I have been in Japan for about two weeks now and figured I would start with just a status update with everything I have done. I have many posts in the works about where I the little differences between the US and Japan, and pots about, where I work, vending machines alcohol, being tall, and my thoughts on the Japanese language all in the works partially written. Hopefully I can get those done soon. This post won't focus on any one topic, but rather give a status report.
My first few days I stayed in Tokyo. The unfortunate part was that it took me a few days to get over the jetlag. Now it is probably worse for me than most people as I am 100% unable to fall asleep on an aircraft. The combination of being too large to even remotely fit in the seat provided as well as having a very hard time falling asleep normally in a pitch black quiet room is disastrous for me. So missing a whole day of sleep and missing a whole day due to crossing the international date line really messed me up. So there was no hope of being awake long enough to checkout Tokyo night life.
The things I did in Tokyo were mostly touristy. Checked out the Tokyo Skytree, which is the second tallest man made structure in the WORLD. You can pay to go up to an observation room and get a view of Tokyo from above. Unfortunately it was overcast so I couldn't see the whole city, but the view was still amazing.
The other touristy thing I saw was Sensoji Temple. I don't know a whole lot about Buddhism, but I had find with getting my fortune from the temple. There are containers filled with wooden rods which if you pay 100円 (roughly 1 USD) you can shake it and then extract one of the rods from a small hole in the container. Each one has writing on it indicating which box to open containing your fortune. I of course received "bad fortune." So just days before I start a new job I am told
"Marriage of any kind and new employment are both bad."
so pretty excited about my new life in japan. If you receive bad fortune, you are supposed to tie the paper to a rack or a tree near the temple so the monks can pray for your luck to change... However I kept mine. I was also surprised that right next to the Buddhist temple was Shinto shrine. Shintoism is the religion that is native to Japan originating some ~2700 years ago. Today it seems that people currently believe some sort of hybrid between the two. Japan does not have Buddhists and Shinto, it contains people who follow both systems, which is fascinating. However I currently don't understand the tenants of either. Actually the fortune may have been Shinto rather than Buddhist as I can not tell and the two seem to blend together here.
Tokyo itself is huge yet surprisingly clean and organized. The trains all come on time, get you anywhere you need to go, and hundreds of people walk through the stations quietly and orderly. The cleanliness of the city is shocking considering that on no street corner is there a trash can. I will have to have a post dedicated to trash/recycling disposal in japan as it is fascinating. Tokyo is filled with vending machines, convenience stores, (Konbini short for konbiniensu sutoa) and restaurants. I enjoyed just walking around the streets looking at things. Pictured below is the most (foot) trafficked intersection in the world, and the best food I have had in Japan so far, unagidon, which is eel on rice.
Off to Tsukuba Town
Tokyo was fun but I will be living and working in Tsukuba (つくば）. There is a express train which leaves from Akihabara station in Tokyo and takes 45-55 minutes to get to Tsukuba station for ~1100円 (~$11US). The time varies depending of if you catch a local train or a rapid train which skips about half the stops between. Now for those of you in the states, it is worth pointing out that it takes over an hour to drive from Tsukuba to Akihabara since it is close to 50 miles as the bird flies. This is a big contrast to trains in the US as I am used to transit between San Diego and Orange county which takes twice as long by train as it does to drive (without traffic.) The Tsukuba Express (called the TX) is smooth, quiet and seems to have a train departing every ~5 minutes! The fact that I can get to Tokyo and back via the express train is comforting as it makes seem like I spend plenty of time in Tokyo as it should be possible to go for just a day trip or more likely weekend trips.
The reason heading to Tokyo is appealing is because Tsukuba isn't. It feels very dull. It is not rural, but small suburban city. The bigger problem is the location of my place of work. I am working at the KEK, which of course it not what it is called in Japanese. Here it is called 高エネルギー加速器研究機構. So from the Tsukuba station I have to take the bus 20 minutes outside of the city to my stop labeled something like 高エネルギー加速器研究機構, no English or romaji on the bus. I was able to find it though since I didn't even know which bus to take and the person at the information desk was able to circle the name of my stop on a bus timetable sheet when I asked for "KEK." The bus fare is 300円. Once there I checked into the guest apartment which is on the KEK campus which I will be living in for the first month. I filmed a tour of my temporary accommodations which you can see here.
