished work and then headed out to see him there. Izu was beautiful, though it rained the first day we arrived and later gave me and Phil a very embarassing first night when we went into a forest path that was very steep and slipped down a muddy slope we didn't feel like attempting to rescale only to end up stranded in a golf course on the other side with the rain threatening to return. It was getting dark and we were getting worried since we'd wandered all over the course and had even seen a wild boar running through one area of the woods too. We had to call Rod to help up us find our way back up and out the forest with a flashlight since we could no longer see the way out.
The next day we went down to a small lagoon that Rod's cousin knew about. To our surprise, we took the same path down to the beach as we'd gotten lost the night before, which took us again past the golf course (though this time along the outskirts) to the surprised looks of the players since we were all wearing bathing suits and sandals and carrying beach supplies.
The lagoon was really nice. Clear water that was sheltered from the waves and also warmer than those in the immediate ocean, and teeming with little fish that scurried away whenever you swam near them. The rocks, on the other hand, were black, jagged, and sharp, made of volcanic material. They might as well've been moved there from Mordor, though it's anyone's guess as to why they'd place them down the embankment from a sunny and pleasant golf course. We found a dead shark beached amongst them, and Phil speared the thing with a little harpoon Rod's cousin had brought along for fishing and then posed with it for a picture pretending like he'd caught it. "Imma tell all my students I killed it when I show the picture to em!" he joked.
Rod's cousin knew how to use the harpoon pretty well as it turned out. It has an elasticky rubber band at its end and, if you wrapped that around your wrist and stretched it, you could use it to impale fish by releasing the pole and letting it shoot forward. I tried it a few times but could never seem to get any of the fish with it. Rod's cousin, on the other hand, managed to spear one of them, a little round fish that looked harmless, but turned out not to be. When his cousin gave the harpoon with the fish to him, Rod asked Phil to get the net so he could put it in. After trying to scrape the thing off to no avail, Rod told Phil to just grab the thing and pull it off with his hand.
"Dude, I don't wanna touch that thing, it's gross!"
"Stop being such pussy and just grab it man!!" we all taunted him back until he finally gave in.
When he did grab the thing though, it stung him with a little horn he hadn't seen before. Turned out this little fish had some kind of venom as well.
"God dammit!! It burns, it burns!!" Phil moaned after it happened. We laughed and laughed, though we also worried a little bit later that it might be pretty bad stuff.
"Put some alcohol on it." We told him thinking that you pretty much always did that and it worked in the movies. But in the end all we had on us was beer, and Phil felt stupid pretty quick pouring beer on his swollen hand in the hopes it might disinfect it. The pain went down slowly but everytime he put his hand in the water it burned again, and so poor Phil had to sit out even though he hadn't even gotten to swim at all yet.
For all the laughs we had at his expense, I actually ended up getting much hurt worse that day. First by falling on the rocks and cutting my own hand open pretty bad on one of them (those fuckers were sharp) and then on top of that I got burned pretty bad by the sun as well. We didn't even notice that we'd neglected to bring sunscreen till we reached the lagoon, a good 20-30 minute hike down the mountain and nobody wanted to go back up at that point. There was no shade amongst the rocks which weren't very tall and had no trees or vegetation. And nobody else got burned that bad either; Rod's cousin was Japanese and used to the sun since he went down there often; Rod, himself half-black; and Phil, being Mexican, all had a sort of resistance to the sunlight. Which left only me with any ounce of whiteness to get just about the worst burning of my life.
The next day we drove around the peninsula, saw a park with wild monkeys, an old abandoned gold mine, and lots of nice beaches that we couldn't go into because my ass was red as a lobster by then. We left back for Tokyo the next day passing through Atami on the way home.
Fuji
The first time I climbed Mount Fuji was in the summer of 2006. I went with Peter, my friend and roommate at the time. I remember in my stubbornness wanting at first to try and climb it from the very bottom to the very top so that I could truly and honestly said that I climbed that mountain. When it came down to it though, time constraints and practicality were against us, and so we had ot take the bus to the 5th station (I think) which was halfway up the mountain, the farthest one you can take a bus up to.
We went at night, as many do, because the temperature is cooler and the climb easier at that time as opposed to the day. And while I have no doubt this did make things more relaxed, the climb was still very long and tiring. Despite being cooler, you still would sweat after your body got warmed up from the exertion. The path and eveything out there was completely black as well, and there was nothing to see except some of the lights of the small country towns surrounding Fuji in the distance and the flashlights of other climbers as you went up. There were quite a lot of people doing it too, even some who were quite old and others who were a bit young I thought. The climb itself was really not that difficult when it came right down to it, and provided a person stopped often and took a lot of breaks, it could really be done quite easily. There were a lot of stops or "stations" as they were called that marked the progress up the mountain. Many of these stations had little shops in them where you could buy snacks or drinks, and some even had futons where you could sleep and rest if you were willing to pay for it.
