Four days ago (or is it five? International Date Line, stop messing up my life!) I drank my last (for awhile, anyway) cup of Dunkin’ Donuts morning coffee and left America for Japan. Now I’m sitting in my apartment drinking my first can of Georgia Original coffee in eight months. (Coffee is important to me; I mark the eras of my life by my current dominant brand.)
The flight itself was pretty uneventful. I hate flying, not because I’m afraid of crashing (I hate long flights so much I sometimes think crashing would be a relief) but because I hate being confined to a seat and having to breathe and smell recycled fart air. I can’t sleep on planes, the smells disgusts me so much I can’t relax. I basically sulk and whine (mentally) the whole trip.
My plane left in late morning and flew northwest over Canada and Alaska. We followed the sun, so it was pretty much high noon the entire 12-hour flight. In fact, in sun time only about 2 hours passed between take-off and landing; we taxied at around 11am and landed at 1:15pm. (For some perspective, in absolute time about 12 hours passed, and in world time about 26 hours passed.)
It was a clear and sunny day, and by referring to the airplane Sky Map I was able to identify lakes and cities I saw below. Over Alaska I saw some impressive mountains and glaciers- I even spotted Mt. McKinley! Like Hawaii, it looks just like it does in photos.
The plane landed at Narita ahead of schedule, to my great joy. Everyone was up gathering luggage and fighting for a spot in the aisle, as usual, when the flight attendants announced that we had to be checked by quarantine officials before we would be allowed to disembark. It was annoying, but I figured some dude would just collect the swine flu questionnaires we filled out during the flight (do you have a cough, fever, have you been to Mexico recently, etc.) and that would be it. I was wrong.
After keeping us waiting for 20 minutes, six or seven people in full quarantine gear (gowns, head coverings, masks, gloves) boarded the plane. At first they just collected the questionnaires, but then they proceeded to check every passenger for a fever with infrared video, and pass out surgical masks. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that each action was performed separately, so the officials had to make three different passes through the plane. It was a 777, too, so we’re talking some 200-300 people.
An hour passed before I was finally allowed to disembark. It was a close call, too: the quarantine officials were really kicking up a ruckus about some dude six or seven rows ahead of me , and after taking and re-taking his temperature about eight times, making numerous phone calls, and running around crazily they finally decided to detain only the several rows ahead and behind the feverish man and dismiss everyone else. I made the cut-off point by only two rows, thank the monkey spirits!
It was smooth sailing from there. At the airport I changed some monies, called my future employer to let them know I had arrived, sent my luggage ahead through a courier service and boarded a bus to Saitama Prefecture. A man sitting in front of me seemed to want to practice his English; he pointed out notable landmarks as we drove by: Tokyo, Tokyo Disneyland, Chiba Prefecture, and, most important of all, Costco. Some foreigners get kind of snippy with Japanese people who approach them wanting to chat in English, but I don’t know anyone this far north in Japan, so without random English conversationalists I might get pretty lonely!
I slept on the bus for a while and somehow managed to wake up minutes before my stop (good to know that eight months in America have not dulled that uncanny ability!), which was a small, quaint train station in Saitama Prefecture. Getting off the bus, I got my first real whiff of Japanese air in eight months (air-conditioned airport and bus air don’t count). It was a warm, sunny and gently breezy evening- basically perfect. You could step inside and outside without noticing the slightest difference in temperature.
I still had to take two trains to get to my town, so I followed some giggling elementary school girls in uniforms and identical red leather backpacks to the correct platform. Where else in the world do 9-year-old girls still ride a train to and from school unaccompanied by an adult, I wonder?
I don’t want to write the name of my town here, because I’d rather this blog remain as anonymous as possible. I’d hate for my employer to find it and worry that I might run down the company, or something. At any rate, suffice it to say that my town is a feeder-suburb of Tokyo, and as such has both rural and urban elements: plenty of rivers, fields and mountain scenery, plenty of shopping and traffic as well. To tell the truth, looking out the window on the train as I approached my town, I was practically hugging myself with delight at the beautiful view. I thought that living near the excitement and convenience of a metropolis like Tokyo might mean sacrificing the natural beauty I was able to enjoy living in rural Hiroshima, but so far I have not been disappointed.
An employee at my company met me at the train station and drove me and my remaining luggage to the office. I was pretty manky in jeans and running shoes, not to mention exhausted, but it was good to get the first impressions over with at a time when any imperfections or weirdness could be conveniently blamed on the fact that I’d been been traveling for 18+ hours.
My own first impressions of the workplace were generally good. The office is small and home-y, but also clean and professional. The staff seems very nice and knowledgeable, if busy and overworked. The majority of the staff is Japanese, so most conversation is in Japanese, though nearly everyone seems to understand at least some English. I definitely have to study up on the J-go if I want to do well in this job, though.
I hung around at the office for an hour or two before another staff member drove me to my apartment. It’s a five or ten minute drive from the office drive down a busy road, but once you turn off it’s almost inaka-ish. Houses are clustered very close together, as they tend to be in Japan, with fields and gardens inbetween. My apartment building is bubble-gum pink and a 5-minute walk from a 7-11 (both points in its favor, imo).
Less favorable is the fact that my whole apartment is basically a dorm room; it’s pretty small. Entering through the front door, there is a genkan (place to remove your shoes) about the size of a post card, then immediately on your left is a capsule hotel-style bathroom (the toilet and bath are in the same plastic unit; most residences in Japan have separate rooms for each). Turning right, you enter the rest of the apartment: ‘kitchen’ on the left (includes a fridge, washer, dryer, and tiny kitchen counter unit), rest of the room (bed, tv, bookshelf, drawers) on your right. At the far end of the room is a large three-sided window with a window seat, from which I can see a small grove of bamboo, some palm trees, a traditional Japanese-style house, and some mountains in the distance. There’s another window between the kitchen and bathroom across from the front door, but it’s pretty small and more for fresh air purposes than for looking out.
Anyway, to summarize: the trip went well except for some quarantine-related adventures, my town is nice, my office is nice, my apartment is okay. Look for more tomorrow!
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