Other than my inability to stand up in the shower (which is very frustrating and I leave the ceiling of the shower covered in water and shampoo as my pre-rinsed head keeps hitting it) the place is fine... except for the location. KEK is a research institution which contains a few particle accelerators. I imagine that it suffers from the "not in my backyard" effect which has caused its remote location. There is nothing near KEK itself. Walking for ~2km (~1.2miles) along a completely unlit road brings you to a マクドナルド (McDonald's) marking the edge of a small area called Oho. It is then a short walk to a grocery store and a few restaurants. Having to walk over a mile back carrying groceries severely limits how much you can buy, and the complete darkness of the walk makes it unenjoyable.
Oh, I mention the darkness because currently sunset is 4:30 here, which means by the time I am out of work it is completely dark, not even dusk. This surprised me at first since Pittsburgh was farther north than I am now, so I expected the day to be longer. It turns out it is longer, but it matters where you are located in your timezone! So I currently have about 30minutes more daylight than I would back in Pittsburgh, but sunrise is around 6:20am, where in Pittsburgh the sun is currently up from 7:10 to 17:00. While I am glad I don't have to change my clocks here in japan (DST is not observed) I really wish we could be in the next timezone over as I don't care at all about the sun being up early in the morning and would must rather have sunlight in the evening!
The isolation from living at KEK is really troubling. I could take the bus into Tsukuba proper, but the last bus to KEK leaves at 22:20 which does not leave for any time for evening activities. It also makes going to Tokyo for a day trip problematic as getting back to Tsukuba in time requires leaving quite early (especially leaving time for me to inevitably get lost.) Taking a taxi from Tsukuba station is possible, but ~$30USD which doesn't seem worth it. So I have been mostly restricted to the oho area near work which does not have much going on, and is very much a small town. At least it is a temporary arrangement, as I will be moving close to the Tsukuba train station on Dec5 (more on that later.) The McDonalds is 24hours so at least I wont starve.
I am able to eat at the cafeteria on the KEK campus, for only 500円 (~5USD) however it is closed on the weekend so I do have to go to the oho grocery store. I have walked around that grocery store for hours trying to figure out what everything is. The first hurdle I had is that they don't provide you with bags to bag your groceries. Well they might provide one if I were to ask, but I don't know how to ask. However there is a little area that most people put their groceries into a box to seal up and take, or more likely have reusable shopping bags. I have determined after walking around the store for hours that the reusable shopping bags are not sold within the grocery store. This problem is now solved as I found reusable shopping bags at a 100円 store (such dollar stores will certainly be the topic of their own post eventually.)
Actually shopping for food is difficult as I don't know what most things are. Things like vegetables, meat and eggs are pretty easy since you can identify them by sight. The meat is a bit tricky since a good percent is fish and I am unable to recognize it but chicken and pork are pretty easy to spot. There are still surprises, like when you buy bacon and don't realize it is not sliced, but at least I know what it is. The problem is everything else, especially sauces and packaged goods. For example it took me 10 minutes to decide that packages I was looking at were salt and not sugar. I believe the things in cartons are milk, but unable to determine which ones are cream, milk, skim, etc. So even if I were to look up how to cook Japanese foods ("Cooking with Dog1" is a youtube channel which seems to teach Japanese home cooking) I am unable to buy the required ingredients. There are many packages which look like they are the spices of seasonings required to make tasty looking things like curries or soups, but I can't read the directions at all. So far the only real cooking I have done has been to cook some noodles in a pan with pork and onions, which I have no idea if I am doing it right, some instant raman, microwavable things, and tomago kake gohan. The last one is simply a raw egg you mix into a bowl of rice. A traditional breakfast food here... I think.
The thing about shopping and everything else here in japan is that I don't understand the language, and no one speaks English. Supposedly everyone takes many years of English classes in school in Japan, but it does not feel possible to get by here with English. In Europe I imagine similar amounts of English in school but the Japanese have much less opportunity to practice it with native speakers. It may be that everyone's English is better than it seems, and everyone is too shy to speak it. Perhaps if I was more demanding or forceful people would speak more English to me, but when I encounter someone who is shy about something, I tend to leave them alone about it. I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable having to speak English to me if they are uncomfortable speaking it! Maybe that is something I will have to learn to get over but for now I have no form of communication with most people. People have been super helpful with everything, like a bus driver getting out of the bus and walk over to tell me where I should go when I was obviously lost, but he informed me with gestures and pointing, not with speech. I have no fear of being unable to do things here, as people will go far and out of their way to help me if I need it or ask for it.
