Metamorphosis

Things like cell phone payments, gym membership dues and internet fees can be paid directly from your bank account. In fact, I think having a valid bank account to make automatic payments from might be a prerequisite to signing up. That's great and all, except for the fact that signing up for a Japanese bank account has to be one of the most insanely complicated endeavours I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. And this is even with the full help of Epson.

First day of work, the three of us co-ops (Andrew and Alex and I) are put in a room with four nice girls (Better than 1:1 ratio - this is how much manpower these things require) and we spent the entire morning, each of us paired with one girl, filling out a seemingly endless wave of application forms. A few days later, a few of them are rejected for being too messily filled out. We rewrite them and a few days later, which was today, they were rejected again, because we didn't fill in the forms entirely on our own. What? They don't think I can write kanji that nicely? Yup - they're right.

So long story short, I have to wait at least another week to join a gym. Which will make it three weeks without a real workout with real weights. I'm turning into a shrimp. And yeah, no keitai cell phone, or internet or pictures till then either.

Oh wait, I'm suppposed to be talking about the good stuff right? Well, everything you heard is true: the transportation system absolutely rocks, as does the food, the politeness and the cleanliness. People say Canadians are polite and friendly, but try walking into any Japanese store and it's on a whole different level of politeness. Someone will always welcome you into the store, every employee you walk into in the store will greet you. At first I thought it was kind of annoying, but I've gotten used to it and honestly, now I think it's pretty damn rude not to see someone bow and say "irasshaimase" when I into a store. Well, I can already tell, the reserve culture shock is going to hit pretty damn hard when I return in a year.

As you likely already know, the transportation system is awesome. Trains are extremely punctual, if you're late even ten seconds you can kiss your ride goodbye. Which means, I should kiss this post goodbye!