Towards the top the number of people become much more thick as the many roads up the mountain converged into only a few final trails, and the people who once dotted the large surface of Fuji instead became concentrated into the smaller area of its peak. There was actually something of a line to get up to the top, which was a little funny to me at the time, but truth be told, as tired as I was, the rest was more than welcome as even taking just a handful of steps would once more leave you only having to wait again for the person in front to move. The air was thin up at the top, contributing to a worsening headache I had.
The top was larger and flatter and colder too. You could look into the center of the crater and see a lot of ice and snow remaining at the bottom. Fuji is indeed an extinct volcano, which is one of the reasons it has such a perfect, symmetrical, cone like shape the Japanese love so much. There's a shop there that sells postcards, and believe it or not, there's even a post office at the peak too, the point of which I believe is that you can send the postcards right from that place and when they stamp it, it'll say it came from the peak of Fuji thus providing "proof" to your friends that you actually made it and didn't just buy a Fuji postcard from a gift shop further down or elsewhere. There's also a ramen shop up there whose food is only average, but man after climbing that far up does it ever taste good, partly because you're so tired and hungry by that point, though I suppose I could also joke around and say it tastes like victory too when you get there. We had time for this, and to wander around a little since we'd made good time ascending. We didn't make it to the shrine of the mountain goddess which was a bit further, because we were so tired and well... it also had really slipped my mind by that point too.
A final reason it's better to climb Fuji overnight is that you're often treated to a something very special should you make it before light. The view of the sun coming up from Fuji can be a sight to behold. Though I've heard of it being cloudy before, and others being unable to see anything, the first time I went there, there were especially good conditions and after a short wait, the sun rose out of a perfect sea of clouds, making the entire trip worthwhile. I'd escaped from under the thumb of Nova's ridiculous system, met a girl, was living in really fun, really cool place and made a lot of new friends in just a few months and at that point in time, felt both figuratively and literally on top of Japan.
Gravity on our side, climbing down was much easier than the ascent had been. Interesting too, as now the world was lit up and looking down upon what had only been darkness to us before, was now miles and miles of land in every direction with a spectacular view from the stratosphere of Fuji's heights with clouds beneath your feet.
Roberto's Visit
My friend Roberto came in late December to see me and stay a while. At first I'd wondered what he'd make of it all and how much I'd changed, but instead it was I who was amazed at how much he had. He'd traveled all over south america, backpacking, and catching buses to places I still haven't been. He'd gone to China, only to become stranded in Hong Kong when he discovered they wouldn't let him back in without the proper entry permits, in the meantime having a whole slew misadventures there, sleeping in the streets, dancing around for tips alongside street performers, and even being threatened at a few points by people who "ran those streets". He was also on his way to Australia right after he finished in Japan. I'd long been thinking of doing more traveling myself and hearing his stories only made me want more to see what the rest of the world, not just Japan, had to offer.
Roberto's Visit
My friend Roberto came in late December to see me and stay a while. At first I'd wondered what he'd make of it all and how much I'd changed, but instead it was I who was amazed at how much he had. He'd traveled all over south america, backpacking, and catching buses to places I still haven't been. He'd gone to China, only to become stranded in Hong Kong when he discovered they wouldn't let him back in without the proper entry permits, in the meantime having a whole slew misadventures there, sleeping in the streets, dancing around for tips alongside street performers, and even being threatened at a few points by people who "ran those streets". He was also on his way to Australia right after he finished in Japan. I'd long been thinking of doing more traveling myself and hearing his stories only made me want more to see what the rest of the world, not just Japan, had to offer.
He stayed for over a month which was probably a lot longer than he should've considering my room was tiny and at times unaccommodating. Phil was nice enough to share his room on occasion too so I wouldn't have to deal with him 24/7. That being said, having him over was an absolute blast. We went out drinking often, and saw a lot of the sights around Tokyo. My first time down to see the Daibutsu (Giant Buddha) in Kamakura was with him and Phil. We went snowboarding together with another friend of mine named Larry who also worked at Gaba at that time.
Being foreigners in a country that didn't celebrate our holidays back home, we would sometimes throw parties to do so ourselves. Many of the ideas of Christmas have become diluted in Japan so that now it is seen as a party day or couples' day whereas their New Year's Eve is the quiet reflective one where families gather. This is the opposite of the US whose New Year's is loud and rowdy while Christmas is low key. Somehow the Japanese have come to see eating "Christmas Cake" (you're basic style of cake also used for birthdays, goodbyes, and other special occasions) as a tradition, one they are always shocked to hear doesn't exist in the US when I tell them so. Lacking turkey, and thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign by KFC, they've also latched onto the idea that fried chicken is a traditional Christmas dinner. But for us at the guesthouse, we decided to have a Christmas party similar to one we held in Thanksgiving: a potluck in which everyone made a dish or two, and then when the time rolled around, we all put it in the center of the table and began eating. Those who couldn't provide a dish, had to buy alcohol and snacks. Those parties were a lot of fun. We generally invited about as many people as we could and told everyone else we knew to do the same to get a good sized crowd to show up. Rob was there for it that year and it was a good one.