The problem is never understanding what is going on. I enjoy knowing what is going on around me. I don't just want to know what to do, I want to know why things are happening. I think everyone has that to some extent, but maybe being a scientist that need to answer "why" is stronger. I am the type of person who reads the manual for every device I buy. Here I am unable to read a single word of anything. It is not good enough for me to figure out how to use the washing machine, or figure out how to use the rice cooker. I feel incredibly frustrated that I don't know what every option on either does. I can figure out what I need to do to ride the train, but I wan't know how all the details of how my rechargeable transit card works. This is not unique to japan, but simply living somewhere that I don't speak the language. I think I either need to learn to understand Japanese extremely quickly or I will be very frustrated and upset with my life here. Either that or take the advice that some have given and "learn to accept being confused and not understand what is going on." Which seems like a terrible thing to try to learn.
Current Status
Currently my biggest complaint is how isolated living at the KEK is. I think things will be better once I move to an apartment closer to Tsukuba station as it will probably be easier to discover things I enjoy, be more convenient to get settled, and hopefully be easier to meet people and make friends. Additionally once I have a more permanent residence I can start buying things to make things feel more at home. The place I am moving to is designed for foreign researchers and comes fully furnished, which is nice for getting on my feet quickly (though it means a bed which is too small for me). It may not be perfect, and people have suggested I should move closer to tokyo and take the train to commute to work, but hopefully since the building is just for foreign researchers I can meet some English speaking friends. I had the option of moving to government housing (I am an employee of the Japanese government) which would have been super cheap (~$200 a month.) When I visited them they were huge apartments, spanning two stories, clearly intended for families. It would have been amazing... except the building was old so the doorways were WAY too low for me to walk through. Standing they were at MOUTH level. Even just looking at the apartments I smacked my head into one really hard and sadly couldn't move there. (I will post more about apartments after I move to my new place)
The next biggest issue is the lack of a phone plan. Not being able to use online translation services or Google maps while out really hinders my ability to explore. Having maps and GPS at your finger tips enables you to have confidence in going places as you can always use the GPS to find a route home. I will be much happier once I have data on my phone. Phone service here first required I get a Japanese bank account. After I received my account the secretary at work took me to docomo, which is the largest telecom here to get a phone plan. Unfortunately they refused to give me a plan for my current phone, and seem to require you to buy a Japanese phone through them. My phone is a Nexus5, which one of the important features of the Nexus phones is they come unlocked so I KNOW I would be able to use it in japan if I had a plan (it works currently with my US plan but the roaming charges are undesireable.) Since I want to keep my current phone it becomes tricky but my research has found that two companies B-mobile and Ymobile will offer simcard only phone plans here, and seem much cheaper than the major companies. The holdup there was since their ordering is completely online I needed a Japanese creditcard. I finally received my credit card today so I can hopefully sign up with one of them soon. However everything is in Japanese so not sure it will be easy for me to sign up.
The credit card is not that important since almost everything in japan is cash based. No one uses credit cards at small shops or restaurants. I was worried because I am almost out of the yen that I brought with me. When I first arrived I converted some USD to yen, but not all of the USD I brought with me in case the exchange became more favorable or I found a better way to convert the currency. I only had enough to last me a few weeks, which are now up. Luckily I received my fist paycheck today so I can take money from the ATM. It took me a long time this morning to verify I did get paid since my bank's website is only in Japanese. In fact here is the bank's website and here is the English version.... looks like it has not been updated in 10 years, certainly can't log in using English. The ATM's for my bank don't have an English option either... so hopefully I can figure out how to withdraw money and don't end up transferring all of my money to Nigeria or investing in gashapon from the ATM.
So that is an overview of everything so far and my current status. TL;DR moved to KEK, waiting impatiently for a phone and to move to a better located permanent place.
I am hoping now that I have this overview out of the way I can focus on writing more in depth about Japan and a bit about the differences in life and culture here as I see it. There are many odd things in japan, which I hope to convey soon in other posts. Thanks for reading.
Japanese Lesson:
Konbini コンビニ
abbreviated from the closest Japanese approximation to "convenience store," konbiniensu sutoa.
There are more 7-elevens in Japan then there are in the US. Konbini are on every street corner in populated areas (none near KEK). They sell softdrinks, snack foods, pens, beer, and often have a section of comic books with a hand full of young men/boys reading them in the stores. The biggest difference between a convenience store in Japan and the states is the selection of hot foods, which are not hotdogs which have been rolling all day, but nikuman which are buns filled with meat and quite good. But also various plates of noodles or bento boxes and onigiri. Try one today!
1 Dog refers to the host of the show, they don't eat dogs in japan.↩