He was also around for my first New Year's spent in the country. It was expensive, but we eventually decided on Ageha, being that it was a big club, sure to have good crowds and good music, and near a pier. This last factor was important as one way in which the Japanese celebrate New Year's differently than americans is that they like to watch the first sunrise of the year, feeling it purifies them inside for the next year to do so. We gathered for the countdown in Hachiko only to discover that despite there being a large crowd thinking the same thing as us, there was no big clock and was not being encouraged as a gathering place for such. Ageha did not let down, however, although the sunrise came only after a very long wait, no thanks to the Japanese practice of not using daylight savings time which delayed things by a full hour.
Gaba
Gaba styled itself as a "Man to Man" Eikaiwa (English Conversation School). One on one lessons (often referred to as "private lessons" by independent teachers without companies) were its main selling point. They had textbooks, and laptop computers in each terminal allowing the teacher and student to use not only practice drills but also the internet's pictures and reference in lessons. Because there was only one student in the class as well, free conversations were also allowed if the student wanted to do so. The atmosphere was cleaner and more professional than Nova, but at the same time also more comfortable and relaxed. You also got to make your own schedule (though wether or not it would get filled was a matter of luck depending on if the students wanted to take lessons at the times you opened). Because students of this sort tended to be either professionals and business people who needed English for work, or else students or those with an interest in it as a hobby, the busy hours when you could actually get work tended to be the same as Nova and all the other eikaiwas: nights and weekends. You got paid only for the lessons you worked, unless a student cancelled before a certain deadline.
At first this system worked out fine for me. I liked waking up late and having free time when everyone else was at work, inhabiting the public spaces when they were uncrowded and easier to wander. I liked the ability to talk more freely with the students too, and learned a lot about the things many Japanese were interested in, and the places, events, sights, and experiences that were unique to this land. I also liked being able to choose my own days off and have as many as I wanted (provided of course I scheduled things a full month in advance); my trip to Izu occurred just after I started at Gaba and a vacation like that one would have been impossible under Nova's overly stringent policies (a running joke amongst foreigners was that "Nova" was really just short for "No vacation") I worked in Shibuya too, which also was a lot of fun. It's a haven for a lot of young people in Tokyo, a fashion district, and (the area around Hachiko crossing being something like Japan's answer to Manhattan's Times Square) also a popular place for tourists. Although it is about as big and built up as Times Square, however, I've never gotten quite the same level of awe from looking at it and I think that part of this is because of significance. Times Square feels like a place where all the world's roads lead, Hachiko by contrast, perhaps simply where all the roads in Japan go to.
I would wander the alleys and back streets for hours just looking at things in the beginning. Being a large, metropolitan city there were restaurants with great Indian, Thai, Chinese food (of almost any kind you could think of) everywhere, and I used to try eating at a different place everyday. There were bakeries with pastries, sweets, and breads from everywhere. Little bars and shops tucked into nooks and crannies and even descending under the other stores (which I know is common for big cities like NY and SF, but was a rarity back in my hometown). Behind the 109 building was a hill full of love hotels and clubs with big acts and great music. That whole area was kind of seedier than the others, and home to what is still just about my favorite techno club "Womb" with its multiple floors and lounges.
Gradually I settled more into routine. There was a ramen shop I started going to almost nightly that made a very milky, creamy tasting tonkotsu ramen and even sold it at a pretty low price compared to most of the other noodle shops that had very good stuff. It had kind of a quaint, familiar, down-home, small neighborhood sort of feel to it, and the shopkeepers began to remember me after a while too.
Eventually, I got used to the situation as a whole, and slowly became worn down by work there as well. Sachiko and I had split up just after October, and the schedule of Gaba had grown to be tiresome. It was better than Nova in every conceivable way with one exception, the pay at Nova had been higher and more reliable, two aspects one had to surrender if they wanted the freedom and flexibility Gaba had on offer.
When I realized my Visa was going to expire after my first year there, it became something of a source of stress when I approached their management and asked for help renewing it, and was told I should increase my hours to help them make a case to the immigration board that I was making a comfortable living wage. For quite some time I'd been watching Phil and how his job as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) for public schools afforded him not only regular hours and pay, but fun, easy work teaching Japanese kids, and all public holidays as well as summer, winter, and spring breaks off. You had to wake up early but that was a small price to pay for all the benefits that came with it. I began looking for new jobs at the same time I was working harder than ever for Gaba in the hopes of getting my Visa renewed. It took a bit of toll on me. When I wasn't working long days and nights at the school, I was looking for a job, filling out applications, and going to interviews during my free time.
Finally I was granted a job at Interac, the same company Phil had been at, though he quit just as I came in, deciding he would move to Gotemba, a small town near the base of Fuji. Things were changing as a new year dawned for me in my new country. A new chapter was beginning and with it, the characters were changing along with the type of game being played.
My first year in Japan was a year unlike any other, and not just because the job I had was different then than all my other years here. My first month felt like I saw something completely new and different each day. The highs were higher and the lows were lower and everything seemed to burn brighter then than it does now.
Shibuya Hachiko Crossing
Snowboarding
Eating out
First Sunrise of the New Year
The Daibutsu
Mt Fuji
The Lagoon at Izu
The sunrise from the top of Fuji
Ghostface Killa
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